It was a simple conversation about happiness that took quite a wide and unexpected turn into a moment of serendipity.

As if our lunch conversation wasn’t already and unexpectedly pretty fascinating given the long lapse of time between our in person meeting, at one point we shared our own list of what makes each of us happy. I wasn’t expecting an epiphany but that’s what epiphanies do, just creep up and surprise you when you least expect it.

As we went tit for tat across the table, I found our “happy” scenarios were all circumstantial, based almost entirely upon fortunate events and lovely experiences that either happened around us, to us, or were otherwise concocted by us simply that we might occasionally experience happiness and joy.

As we hugged and each of us drove back to work, I thought about that epiphany “Us humans seem to put in a lot of work for some fleeting bliss which, ultimately, passes until our dependence on the next experience prompts some catalyst. We could learn a lot from the rest of the animal kingdom.”

Seemingly, to be continuously happy requires effort and exposure to things outside ourselves, while simply being ‘content’ is a taskless, unavoidable state of peace within our selves despite the circumstances whatever they are. Happiness is merely the ! at the end while contentment is the entire sentence before it that we need not work to write because being contented, we just let it fall into place.

Serendipity is full of wonder and beauty, and exactly what our conversation that afternoon had very pleasantly become.