Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. ~ Denis Waitley

Three Questions, December 16, 2024

You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!

What was the most beautiful thing I experienced today?

The most beautiful thing I saw today was a picture of someone close to me dressed in their PhD robes for their graduation. She’s worked really hard to achieve this and I’m really proud of her.

What did I learn today?

I was looking at weather for my upcoming trip to the Valley of Fire and stumbled into a site on the geologic history of the park. It was really interesting, didn’t realize how old the rock was in the park and excited to realize that there are actually some really old fossil areas in the park. A new thing to look for this year.

What made me happy today?

First was finishing my Christmas shopping, happy to get everything ordered and out. While I was writing tonight I saw the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was on TV. Now while I’m not a fan of Christmas or many things Christmas related I have a special spot for that show. First of all, it has been noticed when I was younger and had more hair and a full, red tinted beard that I might bear a bit of a resemblance to Yukon Cornelius. Second, I’ve always felt like a misfit, so the whole misfit toy island story line kind of touches me. But the big reason Rudolph hits pretty hard is because of a really amazing memory of a peppermint kiss. My first real girlfriend was during my first year of college. A friend invited us to watch Rudolph in her dorm room and we were drinking peppermint schnaps. Suddenly, Karie and I found ourselves alone, we’d only been dating for a couple of weeks and now alone, a little high on peppermint schnaps we had our first kiss. It was really amazing and is a memory that always makes me smile.