Tiny beautiful things

I have the impression that the quest for happiness becomes more and more complex as years go by. Adults (me, jaw-dropped, in the first row) are mesmerized by the capacity of kids to find the most common things whimsical and magnetically fascinating and I have heard many parents proclaiming what a bewildering experience it is to re-discover the world through the eyes of their offspring. No breaking news for sure, rather a trite consideration that has found in the past centuries revered voices, for instance that of William Blake, who urged us to rediscover the child within ourselves.

I have stopped being a child many years ago and I don´t have toddlers running around chasing ants or talking eloquently to a potato chip, so basically it seems like I am doomed to be a quite rational grown-up, nailed to the idea of life as I decided to regard it. Yet, last night I was playing tennis (very generous definition of my attempt) with three friends of mine in a poorly lit indoor court and there I was, my knees slightly bent, holding my racket tight, looking at my Indian friend across the net smiling his gorgeous, elegant smile while getting ready to serve. And suddenly it started raining and the ball was flying over the net in very creative twirls and my Canadian friend was doing her funny jump-serves and my London mate was running wildly around the court yelling “Mine! Yours! No, no, mine!” and that rain…the rain kept tapping tenaciously on the plastic roof, producing a warm, reassuring music, transforming those apparently meaningless bunch of minutes into…pure bliss.