Author: Athina Kappou

Undergraduate student, Department of Turkish & Modern Asian Studies

University of Athens

I sat alone for once more. I lay down in my bed and tried to sleep even though I wasn’t feeling sleepy. I closed my eyes. I saw familiar people ,people I love and voices that I have missed. I felt that I smelt jasmine, cinnamon and the sea; my favourite smells. Suddenly I heard my shelf wondering: “is this happiness and if it’s not, then what is it?When does it start and when does it finish?”

In Greek there are two different words for happiness. Both of them are equally beautiful, but they have a different meaning. “Eftihia” is the first one, and if we could translate it, its meaning would be “good luck”. The second word is “eydaimonia”, this word has a deeper meaning. “Daimon” (in english, “demon”) in ancient Greek was a smaller god or something that all of us humans have inside us, a substance. This substance that god shares with us, and gives us the chance to reach it or feel it. Heraclitus said that our character is our “daimon”. Character contains choices, reactions, faith, happiness… We and only we can define our own happiness, only we know what we want in order to be happy.

Ι realised that I don’t want much in order to be happy. Then, I heard this lyric that really pissed me off “…happiness is everything we expect to come…”. Once I heard it, I thought that I don’t want to let my life pass me by with the thought that maybe one day I will become happy. And right then I remembered what happiness is really like for me; happiness is the loud laughs of my beloved people, a true deep meaningful look, a conversation with a friend in a balcony at 3 a.m, five glasses of red wine, singing and dancing with my friends at a concert, the warm touching of a hand, two big brown eyes looking at me, the happiness of my best friends, the smell of  jasmine, the empty city of Athens, people who make me feel like family even though they are not, a cigarette, the chance to fight for my dream, the simple yet magical question “how are you?”, a boat trip to Koufonisia, Crete, two glasses of tsikoudia, a book that I just finished but I miss already, talking and laughing out loud, a magical sunset, the big sweet eyes of my mother when she says “I love you”, a wish when an airplane passes by, the fact that I breath, that I see, that I kiss, that I touch my beloved people, the fact that I am alive right here right now.

Now I know well that, luckily, I am happy.