What Exactly Is Happiness?

In this episode, I revisit a September afternoon in Detroit that turned out to be one of the best days of my life — not because I was chasing something, but because, for once, I wasn’t.

Transcript

Hey... where’s all this happiness everyone keeps talking about?

Welcome back to The Short Pause.

When I was younger, I did a lot of chasing...

Chasing the girl.
 The next opportunity.
 That big promotion.
 And… yeah, another girl.

Chasing happiness.

Sometime in my 40s, I remember thinking... When exactly do you “make it”?
Is it how much you’re making?
The car you’re driving?
The attention your looking for? 
When do you actually get to call yourself “happy”?

The more the calendar flips by, the more one regret echoes louder than the rest:
 I did too much chasing.

Recently, a young woman at work asked me,
 "What was your best day ever?"

The easy answers would be:
 “My wedding day.”
 Or
 “The day my daughters were born.”

Of course, those were great days — but honestly, I was scared to death.

It didn’t take long for another day to rise up in my memory.

September 27, 1999.
The day the last major league game was played at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull in Detroit. Tiger Stadium. Opened April 20, 1912 — the same week the Titanic sank.
Imagine the greats who played there: From Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth to Al Kaline and Allan Trammel. 

I was a radio reporter back then, and I had media credentials that got me on the field.
 I interviewed the legendary voice of the Tigers, Ernie Harwell. (Insert sound)

I scraped blue paint off the dugout.
 Collected dirt in a Ziploc bag.
 Snagged a ball from the infield.
 And I watched the final pitch ever thrown from that mound — flashbulbs exploding like fireworks all around.

One of my best days.

On that day at “The Corner,” I hadn’t arrived where happiness lives.
Some people would’ve been miserable there — in that crumbling old stadium with 50,000 strangers.
But for me, it was perfect.
Because I wasn’t chasing anything.

I was a 33-year-old man — and a 7-year-old boy.
 
 

Without even trying, I soaked in every last minute.
 
 

And maybe... that’s all happiness really is.

We spend so much of life sprinting toward something —
 convinced that happiness is waiting at some finish line.

But maybe it’s never been about arrival.
 
 

Maybe the best moments aren’t about chasing anything at all...
 but about catching yourself fully alive, in just one moment.

That’s where I found myself — one afternoon at the old ballpark.
 
 

And maybe that’s the real invitation.
 To imagine there’s a version of you — ten years from now —
 begging this version of you to slow down…
to enjoy where you are, just a little bit more.

That way, when someone asks you about your best day...
 you just might have a hard time picking one.

We’ll see you next time, on The Short Pause.