Benjamin Franklin was right: happiness is not the big lottery jackpot, but the small, ordinary “crumbs of pleasure” of everyday life.

The Danes call this “hygge.” I looked up what people do in February: “Go up to the mountains, breathe the wind, let your hair go wild, and on the way back be enchanted by a quiet coffee,” they say.

This photo is a record of that moment - the tousled hair, the wool socks, the fatigue. But my real concern is not the peaks. It is the craft of fatherhood I learn while climbing toward them.

Since Ali Rüzgar entered my life, I stopped waiting for “big happiness.” The responsibility that began with that first kick in the womb slowly became the effort to sustain a relationship for a child, and then the skill of steering the father-son bond through separation.

The years flowed like water. “When did I get to this age?” I asked the mirror a moment ago. No answer, only whitening hair and gathered memories.

The peak is beautiful but cold. The real warmth is being able to hold your loved ones’ hands on the way there. Because, as Marcus Aurelius whispers from thousands of years away:

“The meaning of life is in the value we give to ourselves and to others.”

Words fly away; writing remains. Let this stay here, on the dusty shelves of time, as a note that says, “I’m glad I lived.”

Photo: @saitsenvardar

2 February 2023