I’m not talking just happy for a moment, then passing into the rest of the day. These are things that will spread happiness throughout my day and that make me smile for the rest of the week if not for weeks to come.

• Getting a hug from someone I haven’t seen for a long time, especially if it is the kind of deep hug that lasts for a long time.
• First times.  For anything–meeting someone, kisses, make-out sessions, sex, orgasms, cooking for someone, getting drunk with someone, feeling comfortable enough to cry in front of someone.  In any kind of relationship there will always be more first times–that idea is just so encouraging.
• Holding hands.  It’s something so simple, but it makes me so very happy.  Even seeing people hold hands is adorable.
• The smell of the first rain after a long dry spell–it’s my favorite smell in the whole world and it just puts me in this place of utter serenity.
• Cooking and baking.  Just being able to see the result of my long labors being enjoyed by someone or some people I obviously care enough about to cook/bake for is something I cherish.
• Along those same lines, cooking or baking with someone.
• Going to bed after a long day’s work and falling right asleep.  Nothing like it in the world.
• Utterly being in a place that feels so comfortable that there’s no good word for it other than home or a could-be home.
• Meeting new people and just clicking with them–feeling a strong chemistry of some kind.  I have had the pleasure of having this happen at least three times in the last six months.
• Cuddling/snuggling/just being held close.
• Falling asleep with someone.
• Having an orgasm, especially a really good one, especially after a bit of a dry spell.
• Long conversations that last late into the night–sometimes too late.
• To steal a line, “the closing of strangers”.
• Finding something I can be truly passionate about–life gets too dull without this.  I can’t just cruise along–it doesn’t work for me.  I need to be engaged in something meaningful, something purposeful.
• Loving and making love (not in a euphemistic sense).
• Exercising my creative potential–usually through writing, but sometimes through more crafty things.
• Knowing that I have made someone else genuinely happy.

What makes you genuinely happy?