The Mystery of Happiness

"What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?" ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa. As the philosophical one, the contemplative one, am I subject to sadness, always? Most of the time? Honore de Balzac said, "All happiness depends on courage and work." I've been courageous and I've worked hard, but the moments of happiness are fleeting. The bliss of being brief as the thrill I feel in the moment when a hummingbird thrums curiously between me and the alluring red honeysuckle only a yard away. Rare. I take the risk to leave a job that doesn't fulfill me, to step out of easy partnerships; I work for poetry not money; I work to live authentically, and yet the endorphins of happiness continue to skip over me. How much should I continue to seek and how much should I determine to settle? I am drenched in moodiness.