I think happiness is when it feels good to want, and it feels good to pursue what you want. It feels good to look around at the world around you as you tread. It feels like you can reach out, touch it, learn from it, maybe teach what little you know. Hold the thorny stems up to your ear at a careful distance and listen to what they're saying. It feels alright for things to feel intolerable sometimes. Helping even the creatures in your environment that, like you, "shouldn't" be here can teach you so much. Ornamentals that might not bear great fruit but which crave your care. Feels good to learn carefully or messily to cut them. The shears' texture is a little gritty, a little smooth. They can do something you can't and you can do something they can't. Do they help to steward you? I hope they are kind in kind. I hope that they help me do others right.
Their flowers so ornate, intricate, sterile. And so often they're cut away when they're no longer deemed satisfying. I read as a child a big Nature book which contained a recipe for rose petal jelly or maybe jam. I didn't have the agency to try it.
I watched videos by a permaculturist several years ago that made me wonder more and more about interconnectivity and that struck me with awe when I saw how powerful techniques like grafting and training and pruning can be. Pruning feels pretty good, for what little I've done. It reminded me of how, in hindsight, I think I've always had a latent desire to grow. A failed sapling in my parents' yard and a little tomato plant in a tiny pot on a little windowsill that sprouted but no more. Selection bias is possible but the desire has always been present. I'm hesitant to say this, but I think this might be genuinely fulfilling. I suppose I shouldn't be since even dabbling in the ways I'm allowed in latewinter has contributed greatly to my Happiness.
If I'm going to be Happy, I want it to be something that makes other beings feel cared for too. It's intersecting heavily with but not wholly corrupted by a need to feel useful. The need sends me into dark places. It sends me into the frigid frosts and the sweltering highsummers. It's also improving. Sometimes someones will need me on these days. It'll be miserable and I'll feel good helping them feel good! I think I can manage to want more freely and see my wants progress well like this now.