I watched Lily eat a popsicle today after dinner. Scratch that. I watched Lily ecstatically destroy a popsicle today with her mouth. My 1-year old sucked in the experience almost as rapidly as she inhaled her frozen blue raspberry delight. The smile never left her face, save the few moments wherein she was forced to open her mouth wide enough to “try on” the popsicle, as if she were verifying, “Yes, it fits!”. Uncontrolled laughter. Unscripted dancing. Unprovoked outbursts. Unbridaled happiness.

For about 3 minutes, Lily enjoyed the closest thing to Heaven that she has ever known.

I watched Cielee eat a popsicle today after dinner as well. She’s almost 4, so she’s much more refined when eating her popsicles. Now, she still gets the popsicle moustache, and matching color-streaks on her clothing when she eats one, but popsicles don’t elicit siezures of bliss in my 4-year old. Sure, there was the occasional teetering of her smiling head from side-to-side after some of the bites, and the spontaneous, “Mmmmmm”s here and there… but they were tempered.

I remember my psychology teacher in college boiling every human’s life experiences down to one simple premise: As humans, we face conflict, adapt, and move on to the next conflict. Adaptation refers to one’s ability to face a stressor–a challenging life event–and then figure out how to live with, or overcome that stressor. If we don’t adapt, we surely will die. And subsequent exposures to the same stressor result in diminishing stress levels over time. For instance, dating experiences with the same person, getting a flat tire, being called a name–they were all once huge stressors in my life. However, I’ve gotten used to those things, and now, they’re not so bad. I even enjoy one of those things at times.

That sounds dismal, but it rings true. I don’t think it’s the meaning of life, but it has merit.

Now, in certain psychological schools of thought, the same can be said for happiness. The idea is that when you’re faced with the same stimulus that makes you happy, the more frequently you’re exposed to it, the less it affects you.

“Adaptation to positive events is one of the biggest obstacles to happiness. If people adapt to anything positive that they do and everything positive that happens to them, how can they ever become happier?” — Amy Novotney, writer for Monitor on Psychology  

So that explains a lot. That explains why Lily goes nuts over a popsicle, and Cielee is much tempered. She’s used to it, essentially.

That makes me wonder. What recurring life events have I become numb to? What moments of happiness have I lost out on simply because those opportunities come all too frequently? The spontaneous hugs. The unsolicited “I love you”s. The ballroom dances on the kitchen floor. God, don’t let these feelings fade. Please soften this heart that has been hardened to the daily blessings of this life. And God, would you keep me from the temptation of pursuing frequent (and often meaningless) happiness out of purely selfish ambitions?