The absence of suffering

I heard a great quote on a podcast I was listening to while running to work this morning. I didn't catch who said it, but I really liked it:

"Happiness is available. Please help yourself."

The other part of the podcast I really liked was this idea of noticing the absence of suffering. For example some days you're going along just fine - no injuries, feeling good, nothing negative on your mind, no stress. You're not doing backflips with jubliation or ecstasy, but there's nothing wrong. Now that's actually a damn good position to be in, but we're not really trained to notice it. We're happy and at peace, but we really don't acknowledge or even realise it.

This struck a chord with me because I find I only notice it when I'm starting to get better after an illness or injury. For a few days after you're feeling better you realise that feeling "normal" again is actually really fantastic and you appreciate it a lot. Then it becomes...well... normal and you forget all about it.

So I'm going to try every now and then to stop and assess myself and feel happy and grateful for just feeling generally good.