The View From My Window

     There’s an email I get on a daily basis from Gretchen Rubin.  She’s written some book about the "Happiness Project."  Every 4th day or so her email has something worth reading in it so I keep subscribing to it.  Saturday’s email contained a post I found particularly interesting, "To be happier, look out the window." 

     This was a topic I could easily relate to because I love the view from my window.  I see pine trees, birch trees, woodpeckers, chickadees, the sunlight sparkling off of the Seagull River and sometimes the neighborhood fox or pine marten.  I love where I live and this always makes me happier when I am down.

     Until Saturday I had no clue where Gretchen Rubin lived and after reading her post I have no clue how she can be happy.  Here is an excerpt,

My office is in a teeny room on the roof of our building; it was converted from a storage room that had taken the place of a water tower. My window there looks out on air-conditioning equipment and the tops of ducts where they poke out of the tarred roof. Not much to see. 

     She goes on to say,

We don’t have any “views” from our apartment. We have great light, which is a real luxury in New York City (and if I had to pick between good light and a good view, I’d pick good light), but even though we face an apartment building, and another apartment building, and the top of a shaft, there are still beautiful things to see when we look out.

     She also talks about the beauty of the ivy on the apartment wall across from her and watching the neighbor exercise in the window of that wall.  I now see why she needed a happiness project and why her next book is called, "Happier at Home."  

     I am so very happy to live where I can look out my windows and not see a neighbor on an elliptical machine.  I love to be able to listen to the loons, feed the whiskey jacks from my hands and breathe in the fresh clean air.  I love the view from my window and the number of visitors to the Boundary Waters tells me other people do too.