the moments that fill me up

More than adrenaline or adventure, more than a new story or a stamp in my passport, I chase the moments that fill me up. It's those moments that make me feel like a little balloon is inflating right in my heart. Everything comes more alive in me. It's a high. A spiritual, emotional, and mental high. It's emotional. I'm emotional. It's like an endorphin rush. Like the almost dizzy, out of focus, fuzzy head feeling of falling in love. It's happiness that can't be contained, and you'd never want to try. It's the last few minutes of a long run, when I can spot the finish line - or a hard workout when my vision clears and I get pumped up, determined to finish strong. It's a long weekend reunion with friends I haven't seen for years, around whom it's impossible to be anything but wholly and imperfectly myself. It's those friendships that are so deep they feel like a part of my soul. It's what my friend Melanie calls a happiness hangover. It's the moment at the top of a roller coaster before the sudden drop - that one incredible instant of anticipation. It's the silly "I love everyone" phase of a wine night with close friends. It's recognition for killing it at work, after it felt like the work might kill me. It's receiving the admission letter to my dream school. It's holidays with my family after being away for so long. It's emerging out of a forest onto a mountain peak - that first view around me.

And it's some places in this world. It's without rhyme or reason. It doesn't usually happen at the Eiffel Towers or the Great Walls but at the taste of a local specialty, the warmth of strangers, the sight of an animal I never knew existed or had only seen in movies. It's the feel of the sun, that burns differently on each continent. It's the unexpected moments, the rural villages, the first time seeing a new landscape, the charming wine bar in a new city, the heart-stopping shock of plunging into an ice cold lake. 

I live in search of the moments and the people that fill me up.