I didn’t believe that happiness could be found by chance. I thought it had to be earned, deserved, waited for. But one day it just sat down next to me on a bench.

It was an ordinary gray day. I was walking home, tired, with my head full of thoughts about work, about unanswered messages, about the refrigerator being empty again. And suddenly — music. A song I hadn’t heard for ten years was pouring out of the open window of an old house. The same one that my friend and I danced to at graduation, when everything was still ahead.

I stopped. I forgot about fatigue, about the to-do list, about everything. I just stood and listened while the melody played. And then the window slammed shut, and the silence returned. But something had changed.

That day I realized: happiness is not always global. It is not necessarily in a new job, in moving, in great love. Sometimes it is in an old hit that suddenly sounds from someone's window. In the smell of lilacs that you catch while passing by someone's garden. In a text message from a person you haven't spoken to in ages: "Hi, just thought of you." Now I collect such moments. I write them down in notes to reread on bad days. Because happiness is like a cat. It comes when it wants to. The main thing is not to miss it when it rubs against your legs.