I was in a really good mood today. You know the type of mood where everything is great, where you just have to move while you talk to burn off your energy? I mean really good. I don't even know why. But I know that I haven't been in that mood in a while. I think it is from everything calming down. Life seems to be sorting itself out, like it always does, and everything is a little less hectic. So I was in a good mood. It was absolutely great. I actually wanted to play volleyball in gym.

I remember way back in October '96 to February '97, I was always in that mood. That was a particularly nice time to be alive. I'll probably look back and think of them as the good old days. But I digress. I don't know why it was so good, but it was. And it leads to an interesting question.

What influences people's happiness? There are so many variables, that it could be anything from what you had for lunch to the number of neutrinos striking you every millisecond. With the number of things that are working against the average person, I think being even slightly happy is a pretty intense accomplishment. The instant you are conceived, the laws of nature are working towards your death. Everything, I mean everything, can go wrong. What's keeping you from dissociating into trillions and trillions of atoms any second? Energy. Energy harnessed into an exponentially smaller amount of matter. There is a lot of worry riding on everyone's shoulders. Value that good mood.