accidental happiness

Reading student essays about happiness reminded me of a line of poetry that I often quote.  It is from Jane Hirshfield and goes something like this:

"Enlightenment, the masters tell us, is an accident, but some habits make us accident prone."  

Perhaps the wisdom can be transferred to the pursuit of happiness.  Finally happiness is not something that we catch, but some habits make us more likely to be caught by it.  If so, we find that neither luck nor effort by itself is the sole cause of happiness.

So, while I'm in a proverbial mode, I also offer this insight about snowflakes.  They are made neither by cold nor water alone, but require the interaction of both.  Moreover, while they are different from each other, they have enough in common that we are able to recognize that a snowflake is a snowflake not a grain of sand or a rain drop.