¿Como puede encontrar felicidad?

---

Not five minutes after settling into a park bench near the entrance to the Lesseps metro station, two women approached me with pamphlets and bible in hand greeting me in the usual, "Hola que tal!" Too late, they got me! Even my explanation that "no hablo espanol bien" wasn´t enough to deter the persistent Jehovah´s Witnesses. The only thing I wanted to do was to figure out where my hostel was, get into a shower to rid myself of long-haul travel stench, and take a much needed nap (sleep was not possible on the transatlantic flight thanks to a cute, but loud and talkative toddler seated directly behind me). They turned a page in the pamphlet to a section of questions like "Does God exist and how do we know him?" (in Spanish of course) and asked me which was the most important to me. I pointed to the one that said "¿Como puede encontrar felicidad?", how can one find/know happiness?" Their eyes lit up and they had a look on their face like it was their favorite question. The sun was beating down on my already sweaty head and I thought, "now you´ve done it, you´ll never be able to shake them". The two ladies proceeded to read passages from the bible and I strained to keep up with the rapid pace of their Spanish. "¿Entiende usted?", "Si, si... todo no, pero mucho, si". I started thinking was it a sin to think of a bocadillo of serrano ham and tomato while listening to this earnest woman, whose professed purpose in life was to preach about what it is to really live a righteous life in the face of armageddon? I´ve always said that ham is the work of the devil and how appropriate and wrong for me to be fantasizing of a bocadillo while in the process of being saved. Then, I remembered that I was in Spain, which in its modern form is a culture of wonderful contradictions, where the old customs and traditions are still undercurrent of modern society. Case in point, it´s Sunday and during siesta time while I sit in the square near Lesseps, and even in this day and age of "twittering" 24 hour connectivity to the world around us, all the shops around me are closed, but there are people enjoying a slow afternoon under umbrella-shaded tables in front of one of the hundreds (possibly thousands?) of bars and cerveserias around the city. In Spain, this is not just a Sunday occurrence... it´ll happen again tomorrow and the day after and the next. Seriously, this is the way to live, in small savory portions, like eating tapas. How do I find happiness? One incredible day at a time.

---