Everyone wants this more than anything else.

Some believe that you can buy it with a lot of money, but babies don’t have a dime and they find ways to get it for free. Teenagers think it comes with being liked by their peers. Adults try attaining it by searching for the perfect job. Seniors take delight when their grandchildren put it on display.

The older you get the more you understand that it’s a fleeting thing. It comes and goes with the whisper of a word or from a swirl inside a wineglass. It’s totally unsustainable. You can’t hold it in your hands on a windy day hoping it won’t blow away because it will. You don’t have to wait for too long. In another place and at another time, you’ll catch it flying by again.

It’s a teaser, a trickster, a part-time pleaser. It warms your body from head to toe and it can reward you with a good night’s sleep.

Some say the only way it lasts forever is if it comes packaged with unconditional love. Yet, there are those who lurk on the dark side that try to grab a hold of it in hurtful manners that would break the mold of common decency.

It’s an addictive drug, a dancing daredevil, and a sudden rush from a lover’s hug. You don’t always know what it is or where it comes from. Sometimes you think you have it, but you don’t. Other times it’s right there in front of you, but you keep looking over its shoulder for it. You might be envious when someone else has it, but whatever that is would never satisfy you anyway so you learn to realize that what’s good for somebody else is not good for you.

Anger renders you incapable of its charm. Worry chases it away with alarm. You stand tall and claim you don’t need anybody or anything else to help you feel it, but you do.

Intelligence brings no guarantee that you’ll figure out how to find it. Education might give you an advantage in attaining it, but if the truth be known, the unlearned can achieve it while someone with an advanced college degree might never acquire its precious prize.

Scientists can’t test for it. Religion promises that you can earn it for eternity. Peace of mind comes with it as a very nice bonus. It’s compatible with a good conscience. It lives and grows with the quality of having good thoughts. Some say it can only be found within the meaning of life. The sun is its natural symbol, but the moon and the stars can seduce you into thinking it’s an impossible goal that you can never reach.

A famous cartoonist once said that it’s a warm puppy. It sometimes can cure what medicine cannot. A psychologist might tell you that you must experience its very opposite before you can appreciate what it feels like when you get it.

You can fight for it, but you might not be sure of what it is you’re fighting for. It can blind you with brightness but escape you in darkness. Someone’s laughter can deceive you of its existence. You cry tears when you finally get it and you cry tears when you don’t.

The great big lie is that it can be pursued, like dogs chasing the fox, but the beauty of it is that it can just happen upon you like a beautiful rainbow appearing across the healing sky after a terrible storm.

You can think your way out of it, but not your way into it. It’s a song from the heart that only you can hear. It might come more easily to you if you have a bad memory. It’s born in the internal and dies from the external. Service to others invites it in. Self-obsession locks it out.

In the grand outdoors, you can imagine it when the trees wave their branches high above the ground or when you listen to the songbirds sing their tunes at daybreak.

Some will say it comes by accident, from a random act that could happen on a rainy Monday morning or during the coldest night of the year. It cannot be held captive by the strongest chains. Freedom builds it up. Failure knocks it down.

You will certainly enjoy its presence when it’s with you. It gives you a boost of energy until it will eventually leave you again. You’ll feel its return when you see it in the mirror as you prepare to go out and give the world one helluva good day.

When it doesn’t come knocking on your door, then just like when you decide to give love to your disobedient child, this too becomes a choice you make, the desire to spread the light around you onto others who will be touched by the glow of your effervescence.

It’s contagious like a child’s laughter. When it surrounds your family or your friends at a party, the whole room is enlightened with its spirit. It represents the best of the human condition.

Is it something we all can have? The words of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots in the 16th century, answer this riddle by saying we can get darn close to it.

“To be kind to all, to like many and to love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness.”

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.