Just finished reading Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher.  It's a fascinating book about the power of our minds to create our reality, or at least our perception of reality.  In it, Ms. Gallagher writes about how happy, inventive people "maintain a wide-angle perspective on life that ensures that they will...'be surprised by something every day.'"

I was thinking about this key to happiness on my walk this morning.  Instead of taking Jake, my Jack Russell Terrier, the same direction as usual, I opted to stroll him into the woods that border the lake.  Together we stood at the water's edge meditating on a flock of geese and the early return of fall.  Well, that's what I was thinking.  Jake's sniffing the air probably had more to do with visions of chasing birds than mediating on them.  

It wasn't until we turned to tramp home a new way, that a thought hit me:  I'd just written a book about the importance of taking detours.  And what is a detour but a way to surprise yourself? 

No wonder I'm basically a happy person.  Guess I was doomed to having a name like Bliss.