"Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty levels to go.
Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks - the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you got there - and the downticks - the itchy tag at the back of your collar - that happened to every person in the course of a day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day.
Maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous hearthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying.
Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for."