Years ago, I was living in Seattle.  I was in graduate school, I was broke, I didn’t own a car, and I spent many hours walking the sidewalks to campus, to work, to the bus, and home again.  One day, as I lugged my groceries back up the hill toward home, I realized that this was my exercise for the day.  I couldn’t afford a car.  I couldn’t afford a gym membership.  Here I was, getting in my strength-training and cardio work-out, all at once, on the trek home.  Win-win.  Kind of.  If I hadn’t also been wearing my “professional wear” and carrying my backpack with my heavy laptop, I would have felt a bit better about this odd method of multi-tasking.  I would have gladly traded in the groceries and the laptop bag for a sporty gym outfit and some pink plastic-coated free weights.

Oh, well.  At least I was outside.  Sort of.  Being outside in the city is different from being outside in what we loosely refer to as “nature.”  I’d like to think that it’s all nature.  We share the same air with the trees and the mountains and the lakes and the oceans.  Although the air is tainted by car exhaust and the ground is littered with plastic and old bus tokens and the occasional lucky penny – we ARE outside.  We are outside of our homes, yet often in a place that we don’t consider to be home.  This is how it is for me.  I feel like a transplant in this odd city, trying to flourish, much like the plants struggling for growth in the cracks of the broken sidewalk.

There were many interesting places along my walk toward home.  The dilapidated donut shop.  The overgrown lot that showed that nature could again take back the land.  The poetry shop with the typewriter in the window.  This poetry shop was a great “stopping place” along my way home – a place to rearrange the weight of the grocery bags and get a bit of inspiration for the final push toward home.  On this particular day, I rested my bags against the building and read the quote that had been typed onto the paper that wound through the rollers of the typewriter in the window:

“The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears—as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959), U.S. architect. “Earth,” pt. 1, The Living City (1958).

I felt like this quote was confirmation that I could make the most of my time here in Seattle, to make the most of this “nature” substitute in which I found myself living as I pursued my dreams.  This was it.  I wanted to be Sidewalk Happy.  I reminded myself of this as I set out each morning and as I trudged home each evening.  “I am Sidewalk Happy.”  I gained a new appreciation for what it means to be happy when in the midst of something that may not be our first choice in surroundings.

I took notice of the sidewalk as a canvas of expression.  A partial footprint that left the story of someone who had not anticipated the wet cement.  A sneaky expression of Love 4Ever that had been scrawled by a romantic trouble-maker.  There were other things on the sidewalk, too.  Things that made you think.  Things that made you wonder.   Pennies.  Receipts.  Notes.   A business card.  Worms.  Sidewalk chalk.  All of these things are reminders of our connection to others as we go along the sidewalk of our life.

Thus began my mission to be Sidewalk Happy.