The Unwrapped Afternoon

I still keep a small brass button in the pocket of an old canvas coat. It came from nothing of consequence — a jacket a friend lent me twelve years ago when an autumn wind caught us unprepared on an open hillside. We sat on the curb for two hours that afternoon, sharing a cold sandwich and laughing until our ribs ached over an argument neither of us could recall by dinner. We spent so many years believing that joy was something we had to schedule, something that arrived in a ribboned parcel with ceremony and expense. But the older I become, the more I understand that happiness is almost always unscripted. It happens in the margins of our busy agendas, in a shared cup of tea on a crowded street, in the sheer, uncalculating gift of an afternoon where nobody has anywhere else to be.

Photographer Francisco Chamaca has captured this generous spirit in his vibrant image titled Have a Good Time, Always. It brought that windy curb and that cold sandwich rushing back to me. When was the last time you let an afternoon take you wherever it pleased?