Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are

"Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it." — Nikos Kazantzakis

Thus spoke Nikos Kazantzakis, the Greek poet and seeker of truth, whose words rise like sunlight over the Aegean — clear, tender, and eternal. In this gentle yet piercing reflection, he reveals a truth that humankind has long forgotten: that happiness is not some distant treasure buried beneath fortune and fame, but a simple everyday miracle, flowing through life like water — humble, abundant, and often unseen. We thirst for joy, he tells us, even as we stand beside its stream. We long for meaning in the extraordinary, while the sacred waits for us in the ordinary.

To call happiness “a miracle like water” is to remind us that the greatest gifts of existence are also the most common. Water sustains every living thing, yet few pause to feel awe as they drink it. It falls from the sky, runs beneath our feet, cleanses our hands — and still we forget it. So it is with happiness: it is present in the rhythm of breath, the warmth of sunlight, the sound of a child’s laughter, the gentle weight of an evening breeze. But the human heart, ever restless, looks elsewhere — to riches, to triumphs, to fleeting pleasures — and so misses the quiet miracle of simply being alive.

Kazantzakis wrote in a time of struggle and transformation — a Greece torn between the old and the new, between faith and modern doubt. He saw that people, hungry for progress, had lost their sense of wonder. They no longer looked at the world with gratitude, but with demand. And so he spoke, not as a philosopher in his tower, but as a man who had walked among suffering and still found joy in the simplicity of being. His happiness was not naïve contentment, but the deep peace that comes from seeing the divine in all things — in earth, in labor, in love, in solitude.

Consider the tale of Anne Frank, the young girl who, hiding in darkness during one of humanity’s darkest hours, wrote in her diary, “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” She, who had so little and faced so much, still recognized that life — even under siege — offered moments of miraculous joy. The sight of a tree through a window, the laughter of her sister, a sliver of sky — these became her water, her everyday miracles. Like Kazantzakis, she understood that happiness is not found by escaping hardship, but by perceiving grace within it.

So too did the sages of ancient times speak of this wisdom. Lao Tzu taught that “he who knows contentment finds joy in all things.” Marcus Aurelius, emperor and philosopher, wrote that the secret of happiness lies in wanting only what life gives. Even the Buddha, upon his awakening, did not discover a new world — he simply saw the old one with new eyes. Thus, the truth of Kazantzakis’ words transcends ages and nations: that happiness is not hidden from us, but we from it. We are like men dying of thirst while standing in a river.

The tragedy of modern life is not the lack of miracles, but our blindness to them. We move through our days as though asleep — measuring success in noise and forgetting the silence in which the soul breathes. We chase after what we do not need and overlook what we already have. To awaken to happiness is not to gain anything new, but to become aware — to open the eyes of the heart and see that every breath, every friendship, every sunrise is a form of grace. Like water, happiness is simple — but its simplicity demands humility, for only the grateful can taste its sweetness.

So, my listener, learn this truth and carry it into your life: seek not happiness in grandeur, but in gratitude. Drink deeply of the moments you already have. When you wake, give thanks for light; when you work, find honor in the labor; when you rest, feel the peace of being. Notice the sky, the laughter, the warmth of your own pulse — these are your fountains of joy. Let your eyes be like the eyes of a child, astonished at everything, expecting nothing.

For in the end, as Kazantzakis teaches, happiness is a miracle so constant we forget to revere it. To rediscover it, we must slow down, listen, and remember that to live at all is to be blessed. When you learn to see happiness as you see water — as life itself — you will never again thirst for meaning, for you will have found it everywhere: in the sunlight upon your skin, in the kindness of a stranger, and in the quiet beating of your heart.