“Has anyone seen my spectacles?” I shouted.

My wife looked up from her book, started strangely at me, then asked with a smile,  “Where do you thing you left them?”

“If I knew where I had left them,” I said with considerable dignity, “I would not be asking where they are.”

This flawless logic failed to impress her.

I searched the bedroom. I looked under the pillows, beneath the bed and inside the cupboard. I even checked the bathroom, though I could not remember reading anything there except the label on the toothpaste.

“Maybe you left them in the kitchen,” suggested my wife.

I marched towards the kitchen, examining every surface like a police officer investigating a major robbery.

“What are you looking for?” asked my granddaughter.

“My spectacles.”

She stared at me thoughtfully. Children enjoy watching adults suffer. It gives them confidence about their own future.

I opened the refrigerator.

“Why would your spectacles be in the fridge?” asked my wife.

“I am eliminating possibilities,” I replied.

I found yesterday’s ice-cream, however, and had a scoop.

Soon the entire household joined the search. Cushions were lifted. Drawers were opened. Newspapers were shaken. They all searched, though somehow, I felt their hearts were not into it.

My wife looked inside my writing desk, though I explained that no sensible object would voluntarily enter that confusion.

“Think,” she said, smiling even more. “Where did you last use them?”

“If I could see clearly enough to think,” I said, “I would probably remember.”

Finally, my granddaughter climbed onto a chair, placed both hands on my cheeks and announced, “Grandpa, your spectacles are on your head!”

There was silence.

I reached up. There they were, resting peacefully above my forehead, enjoying the search.

“I knew that,” I said stiffly, trying to defend my memory lapse. “Maybe I  was only checking whether all of you were observant.”

Nobody applauded.

Later, wearing my recovered spectacles, I sat in the backyard. The evening sun rested gently on the trees. Birds argued noisily over a branch. My granddaughter chased a butterfly while my wife sat nearby, still smiling over my search.

And suddenly I wondered whether we spend our whole lives doing the same thing.

We search for happiness in bigger houses, distant holidays, important positions and the applause of strangers. We look under the beds of ambition, inside the cupboards of wealth and even in the refrigerators of pleasure.

All the while, happiness sits quietly on us, without us knowing we already have it.

It is in a child’s laughter, a wife’s smile, a familiar tree, a cup of coffee and a peaceful garden.

Perhaps happiness is not hiding from us at all.

Perhaps, like my spectacles, it is waiting for you to notice that you already have it..!