Happiness is a Bubble

The essay argues that happiness, like a bubble, is ethereal and fleeting, and that meaning is intertwined with it but harder to find after a period of direct danger. The author, who served as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army and deployed to Afghanistan and Kuwait in 2016-2017, says that wartime stakes gave a clear sense of good and bad that everyday life no longer provides. Now, meaning must be actively sought, explained and built, and the author describes this as both a relief and a harder responsibility. The essay ends by describing bubbles as forming quickly and unexpectedly from stillness, a substance and a breath.