Traveling Happy

As we all drive through the different scenic outlooks and the small little towns of Puerto Viejo, Manzanillo and Limón I notice a lot of one thing. Happiness.
Even though I was sitting inside a bus full of people and everything flew by the windows I could catch glimpses of the "happy" people. The local Costa Ricans would like at us and eyes were drawn to us because of our skin but if we were unnoticed there was a point of view that was different from most that I experienced. There was one great instant of happiness that I viewed from the outside looking in on our trip through Limón.
I'm sitting in the hot bus beginning to develop this "game" on how many seemingly happy circumstances in the rundown towns. When passing through the town of Limón I saw an example that had struck me during this game. There was a local man that I saw walking on a pair of crutches. He was old, worn out, his skin resembling the appearance of leather after a lifetime in the sun. I looked at him trying to figure out why he was on crutches when it struck me. He didn't have any right leg. I immedietely felt sorry for him and how hard is life must be, but as the car slowed allowing busy cars to pass by us I started listening to the leg less man and his coversation with the bus driver. The driver asked him how he was doing, the leg less man responding with an enthusiastic "Pura Vida mae!" Which, in a nutshell, is the national way of saying, "Dude, I'm doing awesome."
This was a great lesson to me on what really makes us happy in our lives in the states. Do I really need a TV? Do I need shirts to be overflowing my drawers probably never to be worn again? Do I need to use the Internet daily for my personal use?
I don't know what you would've answered to those questions but I asked them around the town of Tortugero, to locals, to myself and came up with a conclusion that a local shop owner and I came to after bonding over music. The more things you have, great, but how you can use those things in God's glory to help create happiness is what really matters.