#461: SPOTLIGHT: Charlotte Hall

#461: Charlotte Hall

April 7, 2026

A Backbeat of Community

Question for Charlotte: 

Has your idea of what happiness means or looks like changed UNEXPECTEDLY as you've grown older?  Would you share that truth or perspective with your younger self if you could?

Charlotte's Response: 

I chase happiness a lot less and, funny enough, I find it more and more. As I’ve grown older, my idea of happiness has changed in mostly expected ways. I find happiness in the small, in the everyday, and in the moments in between, rather than in the grand, the long-awaited, or the much-anticipated.

What is unexpected are the moments of happiness you can find amid the saddest moments of your life. Have you ever seen someone laugh—and I mean really laugh—in the wake of a funeral? Or standing in the kitchen, finally home after days pacing a waiting room? Or even mid-fight? All the grief, all the anger, all the….the fear dissipates instantly because something harmlessly humorous got you laughing again.

Those are the moments where happiness can’t help but escape, making happiness not something I have to seek, but something I can’t help but come back to. How reassuring is that? 

Maybe these aren’t so much moments of happiness or sadness as they are moments of pride—seeing the best in other people, and the best in yourself, come out not because of the circumstances, but in spite of them.