The Sparkle of Joy

IF EXUBERANCE WERE a season, it would be spring; if it were a libation, it would be champagne. And champagne would not be champagne without the magical presence of bubbles: the sparkle born of the long marriage of the yeasts and the wines.

Bubbles are the gift of effervescence, the sparkle of irrepressible joy that infects. The contagiousness of laughter, the giddiness of new love, the intoxicating effects of music and of the euphoria of success.

Champagne's bubbles form a pearl necklace on the surface of the wine. They are plentiful, lively and delicate.

Intense and exuberant, effervescence's rush is fleeting, its sparkling joy, fragile. At some point, the bubbles dissipate, go flat. Or burst. A change of glass will not help.

Exuberance has crossed that thin line, when one is exposed and vulnerable to nature's disappointments -- like the famous snowflake chronicler Wilson Bentley was when he beheld "a wonderful little splinter of ice, incredibly fragile," only to weep at the "tragedy" of its premature melting.

Likewise, when cartwheels abort, in life's disappointments. But never mind. Exuberance, according to Dr Kay Redfield Jamison, author of Exuberance: The Passion for Life, "is a gift of grace that allows us to move on, to seek, to love again." If all were effervescent, the world would be an exhausting and chaotic place, driven to incoherence by competing enthusiasms.

Champagne everyday would make us indifferent to the down-to-earth and mundane requirements of everyday life. It would make us ambivalent to the sparkle of joy in simple pleasures. Such as, the earth laughing, in flowers.