High on Happiness

Archive for September, 2009

So what can I say about what’s really in my heart tonight—the terrible mourning, the depth of sorrow.  How can I possibly sit here and write that I’m happy when I’m wrapped in such a profound sense of tragic loss?

How can I say that I’m happy when so much that gives life meaning and joy is fading into oblivion?  When I see freedom giving way to tyranny, and truth undermined by lies, is it not the height of hypocrisy to claim that happiness abides in the center of my being?

I can say it because when you get to the core of happiness, you discover it both transcends life’s dualities and encompasses them.   I can say it because authentic happiness isn’t a mood.  It’s a state of being.  It doesn’t depend on the play of events.  It’s the luminous screen on which they dance, and they are merely its shadows.

Genuine happiness isn’t about what you think or feel.  It’s not about your judgments or opinions.  It’s the flow of being on which all those things ride.  It’s the release of the need for anything to be different than it is, because everything you need is already within it.

Today, as I asked myself why I was happy, I realized it was the happiness of kindness coloring my world.

Like petals strewn by an April breeze, kindness dappled my path today and touched me with its gentle beauty.  I watched its dance, from heart to heart, in the form of helpful gestures, in words of comfort and acknowledgment and support.  I saw how it softened faces, created smiles of appreciation and relief.

In its essence, the happiness of kindness springs from the way it connects us and reminds us we’re not invisible or alone.  It tells us that we see one another’s needs.  It brings us the joy of lightening someone’s load.  It blesses both the one who gives and the one who receives its deeds.

The happiness of kindness has a purity to it, a freedom from selfish interests or ulterior motives.  It ennobles us somehow, making us larger.

And for all its gentleness and ease, the happiness of kindness has a real strength to it, a power.  It breaks down artificial barriers between people.  It sings of our universal humanness, of the things that unite us regardless of our differences.  It soothes and lifts us and touches us with the warmth of gratitude and hope.

“Wherever there is a human being,” wrote the Roman philosopher Seneca, “there is an opportunity for a kindness.”  Isn’t that wonderful?   The happiness that derives from kindness is always just one person away—the one in the next room, the one you’ll next talk with or see.  Take advantage of that.  See what happens.

A blanket of soft clouds covered the day, muting its colors and sounds.  Now and then the sky sprinkled little showers of rain that stirred the first scents of autumn.   I felt the quiet stirrings of the season’s change within myself, its call to contemplation.

The happiness of contemplation that autumn brings wafts into awareness with a special note of its own.  Its song is a nostalgic one, of saying farewell to one season of our lives and welcoming in a new one.  It’s a kind of peaceful yearning to let pieces float into place, to harvest the abundance of seeds sown and cultivated in the season that went before.

It’s a pulling inward, a settling.  It’s a time for taking stock of where we are after all our activities, for savoring how they enlarged and enriched us.  It lets us look, too, at the places where we can do better in the months ahead, where we can alter our outlooks, our relationships, our ways of being in the world that will bring us greater satisfaction and joy.

One of the qualities of the happiness of contemplation is its tendency to open us to our intuition, to the voice of inner guidance.  It whispers of new possibilities, of new ways to express and develop our strengths and talents as we step into the season ahead.  It hints of capabilities we can explore and nudges us to probe more deeply into the potentials within us, just waiting to be recognized and claimed.

When the next quiet hour appears in your life, cozy yourself somewhere private and indulge in some reverie of your own.  Let your thoughts drift over all the past season has added to you, the wisdom it’s brought, the memories you created.  Take some time to lose yourself in the very special happiness of contemplation this autumn, and see what riches it will bring.

At the beginning of July, I was inspired to see what beauty I could find, photograph and post on my Flickr page every day for a year.  Few things give me more happiness than taking photos of sights that delight my eye.  Why not give myself, I reasoned, the daily gift of time spent with my favorite hobby?

One of the goals of practicing happiness, after all, is to build more positive experiences into your life than negative ones.  Even than positive thoughts or words, experiences that uplift you in some way have a lasting impact.  Because you actually live them, they leave little traces of happiness inside you.  In fact, according to some research, they even impact your DNA, creating happiness patterns in your cellular structure.

Whether that turns out to be the case or not, making sure you include at least one pleasurable experience in your day every day is a wise and enriching way to practice happiness.  Two months into my personal photography adventure are proving it to me.  Besides delighting in the results, I’m discovering that the time I invest in my hobby pays happiness dividends galore.  It centers and refreshes me; it reminds me that I live in a wondrously varied and beautiful world.

Do a little experiment.  Make a list of things you enjoy.  It could be anything from spending five minutes playing with a pet or with your child, or a fully conscious ten-second long kiss with your mate, to participating in a sport or exercise you enjoy, to cooking a favorite meal or going for a walk.  Whatever you find pleasurable is good material for your list.  Actually write one out.  Then stick it somewhere you can see it easily and make a point of doing at least one item from the list every day.

Morning pleasures launch your day with an upbeat mood.  Evening pleasures wrap up the day with joy.  And keeping a little log of what pleasurable thing you did every day doubles your pleasure.  Try it for a week.  Try it for two.  Do it for a whole month and it will become a happiness habit you will never want to break.  Go ahead!  Treat yourself.  You deserve it!

I belong to a small master mind group that’s been sharing monthly goals with each other for the past 20 months.  Because a couple members of the group—well, okay, most of them–are free spirited, go-with-the-flow types who chafe at structure, we call our goals “objectives,” and our stated aim is “to make fabulous progress” toward them.   It makes the whole process a winning situation for all.  And it’s taught us all the happiness of achieving.

Having a primary objective to keep in mind as you go through your days gives you a sense of purpose and nudges you to make choices that align with it.  The steps you make in its direction – even when they’re baby steps – create a momentum, a growing desire to keep moving, to see it through.

Somebody once told me that goals are all about remembering what you want.  In a world that bombards us with distractions, remembering what we want isn’t easy.  We’re blown this way and that by glitter and whims.  Whole seasons can pass without our having accomplished anything more than getting through the time.  But when you have an objective to follow, when you have named one thing as your primary focus for the month, what a difference it can make!

You stay on track.  You get done what you wanted to do.  You build a website or a deck, you write a book or a blog, you create a piece of art, you cut back on your smoking, you spend more time with your family, you find a better place to live.  The members of our group have done all these things and more.  We’ve explored writing thank you notes to people every day for a month, and noticing ways we give to the world.  We’ve demolished our paper piles and set up filing systems.  One member flew to Mexico and painted a mural honoring whales.  One started a new business.  One found a new job.

And yet, the happiness of achieving isn’t, we’ve discovered, as much about completing an objective as it is in the movement toward it.  It’s in the sense of self-worth, and self-direction that comes from acting in harmony with a purpose you set out for yourself.  It’s in the satisfaction of knowing that you’re following your chosen path.

You gain a clearer sense of who you are, of what you want, of how you want to be.  You learn to draw good boundaries around yourself, to say no to the things that aren’t in alignment with what you have chosen for yourself.  It’s a tremendously liberating and self-empowering feeling.  And as you practice moving, day by day, toward your self-chosen objectives, you begin to get a sense that you can do just about anything you set your mind on doing.  You learn to take bigger bites of life and discover that they nourish your joy.  Your confidence in your abilities grows, and so does your trust in life itself, your belief that the universe supports you when you know what it is that you want.

And it all begins with naming a simple objective—something you want to do or create or practice being—and deciding to make progress toward it every day.

Every now and then, when I’m not even looking for happiness, it comes in a beautiful moment of grace.  Take this evening, for instance.

I walked out the door to run to the store and stepped into a moment of perfection.  To the east, summer’s last full moon was gliding up over the hills.  To the west, an apricot sky hung over a deep blue silhouette of hills.  In the field, a light mist was rising and a chorus of cricket sounds filled every molecule of the fragrant air.  It was one of those moments that fills you with such awe that you want just to stand inside it forever.

The poetry of it lingered as I drove into town.  A young boy walking home from football practice, an old man riding a bicycle, the streetlights casting their pink light on the pavement—it all seemed like a beautiful movie set come to life around me.

The more I practice happiness, consciously taking time to savor the moment, the more these moments of grace unfold, and the more they strike me with their depth and beauty.  Late in the afternoon I went for a walk in the field and was dazzled by the sudden tapestry of glowing September color.  It, too, touched me with its perfection, creating within me such a waves of happiness and gratitude for the good fortune of simply being alive and witnessing the vibrancy of the life around me.

These moments of grace come unbidden and feel like a cool breeze rising from nowhere on a hot day.  They’re gifts, little jeweled moments that put me in touch with the core of my being and connect me to the ineffable Something that underlies and supports us all.  It’s too large to name.  But I whisper to it, “Thank you.  I love you.”  And it breathes back a happiness that enfolds and lifts me and makes me feel whole.

Looking for a sure path to greater happiness?  I’ve got one for you.  But before I tell you, I need to remind you again that the four most dangerous words in the English language are, “I already know that.”

The sure path is gratitude.  And even if you think you know it’s good for you, if you’re not actively practicing it in your life, you’re robbing yourself of one of life’s most golden joys.

Not only does genuine gratitude feel wonderful, but it comes with its arms full of gifts.  Consider some of the things that researchers have discovered about people who cultivate gratitude in their lives:

•    They experience less stress;
•    They’re more successful in careers and relationships;
•    They cope better with daily problems;
•    They value themselves positively;
•    They’re more spiritually aware and feel more connected to life;
•    They’re more optimistic;
•    They exercise more regularly, and achieve better physical health and vitality;
•    They worry less about status or the accumulation of possessions;
•    They describe themselves as happy and satisfied with life.

Feeling gratitude doesn’t mean you’re a Pollyanna, that you’re unaware of the suffering in the world, or that you don’t experience disappointments.  It means that even in the midst of these, you see life’s goodness as well.    It means that, despite life’s tragedies and shortfalls, you’re thankful that you were given the opportunity to live on this amazing blue marble, to walk beneath its skies, to see its beauty, to have amiable companions along the way.

Gratitude means you don’t take life’s blessings for granted.  It means you allow yourself to appreciate what you have and who you are—body, mind and soul.  Instead of seeking out faults and shortcomings, you look for the things that work, the things that succeed, the things that bring you comfort and ease and smiles.  You notice the kindnesses others do for you, the words of encouragement, friendship, and support.  You appreciate the ways you benefit from the efforts of the people who have gone before you, and of countless strangers, whose contributions enable you to travel and read and eat and wear clothing, to have water pouring from your faucets and light beaming from your lamps.

Gratitude enriches you by making you more aware of your riches, of the abundance of blessings in your life on all of its planes.  Turn it on.  Turn it up.  Let it flow.

Of all the shades of happiness, contentment is the one I love the best.  I love the way it tiptoes in and settles in a corner, purring.  I love how it looks at everything with its eyes so gentle and full of yes.

Believing that all the moment holds is perfect and fine, contentment is such a peaceful visitor.  That’s not to say it’s passive in any way, or dull.  Far from it!  It’s incredibly alive, and glad of it, savoring every sensation that comes its way, leisurely stretching itself into the fullness of the moment’s depths.

Contentment knows no wanting, no grasping for something different or more.  Its happiness is a melting away of any desire except to bask in the moment’s flowing warmth.  It licks at the morsels of color and sound and wriggles in delight at the way they tickle its awareness.  It savors the moment’s ever-changing textures and clings to none, finding absolute satisfaction in each.

The happiness of contentment comes without yardsticks or scales.  It makes no comparisons or judgments at all.  It knows no lack, within or without, and can hardly make a distinction between them, so complete is each.  To contentment, contrasts are simply partners in the fascinating dance.

Of course the dance eventually gets rowdy and catches us up in its whirl.  And then contentment sneaks away, as invisibly as it came.  But that’s okay.  It will come again.

“Every now and then,” I sometimes tell my friends, “an hour comes along that makes all the rest of them worth it.”  And when I look back at those hours, I see they were wearing contentment’s name.