High on Happiness

Archive for December, 2009

“We need a renaissance of wonder.  We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is a miracle and magic.” ~E. Merrill Root

Wonder is gratitude’s cousin, a welling up of awe at the glorious mystery of it all.  It comes from somewhere beyond thought, lifting the veil of naming so that we see can what is before us directly and be amazed.  It opens up our child-eyes and reveals a world that’s fresh and unexplained.

Wonder is filled with the isness of things in all their pristine beauty.  It shows us their sparkle and depth, their harmony and connection, the way that everything dances together in one grand, majestic song.

It piques our appetite for life.  It teases our curiosity.  It shows us how little we know, how much remains to be discovered.  And so we probe the grand design of the world, with its atoms and quarks, its cells and spinning galaxies.  And we are stunned by it and surprised and filled with admiration.

“From wonder into wonder, existence opens,” said LaoTzu.  At every turn, there is more to see and all of it is a marvel, and none more than we who look upon it.  We, who are blessed with consciousness and perception; we, who can feel ecstasy and love; we are blessed just to be.

As this holiday season of joy and celebration descends upon us, open your heart to the wonder of it all.  Let your soul sing its song, and your mind open to its beauty and reclaim the sense that life is indeed miracle and magic.

One of the hallmarks of happy people is that they’re a sociable bunch.  On the one hand, their happiness draws others to them.  Few things, after all, are as irresistibly attractive as a genuine smile.  And the happiness vibes behind their grins are catchier than measles.  Hang around someone who’s rooted in gladness and you’ll start grinning, too.  And that’s a fact.

On the other hand, happy people seek others out, invite them in, invite them along. Happiness, they know, in all its colors, is juicier when shared.

There’s a synergy to happiness shared, you see.  The sum of your happiness plus mine is bigger than either of ours would be alone.  Me in relation to you magnifies happiness for us both, turns it up a notch, brings out its sparkle.  It may just be that the space between us is where happiness makes itself most at home.

If you’re very young, or very young at heart, the gaiety of the season sparkles your day as naturally as snowflakes drifting from a soft winter sky.  You taste its peppermint; you see its multicolored magic everywhere you look.  But not all of us are blessed this season with seeing it through the eyes of a child.  And you know what?  That’s okay.

It’s not all about gladness and mirth, although they abound and you’re free to dip your fingers in them.   It’s not about pretending that you’re not frazzled, worn out, lonely, pressured, sad or afraid.  It’s not about having to be stronger or wealthier or prettier or healthier than you feel you are, or about meeting anybody’s expectations—even your own.  It’s not any of those things.

This holiday, regardless of the dress our varied traditions deck it in, is about light piercing the darkness of our souls.  It’s about the recognition of our humanness, with all its faults and flaws and imperfections, and the awful longing each of us feels to be better and truer than we are.  It’s about our aching to love more and to be loved.  It’s about our endless reaching for something higher and lighter and purer.  And it comes with this message: Be at peace; be of good cheer.

If the higher weren’t already embedded in your heart, you would have no sense of wanting to know it more completely.  Regardless of what your circumstances, choices and genetics have made of your life, regardless of how deeply into the shadows you feel that you have fallen, you are still a child of the Light, and an infinite spark of it dwells within you, and is a part of you and you of it, whether you know it or not.  And you cannot be disconnected.  You can be blind to it, looking out instead of in.  But you cannot be outside it, because it is the very stuff from which everything is made.

The season that’s upon us comes to tell us, “Be at peace.”  Be at peace with who you are.  Be at peace with others.  Be at peace with the world, however confounding and perplexing it may seem.

Be at peace with the fact that there’s always more to do than you can get done, always more to reach for than you can attain.  Be at peace with your wanting and your pain.

Sink into peace deeply enough and you will find joy at its core, and unfathomable love.  The season comes to lead you there, to rekindle the fire within you, to send its sparks blazing through you with their unquenchable happiness and celebration of being, however human your being may be.  Let it be.

We’re sailing into the light, my friends, and good will is pouring like champagne all around us.  It’s ringing its bells, blowing its horn, and draping its colored streamers around the shoulders of absolute strangers.

It’s time to get our dazzle on, to take out our cares with the trash, to glam up our grins and shine our shoes and prepare ourselves to party.

There’s time enough for serious, for numbers, for vacuuming the rugs.  But the light is coming, and it’s almost time to put those things away.

So break out your best teacups, and scatter your rooms with sugarplum dreams.  Be the prince or the princess on the way to the celebration.  Ride beneath the stars and feel that you’re made from them and that their glittering dust sparkles in your very cells.  The light is coming, and happiness is holding a festival—for you, for me, for the whole big earth and everything that breathes its air and swims in its deep blue seas.

Dig into your boxes and drawers.  Find your best merry and deck your halls with it.  Unpack your mirth and take it to the cleaners.  Try on your glad and see how good it looks on you.  Happiness has on its dancing shoes.  The light is coming and you’re invited to the ball.

I don’t know about you, but for the longest time, whenever I heard that I needed to have a Purpose in life, I felt awfully intimidated.  It sounded like such a lofty, heroic thing, as if it should always be spelled with capital “P.”  You know, like you were supposed to save the world, or at least the whales or something, maybe make sure everybody everywhere had lunch and shoes.

Even when I considered that having a Purpose might not be as big as all that, that it might be more along the lines of knowing what you wanted to be when you grew up, I was at a loss.  I wanted to be everything, and picking just one thing meant leaving all the other things behind.  I envied people who knew from the age of six that they were going to be dancers or engineers or archeologists or chefs.  I had no direction at all.

As the years passed, I did get to do a lot of different things.  Maybe my purpose, I thought, was to experience variety, to live a Whitman’s sampler kind of life.  I thought about getting a business card made that gave my title as “adept generalist.”  There’s something to be said for being a generalist, after all.  It lets you see the world from a lot of angles.  You don’t make great achievements or get to know a field in its depth.  But you pick up a fair share of skills and get to see how a lot of different things work.

Still, it nagged at me whenever I heard a motivational speaker say your life had to have a Purpose if you were going to live with passion.  Then one day I was driving along listening to the radio and some guy said, “The purpose of life is the celebration of it,” and skyrockets went off in my head.  “Yes!” I shouted right out loud.  “Of course!”

It doesn’t matter what role you play, how much power or status or acumen you have.  You make your life whole and holy when you just appreciate it with all your being, when you celebrate the whole, grand, complex mystery of it.  Then, whatever you are is beautiful and every passing day is a priceless gift.

As time accelerates toward year’s end and the approaching holidays sweep us up with their bustle and rush, take a moment now and then to appreciate the ordinary.

The familiar people, the daily routines, the myriad possessions that we take for granted are, after all, the things that add a sense of constancy to our lives.  They give us comfort; they define us; they contribute their textures to our lives.

Because they fill our worlds routinely, day in and day out, we tend to overlook the little miracles that surround us:  The sound of Jen’s voice, the way Matthew smiles, the hum of the refrigerator, the plumpness of a pillow, the warmth of our beds.  Electricity, hot water, indoor plumbing, the fact that the bus unfailingly comes around 7.  The tree outside the door, the cat’s meow, knowing where we keep the spoons.

Appreciating the ordinary removes it from the dusty shelf of disregard and shines it up again.  It lets us see how much we have, and to remember how we value it, how we depend on its presence.  In a world where change is swift and unrelenting, the ordinary parts of our lives offer us a refuge; they deserve our positive regard. And we deserve the quiet joy that comes from offering it.

“Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream.” ~English Nursery Rhyme

Here’s a happiness hint for the holidays:  Whenever you hear the word “merry,” remember the wise counsel of the children’s song, and slow yourself down to a gentle row.

The hustle and bustle of preparations can so easily turn from moments of delightful participation in the holiday’s spirit to feelings of pressure and distress.  We tend to set before ourselves so many additional tasks and such high expectations that it’s easy to feel pressured and overwhelmed.

We fall into the trap that I call “looking at the mountain.”  We see the entire heap of things that we want to get done all in one piece—do the shopping, put up the tree, hang the lights, write the cards, buy the stamps, bake the cookies, plan the dinner, pick up the dry cleaning, take Johnny to rehearsal, clean the house–and it looms before us as an enormous mountain that we have to climb.   And all this to celebrate a season of peace and joy!

The secret to climbing out of the trap is to move your focus from the mountain to the one thing that you are doing now.  Just that, the one thing.  Give yourself to it and allow it to engage your attention.

My friend Cristina over at The Benefits of Positive Thinking taught me a great little practice she calls, “This is me doing,” that works wonders for bringing you into the present.  You simply describe to yourself what you are doing:  This is me, paying attention to my driving, feeling the warmth from the car’s heater, hearing the music on the radio.  This is me, scraping off the plate and placing it in the dishwasher.  This is me, opening the refrigerator and reaching for the mayonnaise.

Once you’re in the present moment, you reconnect with your power because the present moment is the only one in which you can act.  You can’t act yesterday, or ten minutes from now.  The past and future are only ideas in your mind.  When you give your attention to your actions, you perform them easily and well, one gentle motion at a time.  You relax and your senses come alive.  You develop a rhythm, a flow.  You’re rowing gently on time’s river, savoring the scenery as it floats past.

That’s where the peace is, and the joy—it’s right in the moment, right now.  So be there, rowing gently and merrily down the stream.  And have yourself a holiday season brimming with delight, one sparkling moment at a time.

Happiness isn’t something you do, although in doing you may find joy.  It’s not something you acquire, like an apple or a new pair of shoes.  It’s not a hidden treasure that you find by following the right map and digging next to the right tree.

Happiness doesn’t come from lucky circumstances, however glad you may be for the pieces of good fortune that come your way.  It’s not a product of winning approval or prizes, or of having your wishes—even your best ones—come true.

Happiness isn’t something that someone else makes possible or prevents. It doesn’t depend on things going your way or on meeting your preferences.

It’s more like a signal that you tune into, one that’s broadcast from the core of your heart.  And although it’s clear signal and strong, it’s subject to interference.

To pull happiness into your awareness so that its music steadily fills your life requires a little practice and attention.  You need to learn to still the things that block it or bury it in noise, to identify and eliminate the sources of interference, to keep your antenna pointed in its direction.  You need to develop an ear for its sound so you can hone into it instantly when you happen upon it.

But it broadcasts ceaselessly, every minute of every hour of every day.  Always.  There’s nowhere you can be that it is unavailable.  It comes from the same place in you that blinks your eyes, that pumps your lungs, that moves your muscles, that flashes messages from your fingers and toes to your brain and back again.  It belongs to you; it’s woven into the very fabric of your being.  It’s not something separate or apart from you.  It’s not out there in the world waiting to be bought or found.  It’s already yours.  There’s nothing different that you need to be, or anything more that you need to have, or any place else that you need to go.  And if you listen for it quietly, you can hear it.  Right now.  Just as you are.

It sounds like beauty, and wonder, and awe.

It sounds like love.

It sounds like you.

Before you even open your eyes, you feel the subtle tingling of it.  A tiny shiver of excitement sparkles through your body and as you take in a deep draft of the morning air, a huge smile spreads over your face.

You have no idea what it will look like, what shapes it will take.  All you know is that it’s going to be great, and you’re going to love it.  Today is going to be an incredibly lucky day.

Last night, as you were drifting off to sleep you fantasized that you were rubbing the genie’s golden lamp, and having been promised that your wish would come true, you said, “Tomorrow is going to be an extraordinarily lucky day.”   It was just a game you were playing with yourself, but you pretended it was real because that was one of its rules.

On the surface, it looked like a silly superstition.  But you knew what you were really doing was programming your subconscious mind to be alert for beneficial opportunities and to guide you in their direction.  The subconscious, you knew, likes images; it responds to them.  It uses them, after all, to speak to you in dreams.  It’s a right-brain kind of thing.  You decided to try it, just for fun, curious to see how it would work out.

The second rule of the game was to wake up feeling that your wish had been granted.  Then you just had to look for the ways it showed up during the day.  And even though you knew it was a game, you were delighted to find that you really did wake up filled with this delicious anticipation.  It really was going to be a fantastically lucky day!  You just knew it.

And, sure enough . . .

There’s no doubt about it.  Happiness comes leaping from you a lot more easily when you’re healthy and fit.

Radiant health is a joy, in and of itself.  And you can grab your share of it just by making an intention to treat yourself as beautifully as you deserve to be treated.

Good-health practices should be a natural part of your happiness-building routine.  They’re expressions of your gratitude for being, after all.  Good health augments all of your personal strengths.  It decreases stress and frees your mind for expanded creativity.  It enhances your sense of well-being, because it is being well.

Increasing your vitality doesn’t have to be a huge project.  A little choice here, a little change there, and before you know it, you’re wearing the new, improved version of your body, and happiness is simply oozing from your pores.

Regardless of the condition you’re in right now, you can always kick your vitality up a notch.  Move whatever you can move a little bit more often, a little bit farther.  Attend a little more to the quality of the fuel you’re providing to yourself—to what you’re feeding your body and your brain.  Learn the gentle art of releasing the things that are not serving you well.

Here’s a little menu of things you might want to focus on, one or two at a time, as part of your vitality-enhancing routine:

• Smile more;
• Laugh a few more times a day;
• Breathe deeply;
• Choose whole, simple foods and drink plenty of liquids;
• Be moderate in your indulgences;
• Spend plenty of time in the sunshine.
• Stretch more;
• Give your muscles more work to do  (They love it.);
• Pump up that heart rate a couple times a day.  Get in motion;
• Wash your hands often;
• Brush and floss well;
• Learn relaxation techniques;
• Meditate;
• Get enough sleep.

And, of course, have more fun!