High on Happiness

Archive for February, 2010

For brief moments throughout the day, patches of blue sky floated above us.  “Look!” someone would exclaim from a window, “blue sky!”

Because the world has been blanketed with thick, snow-bearing clouds for most of the month and bathed in cold, gray colors, bits of blue seemed a near-miraculous sight.  Seeing them was like hearing laughter after weeks of solemnity.  They gave us hope that springtime was hiding just over the horizon after all and so brought glimmers of joy.

Few things gleam of joy the way hope does.  Hope is like an appetizer for relief.  It keeps you moving forward in the belief that things must inevitably change for the better.  If not tomorrow, then the day after that, or the day after that, light will break through the darkness; sunshine will pour through the clouds.  And the mere thought of it is enough to lift your weariness.

Hope is a kind of faith in ultimate goodness, a trust that rainbows follow the rain, that after the winter, daffodils and robins will return.  And the relief that hope promises is enough to let you see that the glimmers of joy that produced it are happening right now, that this moment brought them.  And that’s its magic.

Warm, comfy bed;
Waking;
Morning;
Mobility;
Electricity;
Heat;
Indoor plumbing;
Running water;
Coffee;
Oatmeal;
Raisins;
Milk;
Clean clothes;
Warm jacket;
Hat;
Boots;
Gloves;
Blue sky;
Red sun rising;
Glistening snow;
Vision;
Camera;
Charged batteries;
Fingers.

Morning Gratitude.
You?

Not all picnics are equal, of course.  In an ideal world, they unfold from linen lined wicker baskets and feature fine wine and excellent cheese.  They spread out beneath azure skies in balmy air on blankets spread on a manicured lawn.

But in the real world, they often come with the proverbial march of ants and the occasional fly in the potato salad.

I held mine today in my car as I gazed at a table piled with snow, and asked myself the question that began this blog:  Why am I so happy now?

“Because,” an internal voice said, “you’re having a picnic in the park.”  Given the unlikely scenery, I thought that was a hilarious answer and I literally laughed out loud.

But the fact of the matter is, it’s all a picnic in the park.  Ants, snow and all.  Life is a feast and we are its celebrants, here for the glorious experience of it, whatever it holds.

Lemonade, anyone?

Ever so softly the snow fell, its countless glistening crystals smoothing the landscape with great, clean curves.  And even though we have had more than our share of it since the month began, its beauty is undeniable.

It erases the sharp edges of things and brings a quiet to the world that evokes a kind of reverence and subtle joy.

Looking out at the newly brushed landscape, I couldn’t help but feel a deep calm and a sense of awe at the sheer majesty of the scene outside my window.

It put me in touch with the serene side of happiness, the sense that we live at the command of a vast beneficence.  It’s the kind of happiness that wears the sparkle of tranquility and that rises from a calm and quiet heart.

The serenity of happiness is a gift that soothes and smoothes the jangled thoughts of our all too busy minds.  It has a transcendent beauty about it that lets you hear the angels sing.  It falls softly with a gentle grace and lets you taste the sweetness of true inner peace.  It’s a whispering of the great yes, a surrender to trusting that all is well, despite the evidence of our limited perceptions.

It comes to you when you practice stilling yourself, when you allow yourself to set your cares and anxieties aside.  It begins with simply breathing, with practicing mindfulness and presence.  The more you allow yourself to soften into relaxation, the wider you open the channels through which happiness flows.  And the more that you open them, the greater your sense of inner peace and joy.

Happiness sings its purest song when it flows between two hearts.  In essence, after all, happiness is the song of love.

And of all the beautiful forms it takes—romantic love, parental love, spiritual love—one of its most joyous forms is the happiness of friendship.

As friendship, it dances between the hearts of lovers and those of parent and child.  It plays its song between siblings, relatives, neighbors and coworkers, between humans and their furred and feathered friends.

The notes of friendship are notes of kindness and consideration, of appreciation, respect, delight, patience and joy.  It rests in trust and positive regard.  It overlooks flaws or finds them endearing.  It forgives errors as easily as it breathes.   It’s given with such ease.  And grounded in shared time and communication, it takes on qualities of endurance and strength that can span a lifetime and transcend long silences and spaces.

Friendship bonds us and teaches us true empathy and affection.  It warms and supports us.  It comforts and encourages.  It holds up a mirror that lets us see our own lovableness and assures us that we are not alone.

Friendship is a touch of heaven on earth, one of life’s most precious gifts.  As rough as the road may, from time to time, be, at least we have fine companions with which to share it.  Isn’t that beautiful and grand!

“He was beaming with happiness,” we say.  “She was absolutely aglow.”   The phrases are more than mere analogies.  They’re statements of perceptible reality.

Light rides on the waves of happiness that flow out from your heart.  Literally.  Actual, measurable light.

Happiness is a radiant power, a beneficent light saber you wield with your smile, shooting out photons toward all who gaze upon your face, infecting them with joy.  Like sunlight melting ice, your happiness radiates a warmth that melts the brittleness that keeps others from their own.

Doubt it?  Think about the way you yourself respond to the sight of a genuine smile flashed in your direction.  If only for a split second, you feel the light of it, the uplift of your spirit as you reach for its joy.

Think of the power that gives you!  Want to change the world?  Make it a happier place?  Follow Gandhi’s advice:  Be the change you want to see.  Get out there and beam, baby!  Go flash some happiness around.

Tink sat immobile as a rock watching the snowy vista outside the window. To a human, the scene might have looked drab and unchanging, a featureless world buried beneath a heap of snow.  But to Tink, it was a mesmerizing wonderland.

She saw how the branches of the great pine dropped clumps of snow that dissolved as they fell into a dazzling powder and how crystal drops of water fell from the icicles hanging from the eaves.  She saw the tiny ant crawling across the window pane and heard the grand whistle of the train rolling across the valley.  Suddenly black wings flickered as a bird darted onto a nearby branch, setting off another cascade of falling snow.  A car whooshed past, a streak of shine and color that gave off a great, wet sound and a low rumbling hum.  She could feel the vibrations of its purr against her body as it passed and it felt like music to her.

She wasn’t dreaming of spring, or of dinner, or about her toys or the mouse she saw in the corner of the basement that morning.  No lists of obligations were running through her mind, even though there was plenty of grooming to do.  She wasn’t concerned with finding distraction from the moment; the moment was rich with motion and music.  The fan on the furnace whirred; the refrigerator hummed; the trees danced; snow fell.

To Tink, rooted in the contentedness of being, moments weren’t something to endure.  They were deep treasures to devour with delight.  Her waiting wasn’t filled with boredom, but with alert anticipation of the next sensual pleasure, and the next, and the next.  And each moment was different and held a surprise.

And that is the secret of the patience of happiness.  It’s the wakeful savoring of all that a moment holds.

Thirty inches of snow blanket the landscape in my Pennsylvania valley, turning every object into a voluptuous white sculpture.

Like an exercise in sensory deprivation, the absence of color and definitive shape automatically set my mind to dreaming.  It’s what our minds naturally do when we’re relaxed and unoccupied by a task; they time travel.

For me, the sight of the snow-draped chair on my front porch evoked memories of summer days when I would sit in it sipping morning coffee and listening to the chorus of song birds.    In my mind’s eye, I could see and hear the rustle of the green leaves and feel the gentle warmth of the morning sun.  I felt the warm breezes brushing against my bare arms.  I remembered the sight of a swallowtail butterfly flitting past and darting from flower to fragrant flower in the garden.

What a treat that little dream was for me!  Instead of being buried in a landscape of endless snow, suddenly I was savoring the warmth and color of an animated summer world of sensory delight.   When I returned my attention to the present, the boost that the summer dream gave my mood let me appreciate more fully the beauty of the winter world outside my window.  And then I flashed to a little future dream of sitting on the porch on a hot day next July, and remembering how my chair had once been covered with rounded heaps of snow.

In addition to the mini-vacations that daydreams like these provide, mental time travel gives us the chance to pull insights and lessons from past experiences, enabling us to make wiser decisions in the future.  And recent research in positive psychology suggests that regularly imagining a positive future for ourselves—a day when things go right, clicking into place—makes us happier in the present.

So while there’s much to be said for the practice of attending to the details of the present, the happiness of dreaming serves us, too.  The key is to be mindful of the content of the present’s dreams as well—to catch them and attend to them and pull the joy from them as they float past.

A gentle kind of grace spreads over the moment when you let it be, just as it is.  When you withdraw your resistance, your wanting it to be otherwise, your judgment that it’s not enough, you create an opening for happiness to flow.  And sometimes it rushes through that opening so fully that it floods your entire being with its joy.

But even when it simply trickles through, you feel its warmth and hear its song, enticing you to open even more fully to the wholeness that the moment holds.

It’s just a matter of finding the place inside you that feels brittle, or hard, or stressed.  Then breathe some softness into it; tell it you’re safe, that everything is okay.  Let it relax.  Remember, just one little opening and happiness will begin flowing through, with all its comfort and all its ease and its transformative perspective.  Let it be.

I laughed today thinking how many words I’ve written about happiness since I began this blog, when it is, after all, such a simple thing.  And then I felt a kind of compassion for us all, that we work so hard at it and make it so complex.

Happiness is such an easy state of being.  It’s not something you strive to obtain as much as something into which you relax.  You don’t increase your experience of it by adding more things, or drama, or complications to your life, but by releasing the things that stand in its way.  You don’t have to dig for it, or climb towards it, or run after it with a net.  You just breathe it.

You don’t have to hunt it down; it’s everywhere.  You don’t have to build or create it; it already is.  Right here.  Right now.  Like air.  Like light.  It’s not something you have to earn or win or deserve.  It’s already yours, given to you as freely and naturally as your life is given, as much a part of you as the blood that flows through your veins, the oxygen that courses through your lungs, the spark and crackle of the joyous song of movement continuously playing through the nerve and muscle of you.

And all that blinds you to it is the make-believe of stories you tell yourself and a dream that things are otherwise.