High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Appreciation’

Outward from the loving heart the smooth rhythm flows, in waves whose gentleness masks their power.  Outward they flow, through every cell, soothing them, enlivening them, restoring in them their essential gladness.

Outward they flow, soaring beyond surfaces, reverberating through space, their song penetrating everything it touches, bidding all to dance to its harmonies.  This one feels its compassion; this one is stirred with appreciation for its joy.  And all are calmed, lifted, opened, refreshed.

Such is love’s dynamism, such is its healing, such is its power.   Bathe in its beauty, sing to its song, connect to its rhythm and dance.   Let it fill you to overflowing, and then pass it on, pass it on.

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” ~William James

Oh, how we long to be appreciated!  For building a bond or strengthening one, nothing surpasses the connecting power of appreciation.  Children blossom in its light; marriages warm; friendships deepen.  Professional connections take on greater significance; neighbors become friends.

“There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread,” said Mother Teresa.  Feed someone with appreciation, and you are nourishing his or her very soul.

When you convey your genuine appreciation for someone, you’re letting her know that she’s real for you, that you have heard her, paid attention, noticed and value what she said or did or tried to do.

Appreciation recognizes the goodness in others.  It happens when something about someone touches us in a way that makes us feel uplifted and proud.  Touching our minds, it takes the shape of respect, or admiration, or esteem.  Touching our hearts, it delights us and makes us feel that we have spotted a precious treasure, and it moves us to cherish and adore something in the person who moved us in such a beautiful way.

But the true magic of appreciation is in the expression of it.  Once it’s kindled within us, it wants to leap forth.  It likes to be wrapped in notes and acts of kindness and in words.  “That was wonderful!” it cries.  “I love the way you do that.”  “You really inspired me.”  “That was amazing!”   “Gosh, I love your face in the morning.”  “Wow, you really worked hard at that!  Great job!”

It’s the giving that makes appreciation come alive, that sends it reverberating back and forth between the recipient and giver in an interplay of deepening recognition and meaning.  It’s the dance of human connection, the weaver and restorer of relationships.  It’s the sharing of the bread that feeds our souls.

Do you realize how hungry all of us are for a word of appreciation?  For those moments where we feel that we’re seen, that we’re noticed, that we’re real to someone?

There’s nothing like it.  Those little sparks of human connection are like honey to our souls.  They nourish us and make us feel, if only for a fleeting moment, more alive, as if we matter, as if we count for something.

What if, tomorrow morning when you woke up, you declared it Universal Appreciation Day?  What if you made it your goal to see something amazing in every human being you encountered?

What if you saw their beauty?  Their courage?  Their loneliness?  Their pain?  What if you noticed their skill?  Their laugh?  Their innate wisdom? Their manner?  What if you beamed little bolts of recognition to everybody?  Even strangers.  Even the ones who generally get on your nerves.  A word here, a gesture there, a touch, a smile.  It wouldn’t take much.

How do you think you would feel when the day was done?  How would it change your world?

When I saw the tiny maple leaves, just emerged from the tip of the branch, I thought about watching one of those time lapse movies.  You know, the ones where you see a whole day sweep by from sunset to dusk in a mere minute or two.

I imagined a little maple seed, the kind that twirl to the ground like helicopters, settling into the soil, sprouting, enduring a winter, coming back taller and stronger each spring until today, it stood before me, a proud sapling, with its endless unfolding of new leaves.  Soon it would produce helicopter seeds of its own, and the story would go on and on.

It reminded me of an exercise I learned once where you travel back through the history of something to appreciate all that contributed to its presence in your life.  If you were eating an apple, for instance, you could trace it back to the store where you bought it and think about all the people who were involved in operating the store.  Someone ordered it; someone sold it; someone unpacked it from its crate and set it out for display.

Before that, it traveled on a truck that came from a distributor who bought it from an orchard.  The truck had a driver, who worked for a company, and it traveled over roads that were imagined and engineered and built.

The apple was one of dozens that came from a tree that thrived in the orchard, soaking in a summer’s sun and rain.  And before that it was a blossom that grew on a tree that produced a seed.  Someone bought the seedling it produced and placed it in the soil and nurtured it. Someone picked it and placed it in the crate that was loaded onto the truck.

And now it was in your hand, and you would bite it and think what a miracle it was and how crisp and juicy and sweet its flesh.  And it would nurture you.  You were the whole reason it came to be.  You and the owner and workers in the orchard, and in the grocery store and the builders of crates and trucks.  And the story goes on and on.

It’s a wonderful exercise.  It gives you a unique perspective.  It broadens your sense of the connectedness of things and leads you to appreciate the wonder of life’s endless unfolding.  And in the end, it leads you to the big questions:  How did it all come to be?  Where did it come from?  Why am I, a tiny life form on a small speck of planet in the midst of a giant and dazzling universe, capable of wondering why?

As she walked past the open guest room door, the sound of his voice stopped her.  Despite its low volume, it was filled with such sincerity and enthusiasm that she wondered who had called him at this hour.

When she peeked in, she saw that he was speaking to no one at all.  He was simply standing there, his back to her, peering out the window.  “Good Morning, Grass!” he was saying.  “Good Morning, Dew.  Good Morning Trees and Birds.  Good Morning, Sky.”  Spontaneously, she laughed and he turned around, and laughed with her.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked, still laughing.

“Good Morning, Caroline!  I’m greeting the day.”

“Do you always start your mornings like this?” she asked her guest.

“Why, yes,” he said, his eyes sparkling.  “I’m so glad for the gift of it, that it only seems right to take a few minutes to greet it.”

It’s All Good

Half an hour later, when they were sharing coffee at the kitchen table, Caroline asked Dave how long he had been starting his mornings with this ritual greeting of his and how it came to be.  “Actually,” he said, “I’ve been doing it since I was young man.  Over the years, it’s taken on such meaning for me that I don’t think I could possibly start the day without it.”

Dave had been through some harrowing times in his life.  He’d been in combat; he nearly died in an auto accident once.  Two of his businesses had failed before he finally met with success.  But even when he woke bleary eyed in the desert, covered with sweat and sand, he told Caroline, or in the hospital, to the smell of antiseptic and the low buzz of fluorescent lights, tethered to IVs, he took time to greet the morning.

It gave him a way, he said, to appreciate that he had one more day to be alive on this planet and to keep his mind open for the gifts the day would bring.

Caroline studied his face over the rim of her coffee cup as she took a sip.  “How could you feel that way when you were in a war?  Or wracked with pain in a hospital bed?” she asked quietly.

“It’s not the circumstances of your life that count,” he said.  “It’s how you look at them.  When I was a young man I read in a book somewhere, maybe one of Wayne Dyer’s, this remarkable statement: ‘Nothing bad ever happens to me.’  Everything is for your good, you see, always.  Even the fear and discouragement and pain.  I just adopted that as my working belief, and it’s seen me through some really difficult times.”

For a moment, Dave stared out the kitchen window at the sunny garden outside as if he were lost in memories.  Caroline heard a robin singing in the willow at the garden’s edge.  “Of course,” Dave said, “his face breaking into a smile, “it’s a lot easier to say ‘Good Morning’ to the world on a day as gorgeous as this one!  You really have a lovely place here, Caroline.”

Caroline smiled back and thanked him.  “But you know,” he said warmly, “every day truly is a gift.  It truly is.”

“O clap your hands, all ye nations; shout unto God with the voice of Joy.” ~Psalm 47:1

Applause!  How we love it!  A pat on the back, a word of praise, a standing ovation for a job well done stops us right in our tracks and plugs us in.

Applause is the eruption of gratitude and appreciation.  It says, “I’m delighted!  I’m jubilant!  You fill me with joy.”  It happens when our gladness flows right down to our fingertips, setting them flying in acclaim.

It bursts spontaneously from children and the old, from women and men of all cultures and climes.  Applause says, “Congratulations!” It pays tribute; it honors; it commends.

It’s as joyful to give as to receive it.  Applaud your partner five times more than you criticize and watch your relationship thrive.  Applaud your child (and the child within you) for tasks attempted or mastered and watch her beam and strive.  Applaud the day when you wake up in the morning and see how wonderfully it unfolds.  Applaud Spirit at its end, and see how peacefully you sleep.

It’s a happiness practice par excellence.  Make it a part of your day.

Intertwined with every wave of happiness like an inseparable companion, appreciation dances.  It’s the harmonic of happiness, resonating with it wherever happiness sings.

Where happiness expresses itself as peace, appreciation adds its notes of serenity.  Where happiness tumbles in the laughter of delight, appreciation adds its touch of affection for whatever evoked the laughter.  Think about the sweet warmth you felt, for example, when you laughed at the antics of a puppy or a baby.  Happiness and appreciation just naturally travel hand in hand.  They’re like the yin and yang of joy, flowing outward in a dual embrace that envelopes and enriches everything it meets.

Where happiness exalts in finding beauty, appreciation adds the harmony of awe.  Where happiness finds release, appreciation brings its echoes of gratitude.  Happiness gives the joy; appreciation gives the meaning.  Happiness gives inspiration; appreciation gives depth.  Happiness is a gift from life’s Source; appreciation is the acknowledgment and valuing of it.

And so, if you listen for appreciation when happiness sings its songs for you, your joy will be all the more complete.  Listen, and be glad, and give thanks.

On this last Saturday of summer, I walked in a golden meadow beneath a cloudless azure sky.  Beyond the field, the first crimson branches heralded autumn’s coming.  The flowers that dotted the meadow just two weeks ago had transformed into globes of seeds.  And bees were busy gathering the last drops of nectar from the glowing goldenrod.

I went there on impulse in the late afternoon, called by the scarlet hues of a single maple at the meadow’s distant edge.  The morning had been painted by colors of its own.  My travels had taken me down a country road where scarlet vines climbed the trunks of trees.  Then I happened on an apple orchard, with endless rows of trees heavy with bright fruit.  Behind the orchard’s store, hundreds of newly harvested pumpkins lined a high field in a brilliant swatch of orange.

The owner of the orchard was just leaving the store as I approached it, preparing to take a group of visitors on a hayride through the grounds.  “What a beautiful day!” his wife said, seeing him off.  “Just look at that sky!”

I bought dark red apples and deep blue Concord grapes, my favorites, and a jar of amber honey.

So vibrant were the day’s colors that I felt as if I had been placed in the midst of some grand Technicolor movie set in rural Pennsylvania.  Except it was real, with balmy air, and the fragrances of early autumn perfuming the atmosphere.

And now, here I was, in the golden meadow, and my heart was so full of the beauty of the day and appreciation for having lived it, that all I could do was breathe “Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you,” as I walked.