Happiness is Overrated?

What if it’s true? What if happiness is overrated?  No, I mean it.  Think about it.  We think we want to “be happy,” spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to get happy. But does it work?  What is happiness, really? An elusive moment, wafting by like smoke. We might be in it for a moment, but we certainly can’t hold on to it.

What if we were happy all the time, like we think we want to be? It might turn out to be incredibly boring. What would we talk about, each of us wandering around in a blissful daze?  There would be few opportunities to grow. We cut our teeth on the sharp edges of things. Without those edges, life would be…well…dull.

Maybe we should get used to the idea that we walk in the shadows as well as in the sunshine, should stop trying to be so happy and appreciate each moment for what it is: part of the acute, often uncomfortable, sometimes painful, and fleetingly pleasurable act of living.

Half Measures

Half measures. We know when we are guilty of them, don’t we? We know when we throw dinner together. We know when we don’t follow through on disciplining our kids. We know when we’ve made a small change, at a time when a really big, scary change was needed.

I think we resort to half measures because we’ve fallen victim to a fallacy, a big lie we tell ourselves: that life is supposed to be easy. We believe that because easy is comfortable, that’s what we should strive for.

But what if we knew things weren’t supposed to be simple? What if our parents told us, from early childhood, not to fear the struggle, not to avoid our own discomfort but to embrace that which makes us grow?

We’d probably still be lazy…sometimes. We’d still get busy and tired, and try to multitask. It’s only natural when things are just so damn hard.  It’s human.  But maybe, we’d stop getting so upset when things aren’t easy.

I’m not at all sure what the point of life is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not for things to be easy.  Maybe we’d all be a happier if we stopped expecting a comfortable, smooth ride and embraced the expected bumps and bruises as just the way life is supposed to be.

Looking for my Happy Thought

It is an essential ingredient for flight, right along with pixie dust, if you believe what they say in Peter Pan.

Children do it effortlessly.  “Think of a happy thought,” we tell them, and they instantly conjure visions of candy bars or kittens.  Were it not for a shortage of pixie dust, they’d be off on some celestial adventure – second star to the right, straight on ’til morning.

For us grown-ups, it’s a little harder.  This morning I awoke, and every thought that came to mind brought with it a little twinge of discomfort.  It seems just about every element of my life has some nuance of worry or malcontent attached to it right now.  Life can be that way sometimes, and this too shall pass.  But what to do about my happy thought?

It seems more important than ever to find one.  I’ve read books about about the law of attraction, rooted in the principle that we create our own realities with our thoughts.  If I am to be the architect of my own existence, I’d better get my thoughts in order. Of course, there will always be things to worry about, but if they pervade my thinking, then if the philosophers are right, that’s what I’ll get more of.  Something has to balance out the worry.  I need my happy thought.

While contemplating this, I cast about in my mind for a happy thought and came up empty.  Then it came to me: a happy thought really isn’t a thought at all.  It is the feeling that accompanies the thought.  That is where the magic lies – in accessing the good feelings.  In that particular moment, the easiest way for me to feel good was to take a break from thinking altogether.

For a few moments, I was able to just be.  There, in the peaceful space between thoughts, I could experience the kinds of feelings that will help me create the life I want, full of creativity, love, and happiness.

Old Friends

We all need quiet in our lives.  We must sweep off the table and make space for it.  My life’s work dwells in the quiet spaces between things – of that I am certain.

When I was little, I had plenty of quiet.  We lived way out in the country, in the middle of an apple orchard, and I was always alone.  I had no siblings, no neighbors with kids, no playmates.  What I did have was an active imagination, and I was a voracious reader and so I enjoyed robust adventures of my own conjuring.

Still, I thought I was lonely.  I built tree forts and yearned for a friend – a Diana to my Anne (of Green Gables) – to come climb with me.  We would giggle and tell secrets.  She would know my heart and understand me without a word.

I thought I was lonely, and maybe I was, with only an aloof cat, the mute companionship of a sweet-natured dog, and the rough-barked apple trees.  But as it turns out, along with the tree houses, I was also building something else.

I was building a relationship with myself.  I asked myself questions and listened to the answers.  The trees were my companions, the tractor-torn clay of the earth.  I ran barefoot and my feet became tough and impervious to rocks.  I ate plums and mulberries – and apples, of course – warm from the tree.

When I started school, I was confused by the complexities of interactions with my peers.  Many of them were abrupt, judgmental, inconsistent.  I began to see relationships as troubling, unsatisfying, and hurtful.

I have been blessed with some very dear friends in my life, but a true and durable friendship, as many of us know, is an uncommon thing.  That Diana to my Anne – that “kindred spirit” that L. M. Montgomery spoke of – I don’t know that I’ve ever quite found her.  Unless…

Unless I am that friend, to myself.  When I think about it, this dialogue that has continued for well over 30 years, this old and comfortable knowing of myself that goes deeper than words, has served me well ever since my childhood, when such self-companionship was forced on me through my isolated circumstances.

When I’m alone, undistracted, and able to really be with myself, it’s like a visit with an old, dear friend.  I thought I was waiting to meet her, but maybe she’s been here all along.  She’s been waiting in the quiet spaces between things…and she is always there for me.