If you want to be happy, be.
Leo Tolstoy
Have you noticed the happiness frenzy? Look in any bookstore and you will find dozens and dozens of books proclaiming they have the answer to everyone’s question: what can I do to be happy?
For some, happiness is a bottle of wine shared with a friend or partner. For others, happiness is a silent walk on the beach with a light rain. What is happiness? Well, to me happiness is not about smiling all of the time. It's not about eliminating bad moods, or trading your Tolstoy-inspired nuance and ambivalence toward people and situations for cheery pronouncements devoid of critical judgment. While the veritable experts lie in different camps and sometimes challenge one another, over the past decade they've together assembled big chunks of the happiness puzzle.
The most useful definition—and it's one agreed upon by neuroscientists, psychiatrists, behavioral economists, positive psychologists, and Buddhist monks—is more like satisfied or content than "happy" in its strict bursting-with-glee sense. It has depth and deliberation to it. It encompasses living a meaningful life, utilizing your gifts and your time, living with thought and purpose.
It's maximized when you also feel part of a community. And when you confront annoyances and crises with grace. It involves a willingness to learn and stretch and grow, which sometimes involves discomfort. It requires acting on life, not merely taking it in. It's not joy, a temporary exhilaration, or even pleasure, that sensual rush—though a steady supply of those feelings course through those who seize each day.
Happiness is a complex matter – hence all the books about it. What interests me is this: getting what you want, doesn’t always make you happy. You think happiness would arrive if you were to win the lottery, or would forever fade away if your home were destroyed in a flood. But human beings are remarkably adaptable. After a variable period of adjustment, we bounce back to our previous level of happiness, no matter what happens to us. (There are some scientifically proven exceptions, notably suffering the unexpected loss of a job or the loss of a spouse. Both events tend to permanently knock people down a notch.)
I feel that it is important to know ourselves well enough, and do the things that bring us joy and happiness. If you can’t think of anything, maybe it’s time you sit down, grab some paper and a pen…and think. What makes me happy?
My happiness list (in no particular order):
1. Warm socks on cold feet
2. New music
3. The smell of the ocean
4. Getting letters in the mail
5. Coffee, Wine, Beer (Vices?)
6. Being interrupted with a kiss (Taylor Swift said it best)
7. Painting
8. Laughing until I cry
9. Doing something really dirty, and then getting really clean (weird one, huh?)
10 Going on a walk, and finding beautiful things
Sometimes, it’s easy to lose ourselves amongst the chaos and demands of everyday life. It’s important to do something everyday that makes us happy. And I don’t need no fancy book to tell me that.
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