I just read a little piece on happiness. It was one of those little “inspirational” tidbits that come into my inbox each day. The opening line said,
“Happiness is the art of living, the purpose of our existence. Happiness is the true index of quality of life. Without happiness, life is dry and meaningless.”
And the last line.
“Happy people keep themselves happy because they know the little ways to appreciate themselves and to see the humor and magic in each moment.”
I often wonder what other people’s “take” on happiness is. By definition, being happy is “feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.”
I guess if someone asked me if I was a happy person, I’d have to know the context of the question. Most days, I do not flit around the kitchen like Snow White, whistling while I work with the Dwarves of Seven. No. Most days, I move through the tasks at hand without complaint. But I’m hardly giddy.
Yet, if someone asked if I had a happy life, and the conditions were dependent on “contentment,” I would say, most definitely, it is happy. I have been fortunate beyond measure, in a million different ways each day. And I mean that. Every beat of my heart is a miracle. The ability to use all my senses, to think, speak, walk, eat, stand, all on my own devices, is miraculous. I have food and shelter and means.
There are squirrels outside, for crying out loud, burying nuts like bosses. It doesn’t really get any better than that. My life is amazing in these ways, and for that, I am grateful to the higher good, the benevolent Universe, the God of gods, or whatever you wish to call it. I am thankful, to the nines, and full of content.
But when people write about happiness and say that is “the purpose of our existence,” I tend to bristle. When they say that “without happiness, life is dry and meaningless.”
A lot of people in the world don’t know happiness, and it is not by choice. Abraham Lincoln, my favorite president, once said this about happiness:
“Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
I disagree with him, wholeheartedly. I can’t imagine too many people who were enslaved during his time, those men and women who feared, daily, that they would be beaten, raped, or hung from a tree, would be able to just make up their minds to be happy.
The six million Jews who died in the Holocaust didn’t have much to be happy about either.
Both of these are extreme examples, but there are people, every day, who are homeless or hungry. People who have lost their partners or their children. People who struggle with depression and anxiety. Those who are suffering from illness. And many other examples. It isn’t a matter of a choice to flip on a switch and suddenly see streamers and confetti. I don’t think happiness is the “purpose for their existence.”
Don’t get me wrong. I wish everyone could be filled with happiness and joy. I hope everyone can know goodness and well-being in this way.
That “inspirational note” said that happy people “can find the humor and magic in each moment.”
Again, I feel a conflict with this. I think each moment contains something for us to know, to explore, to feel, and to sense. In that thrust, it could be construed as magical, but not necessarily filled with humor, as this happy wish suggests.
Yet, on the other side of this, for most of us, in our everyday lives, how we react is up to us. We cannot control what goes on around us, for the most part. But we can control how we respond. And in that way, if at all possible, it is better to choose happy.
Like those happy squirrels out there. And their bushy little tails.
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“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden
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“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
― Mark Twain
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“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
― Aristotle
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“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
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And you know it, clap your hands.
