Happiness is sugar. As an idea, it’s not particularly big and deep and meaningful like joy or love, but it sure helps the medicine go down. Some think of happiness as a goal or a prize at the end of some mysterious and mythic journey. Cynical people describe happiness as foolish or blind and skeptics talk of it as rare. Some talk about a “search” for happiness as though it can only be found with a secret map. Regard these kinds of people carefully, because they really just like being disappointed and vexed. Over time they become very tiresome. Happiness is easy. It’s neither hidden nor illusive. Happiness is the straightforward and natural result of a thoughtful, generous and focussed mind. It is not a goal, but rather a manner of travel. It is the way this herky jerky journey we’re on can be made fun. Happiness is life’s leaven. And it is also a choice. As social creatures in a hard world, happiness is the gift we give our fellow travelers. And here is the secret of how to be happy. Be grateful.
Happiness is all about paying attention and giving deep and mindful thanks. It is all about seeing, learning from, and appreciating the present. In our busy, stressed out lives when all our sneaky wants quickly become needs and our days organize themselves into checklists or route themselves into brisk, straight thoroughfares between points A and B, we forget to take note. We forget to truly experience the moment we’re in and give it due reverence.
Years ago I heard Camilla Kimball speak. She seemed a very humble person, uncomfortable in the limelight, and for her talk, she walked to the podium and recited a sing-song rhyme. I remember the poem because it seemed so applicable to me. I’d just finished painting my staircase white and had two small children, both too short for the handrails. The poem was a mother’s lament over dirty handprints on the walls. In the last stanza, she spoke as an old woman and sighed that if she could see one of those lost tiny handprints now, she would hang a gold frame around it.
I think if we could see the moment we’re in for what it truly is, and understand the gift it is in an eternal sense--for what it has to offer and teach, for the good we can do--we would hang gold frames around each of our days, no matter how seemingly mundane or insignificant. But our days can get monotonous and more often than not, our routine tasks are not what we’d choose given the opportunity. How do we infuse our ordinary days with happiness and delight?
I went walking with my niece and nephew once when they were very young. At one point, I watched my seven-year-old niece bring a clod of dirt to her nose. She stood totally still, shut her eyes, inhaled deeply, and a smile flickered across her face at the smell of it. I wonder if as adults, we bolt the door of our delight. Our carefully applied and sophisticated tastes have raised the bar too high. We will not stoop for any of the thousand little joys that litter our path. As we get older, we acquire more and more patience for the trivial and have less patience for the essential.
One Christmas when my family was skiing up in Canada, I’d been goaded as usual, onto a run meant for lemmings or teenagers with more testosterone than sense. I ended up picking my way ever so carefully over a cornice at the very top of Whistler Mountain. Needless to say, I was chuck full of fear and loathing and my eyes were glued to every bump and drop beneath my skis. When I finally came to a place where I could at least stand without plummeting down the mountain, I paused to catch my breath and steal myself for the next few yards—and I glanced up. In every direction as far as I could see were range after range of rosy pick mountaintops with gauzy purple clouds wrapped around their flanks. They stood out against a sky so brilliant and deep and blue that the very sight of it brought frozen tears to my eyes. It was completely astounding. I’d been so focussed on the obstacles at my feet I’d almost missed one of the most fine and fabulous things I’ll ever see. And so I have a little sign on my worktable that says, “Look Up.” I leave it there as a reminder when day to day stuff gets frustrating and I get too obsessed with maneuvering around details and icky little problems. If I’ll just pause and look around me at the big picture, the very idea of being alive on this planet is completely amazing.
When we take note and begin to understand our experiences profoundly, we are compelled to gratitude. And this is the secret to happiness and joy. When we are profoundly grateful, we are joyful and our joy becomes worship.
Then if gratitude generates true happiness, what kind of gratitude is most acceptable to God?
I suppose all gratitude begins with recognition, the listing of blessings. A magical thing happens when we begin this simple process. It’s like focussing hard on the one bright star in the night sky. Soon all those faint stars surrounding it slowly appear and so it is with blessings. Simply beginning to notice our most apparent blessings reveals more subtle blessings and soon we realize our lives are richer than we ever suspected. But this is only the first level of gratitude.
The application of gratitude is a second level. Gratitude can be a kind of Lamaze breathing, something we can focus on rather than the monotonous or grim aspects of our daily lives. At this level, our attitude changes and we begin to be happy people. We don’t just count our blessings and go beyond simply noticing them. We focus on them and think about them and this changes our perception of life. Seeing our lives in a new way, we respond to situations more positively and people around us respond to us differently as well. Our outlook changes the very nature of our life.
The third level is worship. When my children were young, I made them lots of toys with the secret hope that they’d be loved to tatters. I didn’t want them to be collected and saved. I wanted them loved to bits and pieces because I knew that something’s real value is measured in love and use. And so I suspect that the kind of gratitude most acceptable to God is also one of love and use. The truest and highest form of gratitude, the kind that creates joy and constitutes worship, is a genuine understanding of our lives in an eternal sense with an eternal perspective. A relish of our day to day experiences—for their sensual delight and also for the growth they offer. It is a devout love and respect and delight for the very gift of life itself. Over time, this kind of gratitude gradually removes the thick cataract of mortality. Bit by bit, we see past the sludge and artificial clutter of life to its divine underpinnings. When we are truly grateful, our eyes are opened and we see the hand of God everywhere we turn.
Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God.” When we recognize the hand of God in everything we see and experience, we stand all amazed. We rejoice. We praise God and that’s what worship is.
So if our gratitude and our happiness and our delight are worship, then surely unhappiness is a kind of blindness—perhaps a myopic self indulgence, a crutch, a habit, a tether to past grief, a vanity, or even a refuge when we’ve lost our nerve. Whatever unhappiness is—it is at the very least ingratitude. We walk each day neck deep in blessings—blessings as big and complex and tangled as the love of a spouse or a dear friend or a child, or those as small and rare and wondrous and fragile as the smell at the base of a baby’s neck.
We can give our unhappiness clinical names, call it a disease, call it a kind of handicap we were born with. We can chart its sources—chemical, hormonal, our natural dispositions. But no matter what its source, we cannot give our unhappiness validity. Because at the very heart of unhappiness is an ingratitude that surely must be galling to the God who made this earth and sacrificed his beloved son just for our chance to be here and feel all this stuff.
There is much to grieve in this life if we choose to spend it grieving. There is much heartbreak, hopelessness, betrayal, bitterness and pain. But our wiser selves, our pre-mortal spirit selves, chose this particular life for us because they saw the inherent beauty and growth and usefulness in it. Our wiser spirit selves knew that “Man is that he might have joy.” And that joy is a positive little word that includes and encompasses the vast and intricate beauty in all those negatives. Our eternal selves knew that pain is a necessary element of joy—that we can only have joy about those things that have cost us tears.
In a documentary about AIDS in Africa, I watched an interview of a tiny orphan living with the disease. The interviewer was banking on a cheap tug at our heartstrings and asked the little girl how she felt about her situation, but she surprised him. She thought a moment, smiled this big toothy smile, and said that she was really happy. She held up five crayons and said, “Look. I have yellow, blue, red, green and orange.” Gratitude.
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