A friend was struggling to support all of the people who needed her. She was there for all of them, but was feeling the weight of it. She asked me: Is no-one happy anymore?
I know that the truth is that some of us are happy, still. Or again. I know because I am one of them and I know because I encounter happy people all the time. That's not the same as people who are "happy" all the time. Do not mistake cheerfulness for happy. Or the absence of cheerfulness for sad or miserable or depressed or any of the deeper, darker labels we are so intent on applying to ourselves and to others.
It's unfashionable to say it, but: I am happy. I am not always cheerful. I have my misery moods. I have my WTF moments. I get angry. I get sorrowful. But they are moods. They are the clouds, not the sky.
At core, I am deeply content.
Yes, I am lucky. I deeply appreciate that my life circumstances are better than they are for many others. You could say I am privileged. But I know that there are many who have the equal to my good fortune or more, who are not happy, not content. So my happiness, my contentment is a choice. The doorway to that choice, for me, was gratitude practice. Old-fashioned blessing-counting. Literally, writing them down and numbering them and seeing the magnitude of the abundance in my life.
I started that practice in the depths of depression. I credit the late Susan Jeffers and her book End the Struggle…and dance with life, for bringing me the idea of the gratitude journal. I needed the 'think of 50 things every day' approach at that time. It was a way of carving out space for myself, my true self, in a period of upheaval and fear and people dying and loves failing and work crushing me and basically believing that I was losing.
The struggle had got me, so I got with the programme. I found time at the end of every day to list the 50 things. Every day. 50 things. It doesn't seem possible does it? But we can be grateful for the same things every day if we notice them, because what is a gift one time, is still a gift the next time. We can (and I believe must) start really small. Even now, nearly two decades later I always start a long list with the same few things: Four walls and a roof, clean water, I don't live in a war zone.
Expand it from there – assuming you have somewhere to live, clean water at the turn of a tap, and/or you don't live in a war zone – what else is there? Family? Friends? Pets? Wildlife? Technology? Being able to read? A job? Study? The sun? The rain? Sleep? Books?
There you go, a dozen possibilities, which may or may not speak to you. And they are quite widely captured – get specific. Be grateful for a specific author or a particular edition of a magazine. Be grateful for one friend or what small thing that friend did. I am grateful for the BBC's on-going production of the Watches (Spring Watch will be next up) and each of the different presenters, and the specific things they let me see. I am also grateful for most of the animals that pass through my garden. I draw the line at rats. Sorry. When it comes to rats, I'm grateful for the things that keep them out of my garden.
Hone in, and you will be amazed at the things you love about your life. I challenge you to spend four weeks on the 50 things path. It changed my life. It brought me back from the brink initially, but that was just the beginning.
When I felt better, I decided to ease up on the training. Now I reckon that 3 things a day, properly noticed, is good practice. Or maybe 6, or 9. Or whatever your lucky number is. We can all find three things to be grateful for. Today it is:
· playing the old music and letting it make me dance the way I used to,
· reading a new book that is calling to me everytime I put it down
· the evening sky and catching the moon between rushing clouds
I know I am grateful even when I don't feel it. On anyone's scale my life is good. But I also know that feeling grateful, noting the blessings, making them concrete by putting words around them, is something to be grateful for in and of itself. I am grateful for gratitude being part of my life. Thank you, Susan.
Being grateful is my doorway to contentment.
I got through that bad time. I got through other times that followed on that were even worse. And I know that I will get through whatever the next tough time is, because I check in on what I've already done. I know what I've survived and that is proof of what I can survive. And if what comes next is even worse again, then I know that I've got a least a percentage of it licked…I don’t start at zero. And there will always be things to be grateful for.
Besides: that's the future. Part of being happy means planning for the future, working towards it, but choosing not to live there. Being happy requires us to live now.
How do we do that? How do we pull ourselves out of our past and our future and live now?
For me it hinged on clarifying my mission, my purpose for this stage of my life. It mattered that I add that emphasis around 'this stage of my life'. Doing so means that everything I have done before which is not in alignment now, is still valid. It has brought me here. It was of meaning then. All good. It also means that if at some point I decide that this bit is not a 'fundamental and forever thing' that too is ok, that too does not mean that I am wasting my time.
Our mission and purpose are allowed to change over time. And if we want to be happy it is hugely important that we let them do so.
I spent decades trying to align my values and my life with what was required in my working world. Sometimes I came close, mostly my stress levels would suggest I failed. Now that I've stepped into my crone years and can welcome the increasingly simpler way of living, I can fess up and claim my mission statement: I'm all about the good stuff.
I don’t deny the dark, the horribleness that goes on in the world. I simply choose to look at what I can do about it, do what I feel able to do, and then let it go. I don't need to share that with those around me. They're already dealing with their own encounters in the dark.
I want to, no, I insist on focussing on the beauty, the wisdom, the happiness, the joy, the pleasure, the fun, the playfulness, the frivolity that there still is in the world.
Doing that makes me happier and I believe that it also helps to redress the balance in the world at large. It means I find ever more things to be grateful for. Hopefully it means that I entice another person here and there along the way to look differently at our awesome planet and the goodness, kindness, beauty that does still abound.
Speaking at a Resurgence event this week, the wonderful peace pilgrim Satish Kumar reminded us that we should not under-estimate the amount of love in the world. It is love that is holding us all together through all the external inanity. I would add that we should also not under-estimate how much beauty and wisdom there is.
I am happy because having decided to look for beauty and to share wisdom (my guiding principles) I find so much more of both everywhere I look. I think the old rule holds true about the way the universe operates: seek and ye shalt find. If you're looking for things to be angry about: there they are. If you want to reinforce your sense of a dark world: there it is.
And equally if you want to believe in a brighter future, AND a happier, more fun, more creative, more fruitful, more loving, kinder, more tender, more joyful NOW – look for that – because it is here too.
