On Happiness

Mark Kerstetter, whose blog ‘Le Bricoleur’ makes me think and gives me opportunity to learn like no other, rather surprisingly tagged me in one of his posts last week. Surprisingly, because we don’t know each other that well, but that’s also the point of these things, I figure. But I’m happy that he did that, which is quite appropriate, because he tagged me to write about what makes me happy.

And therein, for a while, lay a problem. Being an honest, rather than an inventive writer, I felt a certain pressure to come up something true, in fact, in order to get more than a few hundred words out of it, I had to come up with several true things. So for a few days I have been examining the nature of happiness as I see it, wondering what it is that I can honestly say makes me happy, as opposed to satisfied, or excited, or just pleasurably affected.

It’s a spectrum, of course. On one end—the most readily identifiable one—is ecstasy. On the other, milder end is contentment. Somewhere in the middle are pleasure, delight, appreciation—here I reach for my synonym finder—joy, bliss, jubilance, enjoyment, enchantment and so on. Oh, and there’s the ‘new shoes’ feeling, an expression my mother came up with that describes the delight that comes from the anticipation of, or the unexpected receipt of something really pleasurable. If getting a new pair of shoes was an uncommon event for you as a kid, you’ll understand this.

Normally, ecstasy would be a hard one to start with, perhaps because it is often associated—in romance novels, at least—with things personal or possibly even illegal. But my most recent and memorable ecstatic experience happened in a gymnasium where at least 300 other people were in attendance. A son, a basketball game, a pinnacle of achievement, a moment that every other moment in a life seemed to have been heading towards—all those elements coincided to propel me into an ecstasy that still resonates almost a year later. To synthesize it, seeing my children succeed in reaching their goals makes me very happy indeed.

Playing certain music on a good piano also brings me to the point of ecstasy. Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Rachmaninoff are among those composers who wrote the kind of music that lights up a certain part of my brain, and on the rare occasion that I can decently acquit myself from beginning to end of a piece, I am filled with a pleasure like no other. I don’t have to be the original brilliance behind it—it’s enough that I can reproduce it, in my fashion.

Being around the dinner table with my kids—listening to how they talk to each other, laughing with them, seeing how much they enjoy being together—ranks pretty high on my happiness index. Almost everything to do with my kids makes me happy, but I particularly enjoy how they make each other laugh. And that they take each other out for breakfast.

Having a project. Being useful and productive satisfies and gratifies me and fills me with authentic contentment, especially if the successful completion of a project involved a challenge or required some hard-core problem-solving. In fact, problem-solving all on its own gives me enormous pleasure, because I know that if I keep at it long enough, and am able to free my mind to find a solution, I’ll almost always come up with one.

Making my lover laugh. He is a quiet and serious man, whose sense of humour is intact but not very close to the surface. I associate laughter with love, and of course with happiness too, so making him laugh means he loves me, that I make him happy, and then I’m happy because he’s happy. Making him laugh is also a bit like having a project with a challenge attached, so I get twice the bang for my buck. I haven’t ever made him snort with laughter, but I haven’t given up. One day.

Being in my own space. For much of the time, I live in a comfortable, pretty house in a part of the world that is particularly beautiful and that many would consider romantic. I don’t take any of that for granted, but there is very little in the house that speaks to my taste or history, and there are many remnants of another important relationship. When I open the door to my very own, modest house in an un-special city half a world away, I am suffused with a contentment that has its roots in belonging, security and the very non-Zen principle of ownership.

An excellent book. I can’t imagine not being a reader and think that anyone who isn’t one misses out on one of life’s greatest, most accessible pleasures. Graceful writing, a clever plot, compelling characters —this is guaranteed happiness in a package. I recently picked up 67 of them at a used-book sale and had a smile on my face for days.

The natural world. I am not a committed and steadfast friend of the Earth by a long shot, but the Rocky Mountains at sunset or a full moon in October or the fresh green of newly-leafed trees in spring lights up that part of my brain right next to the Debussy one. Foggy mornings, fat Christmas-style snowflakes falling thickly, the sound of surf at night, the spectacular show of Northern lights in August and the liquid evening song of robins also all fill me with delight.

Connecting with people. Talking with them, learning from them. Discovering their stories. Blogging, which started out as a way just to make myself write more regularly, allows me to do all that. It has, in fact, changed my daily life considerably and for the better. For all these reasons, it makes me happy.

I thought the list would be short, because everything on it had to be demonstrably true, but the more I write, the more I find. A really clean kitchen, for instance.  Watching the cat chase butterflies.  The sight of that serious man as he rises from our bed in the morning. But that’s enough for now.

So thank you, Mark, for giving me the chance to say all this, and the invitation now goes back across the Atlantic to Christopher in New York City, where I hope he’ll give his views on what does it for him.