“A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be,” said Abraham Lincoln. A contemporary French writer we’ll call “C” added, “It takes tremendous courage to be happy.”
“C” has every reason to be miserable. She was born during World War II when the Nazis were overrunning France. Her father was gone, and her first job was working behind the counter at a department store selling brassieres to very wealthy women.
That lit a fire in her heart and brain, and somehow she found funds to go to law school and became a successful lawyer, practicing later in the United States.
Like Coco Chanel, she drank champagne only when she fell in love or when her heart was broken. Let’s just say she went through a lot of bottles.
Her husband traded her in on a new and more sporty model, leaving her all alone after retirement, so she started a new niche career teaching Americans how to swear in French. “Happiness,” she says, “is hard earned.”
In case you are wondering, I signed on as one of her students. It adds to my happiness knowing I can break out the epithets to boneheaded drivers and they will never know what I’m saying.
I got to try it out the other day in Holland when a woman was walking behind me, focused on her phone, and walked into me. She had no idea what I said, but from the tone of my voice she could tell I was not in a chipper mood.
Some people are inherently happy, as if they were born that way. Fortunately, they are rare because most of us aren’t so cheerful. After a too much time in their company we find their perpetual happiness annoying. For us, we have to work at happiness.
I agree it takes courage to be happy, especially nowadays. Politics on all levels seems like an endless siege. Reading about what’s going on in Washington and Lansing is like a television where every channel is professional wrestling 24 hours a day, with no off button. There is no joy in all that phoniness and trash talk.
All the prattle about public policy decisions, especially on immigration, the economy and endless war in the Middle East and elsewhere wears us down. We fight over Bibles and posters of the 10 Commandments, lunches in school, medical care or a federal order to round up the homeless and cart them off somewhere. All that is grinding too.
Ask someone how he or she is doing, and it’s a rare to hear they are happy. Eight years ago I said “good morning” to someone, and they tore a strip off me. How dare I use the word “good” when we see what is happening in the world.
I think happiness can begin first thing in the morning if we avoid the temptation of turning on our telephone, TV, radio or any other noise-making device. We need time to be quiet, reflect, perhaps plan the day and meditate. That in turn leads to gratitude. We realize how fortunate we are to be alive, to have something to do and ability to do it.
It takes courage to turn off the electronic devices and not let our curiosity overwhelm us. Whatever happened in the world over night will still be discussed in another hour, if we must listen to it then. Take the hour or even half-hour to set your mental disposition dial on happiness instead of fear you’ll miss out on something.
Psychologists tell us two conditions — time and control — lead to our unhappiness: time and control. We never have enough time to all we want to do, or someone is often interfering with our time.
Theodore Roosevelt was perhaps our least-patient president. He could not stand being idle and enforced idleness made him as restless as a wild animal in a small cage. A lot of people are that way.
When I was writing my mysteries, my main character, Dr. Horace Balfour, was based in small part on him and other restless people. His phrase was, “Thunderation! I’m stuck in the waiting room again!”
Roosevelt had the good sense always to have a book nearby. Whenever he was “stuck in the waiting room” he got out something to read.
Before going on his African safari in 1909-1910, he commissioned some 100 classic books bound in pig’s skin. Pigskin, he explained, did not mold and Africa was damp. It worked. If he was waiting for someone or something, much to everyone’s relief, out came a book.
I followed that example when Pat and I traveled. She loved to shop; I hate shopping but wanted her to have fun. A pocketsize electronic reader, a Kindle Paperwhite, solved the problem. I loaded it down with free books and could enjoy myself.
One time, when Pt found me outside a shop engrossed in a book, she asked what I was reading. I told her it was the history of the Minnesota Third Infantry Militia in the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862. She was not impressed, but I learned something about a nearly-forgotten subject.
One way to regain control of our time is to start bundling an enjoyable activity that can be done in the midst of an unpleasant one. Many of us can safely enjoy a book on tape or some other type of audio book while we are driving somewhere.
In a slight variation, Pat and I made routine activities into a ritual. For example, each summer there is the six week Chamber Music Festival series in Saugatuck.
Some of the music I liked; others sounded like five cats having a full-volume spat while a train wreck took place in the background.
What made all of it much more fun was the ritual of learning about the music on the program and the composer, dressing early to attend so we could have a nice meal at home, walking the five blocks down to the venue and the concert itself. And then, walking back home to discuss it.
More than anything else, converting a concert into a package deal made it wonderful. We used our time wisely.
