Exploring Happiness

Reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, I've been inspired to start my own. I'm not going to call it a project though. To me, the word project connotes a daunting, maybe-I'll-do-it-someday kind of task. A project is also something cut-and-dry, something you can check off a do-to list, something you can dissect, quantify, and ultimately understand. I think happiness is bigger than that. Happiness is, at least in part, a matter of the spirit, and therefore contains an element of the metaphysical, the mysterious, the divine. (I'm suddenly picturing the end of How The Grinch Stole Christmas with all the Whos singing and holding hands.) So, rather than accomplishing a project, I'll simply be exploring happiness. I want to really think, experiment, and write. And hopefully, I'll make a few discoveries along the way.

I've come up with 10 areas that I think are relevant to my current happiness: spirituality, relationships, developing a mothering heart, contentment, kindness, humor, remembering the good, replacing unhappy thoughts, and exploring interests. I'll focus on one each month (I meant to post this on the first of the month). Maybe I should have included an “overcoming procrastination” goal. :) There is also a conspicuous lack of a health-related goal, although I believe strongly in its importance. Maybe it just seemed like too much of a given to be interesting. But it may find its way to the list eventually (note: all things subject to change). And for the last area, exploring interests, I'll actually be tackling one interest per month (e.g. cooking for August, poetry recitation for September, etc.), culminating in the final month.

I also want to periodically post about sources of happiness and obstacles to happiness. Like I was getting at above, I think happiness is big and complex and can't be boiled down to a simple list of “good” and “bad.” But I want to explore (there's that word again) these experiences (e.g. What is it about shopping that makes me happy? Why is having a dog worth cleaning up the cat-poo-throw-up mess? Why do I often leave social events feeling sad? Etc.)

And finally, unlike Rubin, while I don't feel the need to justify the value of this endeavor (I think that “man is that he might have joy” and think most people would agree), I do feel the need to spend a moment on sadness. My goal here is not to eliminate sadness to attain a forced, inauthentic, but constant, level of “happiness.” After all, there is “a season to weep” as well as to laugh. And these not-so-happy feelings represent a valid piece of my emotional make-up. (I love when Gandalf tells the hobbits at the end of Return of the King, “Not all tears are an evil.”) I'm hoping to make some distinctions between the sorrows that are natural and, yes, good, and the unpleasant emotions I trap myself in simply out of habit or because that type of downward spiral has become the path of least resistance. I feel convinced -or at least hopeful- that I can retrain some of those patterns. That I can find ways -from the simple to the profound- to be happier now. And isn't that what everyone wants? So let's start exploring.The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the real. Ready, set,...go!