A colleague of mine shared this cartoon with me today...
I really like it because creating happiness is not something I was taught how to do.
Please do not misunderstand, this is not a critique of my upbringing per se.
No, I believe what I was taught about happiness was exactly in line with the white, middle class western world of my time growing up in the last quarter of the 20th century.
The only problem is, in the last 10 or so years, it has become painfully clear to me that what I was taught about happiness was incomplete at best, but more often than not, just plain wrong.
I've had some time to reflect on this too since my 3 year-old daughter has become infatuated with The Trolls movie (2016).
Now, if you don't have a child under the age of 10, you may not have had to watch and re-watch this film complete with Justin Timberlake movie soundtrack- lucky you!
However, I will say the one take-away about this animated movie is a theme that I've been tinkering with for some time now: what is happiness?
Of course for those of you who have seen the movie, it is Princess Poppy who offers her own answer to this question:
Happiness isn’t something you put inside you. It’s already there. Sometimes you just need someone to help you find it.
Growing up in the late 1970's through the 1980's I absolutely took in all the standard messages about happiness being equated with consumption.
This meant that happiness manifested only when you had the peak experience of a very particular person, place or thing in your life that would finally make you complete (for five minutes or less).
However, what may have been somewhat unique to my experience at that time (though I think it is actually much more common now) was an apparently contradictory edge to that algorithm of consumption=happiness that included a set of rigid morals.
In other words, there was no questioning that the way to attain happiness (because it was something extraordinary to be attained, certainly not something given freely to everyone and definitely not pre-existing) was through people, places and things, but they could only be certain people and certain places and certain things that were within our moral guidelines.
For example, my family would travel, but the trips would always be culturally enriching or we would sleep in a tent. We would have things, but the things would not be anything remotely connected to a superficial fad or a best-seller which somehow created the illusion that our stuff was better, we were better.
I'll reiterate here what I said above: what I was taught about happiness was incomplete at best, but more often than not, just plain wrong.
So imagine my wonder and amazement when I began to be introduced to these ideas:
Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves...Mindfulness is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.
Mindfulness is the basis of happiness.
-Thich Nanh Hanh 1976.
To which I exclaimed: "Wait...What?!"
It would not be an understatement to say that my first encounter with mindfulness created a complete paradigm shift for me in regards to that question: what is happiness?
Whereas I had grown up to believe that happiness was an elite emotion reserved for just a select few (and even for them, happiness was exclusive to only those very peak experiences), along comes mindfulness that tells me happiness is completely egalitarian- literally available to everyone.
Everyone.
Talk about democracy in action...
Mindfulness also said happiness is available now. As in, right now. This-very-moment.
Again, for me, fireworks- another huge paradigm shift.
I realized the myth I had believed for so long that happiness was scarce was just not true.
Mindfulness said that happiness is not reserved for only the VIP, and happiness is not an endangered specie in the context of painful complicated lives, but rather happiness is in fact abundant.
To which I proclaimed again: "Wait...What?!"
It has been many years now since I began to unpack my early learning about happiness, and I feel so grateful for what I have learned about happiness as to transform my day-to-day, moment-to-moment, experiences in such profound ways.
This past week was one of those weeks where I found myself in deep gratitude for mindfulness and mindfulness practices as my mother was back in the hospital on a Friday and my mother-in-law was in the very same hospital the following Monday.
If I had held onto the cultural myths about happiness of my childhood, times like these would have left me feeling depleted and helpless.
Which is not to say these types of moments are not stressful, painful and just damn hard- believe me, they are. Yet I also think, with mindfulness, happiness is present too.
One of my favorite Western Buddhist author and teacher is Sylvia Boorstein who wrote a book called: Happiness is an Inside Job. And I can say, growing up I honestly would not have had a clue what that title meant.
Now, I can say that I do, and I am so grateful for that.
As I go forward, and continue to explore and redefine happiness, I am interested in trying out other letting go practices such as generosity and renunciation that may prompt feelings of joy and in turn create greater happiness. I am intrigued with the counterintuitive idea that letting go may yield greater happiness than consumption.
Here's to more seeking!
May it be so.
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