Happy With Little Things

How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion. (Psalm 84:1-7 ESV). I recently read about a woman who climbed on the bathroom scale after two weeks of butterless toast and early morning jogs around the park. The needle was still stuck on the number where she’d started. This struck her as typical of how things had been going lately. She was destined never to be happy. As she dressed, scowling at her tight jeans, she found $20.00 in her pocket. Then her sister called with a funny story. When she hurried out to the car, angry that she had to get gas, she discovered her roommate had already filled the tank for her. And this was a woman who thought she’d never be happy. Every day, it seems we’re flooded with advice about how to be happy. The advice is usually centered on something we’re supposed to do, make the right choices, or have the right set of beliefs about ourselves. This is often coupled with the notion that happiness is a permanent condition. If we’re not joyful all the time, we are told there’s a problem. Yet what most people experience is not a permanent state of happiness. It is something more ordinary; a mixture of what essayist Hugh Prather once called “unsolved problems, ambiguous victories and vague defeats, with a few moments of clear peace.” Maybe you wouldn’t say yesterday was a happy day, because you had a misunderstanding with your boss. But weren’t there moments of happiness, moments of clear peace? Now that you think about it, wasn’t there a letter from an old friend, or a stranger who asked where you got such a great haircut? You remember the bad parts of the day, yet those good moments occurred. Happiness is like a visitor who turns up when you least expect them. You can’t command their appearance; you can only appreciate them when they do show up. And you can’t force happiness to happen, but you can make sure you are aware of it when it does. Happiness is an attitude, not a condition. It’s cleaning the blinds while listening to an aria, or spending a pleasant hour organizing your closet. Happiness is your family assembled at dinner. It’s in the present, not in the distant promise of a “someday when...” How much luckier we are, and how much more happiness we experience, if we can fall in love with the life we’re living. Happiness is a choice. Choose it today. Look for those little moments in your life!