Category Archives: Happiness

Nostalgia Covers a Multitude of Sins

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There are moments we know, without a doubt, that we will remember fondly. But it doesn’t mean that those moments were completely idyllic or picturesque. Often times, as we dive back into our memories, they are blanketed with a think layer of nostalgia that covers a multitude of sins. Family gatherings, for instance, are often fraught with familial tensions. Unspoken but implied criticisms. Hurt feelings or frustrations. But these are not the things we remember. We remember with rose-colored glasses the good times. The unguarded enthusiasm of children experiencing things for the first time. The brash and also unguarded comments of the aged who no longer feel the need to bother with social niceties. Fingers in mixing bowls getting smacked by mammas. Christmas presents opened just a smidge at the corner when no one was looking. Or endless games of monopoly in which we seek to dominate our beloved.

But it struck me this weekend as I experienced just such a moment of pure nostalgia in the making, that it is often incredibly hard to get past the difficulties that exist in those moments so that we can see, all around us, the things we are sure to remember fondly. Why is it that we so often only appreciate things that have already passed? It is because we’re too busy dealing with the stresses of the present to notice. But shouldn’t our memories, time and time again, be a lesson to us to let go of the things that don’t matter in the present? If we can just find it in us to brush off a harsh word, let go of unwarranted criticism, or never return the slight of someone else in kind, we can remember, in the present, the love that holds us together and the joys that are the building blocks of our memories.

This weekend found me and my family in a very small town in northern Mississippi where my husband was participating in a reunion concert for a local band who’s first gig occurred 40 years previous. It was astonishingly beautiful. Already, I remember it warmly. But I do regret allowing myself to be taken up with some of the stresses that surrounded the weekend. Some of them were silly stresses. Some of them serious. But none of them will factor into the beauty of the memory. What did it matter, in the long run, if the hotel room was old and small? Or if my sick son was a bit whinny and slept in my arms for most of the concert? That, in and of itself, will bring a smile with its memory. Was it really justified of me to feel somewhat jealous of the time I didn’t get to spend with an old friend when he was surrounded by family, friends, and a girlfriend he doesn’t get to see often enough? Should I have allowed myself to embody the stresses of those around me who were prepping for the concert or dealing with their own family tensions? Or should I have been an oasis for those same people – a stress free zone to refresh their mind and spirit? Of course, none of these difficulties compared with the wonderful beauties that the weekend afforded. Such as the constant bombardment of strangers telling me how wonderful my husband was both as a person and as a musician and how much they appreciated his help over the last several months. Or seeing the pure excitement on my son’s face, despite being sick, as he watched his daddy play in a concert. Or witnessing old men relive the passions of their youth with unrivaled enthusiasm and the support of their home town for their endeavor. And seeing a mother dance with her grown son, my friend, as though no one was watching and imagining myself and my son, who was sleeping in my lap, dancing in their shoes in the not so distant future. This is the stuff of life. All the rest is not worth remembering, and so, it is not worth dwelling on.

A Little Gratitude Goes a Long Way

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We all long to feel appreciated.  We want to know if other people recognize that the things we do are important.  It is integral to our happiness in all of our relationships, from friendships and marriages to employers and children.  And today I learned, from a very simple source, that a little gratitude goes a long way. 

For the past three years, since we have lived in our current house, we have had the same garbage men.  They come every Monday and Thursday to collect our waste and take it away.  I cannot imagine a much more thankless and disgusting job.  And yet, I must admit, that for those same three years I have harbored a slight annoyance at them – simply because they were careless about where they left our can.  Sometimes it would end up down the street a bit, often several feet away from the lid.  And I would always grumble about why they couldn’t just put it back on the curb.  All that changed when my son became fascinated with “Dump Trucks.”  From our kitchen, we can hear the truck coming around the block and for a half hour every Monday and Thursday morning, I hear the repeated exclamation, “Mommy, the DUMP TRUCK’s coming!”  And as it get’s closer and louder, he says with surprising urgency, “The dump truck!  I need to go see it!”  And we will stop whatever we are doing, sometimes covered in breakfast, and go marching outside to see the dump truck.  We wave emphatically and, because I am trying to teach my son to be polite and grateful despite the grumblings in my own mind, I tell him to say thank you loud enough for them to hear it over the din of the truck.  All three of the men have come to recognize us and smile broadly as we walk out the door.  The driver “beeps” his horn, and one of the collectors always waves and gives thumbs up.  Today and for the past several weeks since we began thanking them, the garbage can was placed nicely on the curb with the lid on top.  I never said anything to them about it.  It was just a natural response to kindness.  It made me wonder how often these men, who do such an amazing service for us, ever receive thanks.  Of any kind.  I intend to continue thanking them long after my son’s fascination wanes.

And then I began to consider all of the other unappreciated jobs that people do for us on a regular basis and how rarely we stop to thank them and make them feel like what they do is important.  Too often we feel entitled to services we would never perform.  Security guards at shopping centers.  Check out clerks at grocery stores.  People working fast food windows.  Entergy service technicians working at midnight in a storm.  The doctors and nurses at public clinics who even work holidays.  If we wouldn’t want to do their jobs, but we utilize their services, shouldn’t we be much quicker to show gratitude?  And not just to people doing jobs we don’t want to do, but also to those closer to home who do jobs we would have to do if they did not.  Like a spouse’s trip to the grocery store or afternoon spent folding laundry.  Or a child’s willingness to pick up their things when asked, or a colleague sharing the workload on a big project that could never be finished in time alone.  I think we’d find that we would get much better service with a much bigger smile if we found small ways to regularly say thank you.  And we may even make someone else’s job a bit easier and their day a bit brighter.

A sweet message of gratitude from my husband that completely transformed my day.

Reminding Ourselves to Remember

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I recently had the opportunity to revisit one of my favorite childhood pastimes – something I hadn’t done in over a decade. I went roller skating. Was I taking Aiden for his first experience with wheels on his heels? No. Was I attending a birthday party for some friend’s child or chaperoning some other young person’s event? No. I was just reliving the good ol’ days with some coworkers and the nostalgia of it was overwhelming.

It was yet another reminder to appreciate things as they are happening and not as we look back wistfully in the rare opportunities that we have to relive them. Although I loved roller skating as a child and even as a teenager, I don’t think I ever slowed those wheels down long enough to savor the experience and recognize that I wouldn’t be able to do it forever. I’m certainly not saying that we should take every happy, wonderful moment full of innocence and joy and make it serious, sober, and appreciative. But rather that we should learn to take mental snapshots. We are all so very good at taking digital photos these days – capturing flat, visual representations of the things we experience. But there is so much more to those memories. There are smells, tastes, sounds, feels, emotions, thoughts . . . all connected in an intricate web of vitality. And our minds are capable of cataloging all of it – if we would just take a moment to breathe and remind ourselves to remember. Tell ourselves in a fraction of a second, “This is good!”

As I looked around the rink at all of the other skaters, most of them half my age, I found myself wondering how many of them would remember. The twelve-year-old boyfriend and girlfriend with matching T-shirts skating hand in hand in countless circles. The new recruit to the roller derby team, getting a strong sense of her stride. The flamboyantly gay twenty-something spinning pirouettes at each turn and squealing with delight, not caring what anyone else thought of him. The middle-aged, excessively bearded beginner skating back and forth in the center at a painstaking pace, trying to prove that you can teach and old dog new tricks. The six-year-old little girl with white skates just like mine who put my moves to shame. Will all of these people find themselves in this spot a decade later trying to pull the cobwebs off of these memories? Or will these moments flood back with a vivid force because they LIVED them now? I am very glad I took the opportunity to experience this small part of my past again. And this time I drank it in deeply and will not easily forget.

Balance

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Balance.  This word . . . this idea, is so crucial for understanding and attaining happiness.  It is a significant part of the reason that I am writing this blog.  So many of us find it easy to highlight, ponder, dwell on, and magnify the negatives in our lives until they become radically out of balance with the positives that are all around us.  I am as guilty of this as anyone.  But, by the same token, the bright, happy, light, fun, and beautiful things, although often overlooked, would not retain their majesty without the contrast that pain provides.  I am struck lately, by many such examples of this balance in my life and they move me to gratitude.  They are the building blocks of my contentment.

In accidentally stabbing my hand, I discover over the course of the following week, the immense relief of allowing someone else to take control and help with the simple everyday things that often bog me down.  In being consistently frustrated by the window-rattling, base-thumping music of my rear adjoining neighbors, I am afforded an opportunity to connect to another neighbor I might otherwise have never spoken to.  While exhausting myself trying to finish a book for my book club, I find myself refreshed by the stimulating discussion of friends that follows my accomplishment.  Because my sitter’s daughter became ill, my son was able to spend some much needed time with his daddy and friends.  In lamenting the loss of certain friends to my husband, I am reminded of poignant examples of the depth of the friendships that remain.  While on the verge of letting my frustration overcome me at the unfathomably slow pace of my toddler on a walk around the block, he brings me a stick with dead leaves hanging off of it and proudly declares, “A flower for you Momma!  It’s special!”  Indeed it was.

The key, I suppose, is remembering, while immersed in the difficult moments, that they too will find balance.  There is always another side of the coin.  But don’t wait for that balance to happen too you.  Seek it out.  Mine for the joy that accompanies sorrow and most likely you will be able to find it.  Create moments that will surprise you . . . you might be surprised what you’ll find.

The Idea Behind the Blog – Making Our Own Happiness

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I have learned over the course of my increasingly fast-paced years, that happiness is not something that happens to us.  It is not delivered to our doorstep with a nice red bow on top, just waiting to be opened and enjoyed.  Of course life has its surprising moments that utterly grip us and take our breath away.  But for the most part, I believe, happiness is something we make.   Fulfillment is something we enjoy when we learn to stop taking the little things for granted.  If we constantly brush off all of life’s tiny little beauties because they are ordinary, unimportant, or we’re simply too busy to bother, then we will surely see the color fade out of life and happiness will be hard to come by.  Because, let’s face it, if we wait for the eventful, the enormous, the extraordinary to bring us joy, those moments will be few and far between.  My two year old son has been an amazing teacher of this this lesson.  To him, everything is new.  Everything is amazing.  The tiniest things that we as adults have come to see as commonplace,  can make him quiver with excitement and curiosity.  And, as his primary playmate, I too am learning to be excited with him.  To share in his enthusiasm rather than squelch it.  And, in some ways, he has become more of an influence on me than I have on him.  It is my goal in writing this blog to share that influence with any who care to read.  To find little lights of inspiration and beauty in every day life and highlight them for myself and others to take notice.  To help create happiness.  To appreciate now the things that we’ll remember later.

Photo taken by Reeta Allen in May 2010