Happiness

One great cup of rich, hot, decaf coffee tastes good to me this morning. It is exactly what I want and makes me happy. It soothes and warms me, puts me in the mood to write. It gently reminds me of my father who seemed always to have a cup of coffee in his hand. The smell brings me closer to him and I smile. There are few trade-offs aside from the expense of good fresh beans from Recess Coffee and even that supports a local business which feels good. My one cup of coffee is just right. A second cup doesn’t feel as good so I stick to one and savor it while I write. I savor even the steam rising out of the mug. So beautiful.

As the water boils for coffee I pick up the kitchen some. Small doses of cleaning feel good. I put dishes in the dishwasher, clear clutter off the table, throw junk mail into the bin. I take garbage and recycling to the basement and wipe down the counter. When the coffee water boils and I make a cup, wash the press and a few dishes in the sink. I’m not sure that washing dishes is the way to enlightenment, but it makes me happy.

This month I have gotten back to weighing myself each morning. I had stopped because I had goals for my weight and goals rarely work out. I began each day in a funk, guilty, and doubting myself. This morning I stepped on the scale with curiosity (which weighs less than guilt), saw the number and nodded. Okay, I said, curiosity satisfied, happiness maintained.

Twitter and the news haven’t made me happy since before the election. The news and my Twitter feed are cesspools of anger and negativity. I scroll through my feeds out of an obligation to keep up, but it has made me sad, angry, and hateful. I keep wishing bad things for certain people, especially one person. That’s no way to be happy. As an experiment in curiosity, I stopped looking at Twitter for thirty-days from it that may lead to a permanent break. I’m happier so far. I’ll keep pursuing that. The world, actual and virtual, will go on find without my unhappiness.

Reading books (especially Richard Russo’s) makes me happier than the news does. Television and football don’t make me very happy at all. I keep thinking that they will, but aside from watching The Good Place with my family, it just isn’t working out. Putting a record on the turntable, writing on my Chromebook, and having a meal with my girls, all these things feel better to me.

I will walk the dog today. Silly little thing. She will yodel and sing as I get the leash out and ask, Who wants to go for a walk? I will lead her along as she sniffs everything we pass. I’ll put good music in my headphones and enjoy the warm November morning I’m passing through. The dog is good company, pure and honest, devoted in the extreme. It’s tough to be unhappy when I’m with her, when I’m moving my body. And that movement may ease the unhappiness of a stiff back, pain in my legs, and a general discomfort of not having moved my body nearly enough of late.

Being happy in the long term doesn’t seem to be much about resisting short term happiness. I don’t feel much inclined to be vigilant against sin, immediate satisfaction, hedonism. If happiness depended on willpower, I would be forever miserable.  Instead I’m in search of the blessings of the moment and it turns out to be an easy search. I find them wafting off the mug of coffee, in the feel of a clean dish, and arriving on the soft sound of the pen moving across the page.

Writing each morning feels good. It is a rare day that I don’t feel like writing first thing but even then I do it and come to feel good almost immediately, just having decided to go into the process. I’m happy in the act of writing and with the habit of doing three pages every single day. That sound of the pen on the page, its tap on the hard surface of my desk, the feel of my hand sliding across the white page and the sight of the blue ink laid down, these are all enough to make me happy.

I have things that hold me back from happiness, but I’ve met the enemy of my happiness and overall, kind of as Pogo would say, he is me. It’s okay because I know that guy and understand how it is that he can change. One way is to write on.

(I hope the links weren’t too distracting. I’ve been thinking about how I have found certain things that have made me happy and it seemed a good idea to show some of them to all of you.)