HAPPINESS

              



                               HAPPINESS

A friend and I were talking a while back and I made the comment, “What is happiness?” Of course I know it is the opposite of sadness.---- Aw yes,-- and sadness is what?

Well I suppose with those two questions you could chase them around like a dog chasing his tail, all day long. However there are a whole lot of side questions that could be asked, that do not have answers that are that simple.

Example: Are you happier as an infant, youth, middle age or old age?—And do we have true happiness during all those times of our life? Then I guess the trick question OR the answer is that no one can really answer that question except you.

I used to think that infants did not have those kinds of emotions. I thought as long as they were fed, changed, calmed when crying and had a good night sleep they were happy. However now that I have become a great-grandpa five and one-half times, I know when I have one of them on my lap and they are goo-gooing. They are doing it just for me, and we are both enjoying it. At least I have convinced myself that is the case.

Then there are the youth. I think as a youth I was very happy. Of course there were “some of THOSE days” that I definitely knew I was unhappy, but they were not the things I remembered as I grew from youth, to middle age and then OLD AGE.

Then it seems all at once I was middle aged. Of course I can only speak for myself, but I think that middle age was the happiest time and also the most trying time of my life.

        
                                 

It is important to have friends in your youth, but I think it is just as important, and perhaps even more so when you have reached middle age. At that time we struggle with a lot of life’s problems, trying to raise a family, I always had a thought going around in my head---I wonder if all my kids are REALLY doing OK? We seem to make and lose a lot of friends during our middle age years.

Then at least in my case, (somewhere along the line) I realized I had got old! It creates a lot of unhappy things, to help you remember you have got old, but in my case I have had a lot of happiness come along with old age. I call them my old age “perks.” I don’t have to account for any of my time. I can go and do whatever I want. I can eat if and when I want. I can sleep (sometimes) day or night. In fact I can do anything I want, if it is legal, and my kids say when I am driving I may do a few things that are illegal?  

However at family get-togethers I can sit in the corner in my rocker, and snicker or giggle and watch the “middle agers” try and keep their kids under control. And I love it when the “little ones”, as my wife used to call them, come over and want to sit on my lap and have me read a story about a “family of fish” or a Pretty deer” or a little boy lost in the woods. Of course I can open any book to any page and read any story, as I have been making them up for years. That all changes, when they get old enough to read themselves.  

Here are a couple of questions only an individual can answer for themselves. (1) Would you rather visit with a person on a phone, in person, by reading a blog, or write a letter to a friend and get a real written answer back. (2) How about the same question about an acquaintance instead of a friend—would your answer be the same

So I have talked about family, friends and acquaintances and if they make us happy. Can we also obtain happiness from other sources? As for me the beauties of the earth give me more happiness than a lot of people do!

                                                                  

                 

I once read in a book by President James E. Faust, this comment , ”Happiness is not given to us in a package that we can just open up and consume. Nobody is ever happy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rather than thinking in terms of a day, we perhaps need to snatch happiness in little pieces, learning to recognize the elements of happiness and then treasuring them while they last. “see” Our Search for Happiness” by President James E. Faust”

I love the idea he puts forth that probably no one is happy 24 hours a day. I don’t mean that I am happy that no one is happy 24 hours a day. I just sometimes wonder if we perhaps set our goals so high that we cannot reach them and we get discouraged?

If you are unhappy or down in a rut- so to speak, who do you turn to? Is it a friend, family member or an acquaintance – again only we can answer a question like that.

A lot of times we 80+ people just need a change, to change our attitude. Mine is to get out of the house and go for a ride. I think I have headed to Park City twenty or more times since April and most of the time I get to Parley’s Canyon. By then I have calmed down and I end up at Sugar  House  Park, The Duck Pond or Murray Park, where I feed the ducks, read the newspaper for a while and then just go home, feeling a lot happier than I did when I left.

Sometimes my Sister and I just go for a drive up one of the canyons near our homes just for as change of scenery. Sometimes we go to have a different lunch. I recall one of our “drives” we traveled over 100 miles and ended up going in a big circle and eating at McDonalds! We ate our same old lunch, but we sure saw a lot of beautiful mountain country. And of course that was not a onetime thing. It seems our family has “itchy feet” and we have to go for a ride to calm down. I guess it is good therapy because we always come happier and in a better mood than we were when we left.

There was a song going around several years ago talking about Happiness. I do not recall exactly how long ago it was written, but it was very popular. It was written by Bobby McFerrin. The title was “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. There were several things in the first verse that ring true to me.

Here’s a little song I wrote

          You might want to sing it note for note

          Don’t worry, be happy

          In every life we have some trouble

          But when you worry you make it double

          Don’t worry, be happy

          Don’t worry, be happy now.

I do believe everyone has things that make them happy, and for me most of them are small in the large picture of my life. Most of them seem to be family oriented and inexpensive. However they make my life much happier without having to really work at it. That comment itself bodes the question, ‘do we have to work at being happy or is it a natural part of our personality?

A lot of things that make me feel happy are simple things that just seem to show up in my life, some a lot and some just occasionally.

My happy list:

-Earths beautiful scenery, forests, mountains, Blue sky/white clouds and a     mountain stream.

-Family gatherings, sometimes the people get a little loquacious, but I can just turn my hearing aid off. (Is that an advantage?)

-Soothing music, especially stringed instruments and the piano.

-Old things----including people.

-Spending time with a good friend. (Reminiscing)

-The smells, in the house at Thanksgiving time.

-A walk with Max. (an old K-9) acquaintance.

I think happiness is always there, just waiting for us to grab it. Sometimes we have to work at it and sometimes it just jumps up and grabs us. At that point we have to decide to keep it , let it go or throw it away.