Happiness: As Good As It Gets

I received an email from a woman I know last week. She considered me a happy person. It surprised me. I don't consider myself particularly sad or pessimistic, just not what one deems happy. I'm simple. Maybe that is what she meant. She gave me ten seconds to reply.

As a kid, the medical community considered me dysthymic and without much motivation. Actually, that was a symptom of my boredom, and didn't have a lot to do with my brain chemistry. I had a relatively high IQ in (Mississippi) in their public schools, and very little could attract my attention; except when girls started wearing shorter skirts.

Psychologists tell us we are not all, but part of a product of our environments. I did not grow up in a happy environment. Nor did a lot of others. I don't even use the word dysfunctional anymore, since it is such a common phrase and it seems everyone "had it at one time or another". But those days are way in my past and I have had many happy and joyful experiences since that time. Many were small and many monumental. They each added up to my happiness, I suppose.

Of course what is happiness to me might not be happiness to Vladimir Putin or Bill Gates or Woodie Allen or Sally Field. I just drew names out of a hat. My happiness depends on all sorts of factors, and if they are not all like ducks in a row, it does not mean I am sad. If one option of my being happier is not available, I will try another, until I feel better that moment than I did the moment before. It is all a series of actions that seems to make me happier, from walking in nature, to being kind to children and animals and the elderly, to studying and learning something new to holding hands with my girlfriend.

Shakespeare, like many writers, instinctively knew how important it was to be true to oneself. He coined the phrase "To thine own self be true". He didn't say that just to show off. He was providing years of therapy into one sentence. If one is true to oneself, the amount of money, fame, or any other trappings don't mean a thing.

With this in mind, let's count how many ways we compromise our happiness, or make certain it does not happen. We take jobs which are terrible but pay well. We do not like our co-workers and they do not like us. We do not like our boss and he does not like us either. We get married and have kids out of peer pressure. All our friends and associates did it, but we were not ready, or the opposite. We decided not to get married as we grew up in an unhappy home, and we would "show our parents with sweet revenge" (That was my modus operandi for many years). Suddenly it occurred to me they didn't care what I did as long as I was in the pursuit of happiness. Besides, they were deceased. Or we spend too much on credit to impress someone or a lot of people and then feel the pressure as the bills come.

I learned that thought the book was great, never to take "Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten" too literally. Yes, it offered some pragmatic lessons and great analogies, but the most powerful lessons I have learned, to transcend from sadness and depression, have been mistakes made in adulthood. I make less of them now, but I still make them. I don't get all upset when I do. I realize there is a lesson about to be learned.

"It's a process, Doc!", explaimed gangster Robert DeNiro to Billy Crystal in the hilarious movie "Analyze That". He was talking about recovery from a bad childhood (Crystal was the psychiatrist who ended up getting more help from DeNiro). It is a movie worth seeing, not just because of the great comedy, but because of the analogies they represent regardingreal life and painful growth and change.

Simple is good. Complex is not so good. It is human nature to like drama. Leave it for the movies. Live your life more simply and experience more happiness. It is really that simple. Sounds cliche but I can guarantee you, in my half-century here on earth, I have an inkling of wisdom in that area.

Life is short. Do the work you love, regardless of the money. Study it hard. Research. Get to know it and love it. The money really will follow. If it doesn't, learn yet another vocation of interest until you are wearing the right mask. Career and money can contribute greatly to happiness, but money itself, for the sake of an uninteresting career, leaves one empty.

I am not saying one has to work in the world of cartooning or humor to be happy. But it doesn't hurt to expose oneself to it.

When I was losing my mother to cancer, I read a book by retired surgeon Dr. Bernie Siegel who wrote a best-seller in the 1980's, Love, Laughter, And Healing. He had incurable brain cancer and exposed himself to many comedy movies, videos, cartoons, books, etc. He didn't know if it would help heal him, but he knew he would at least get to laugh in his final days. Within a few years, the cancer was in remission and he still is alive and writing two decades later. I have talked to him several times on the phone, when mom was sick, and he gave me some direction as to what life is about. And adding humor to it seemed to be a necessity.

Aside from Dr. Seigel's advice, a Gary Larson Far Side exhibit I saw in Washington, D.C in 1986 maybe had the most impact on me to demonstrate just how important humor is in our culture. Dr. Seigel taught me how healing it is. Knowing I am in a field that makes people laugh and feel healed, offers a great deal of joy into my own life. So helping others is an action in my pursuit of hapiness.

Giving the gift of laughter is kind of like Passing It Forward. It is contagious and people like being around you. Give it a try. It can be a gift, a joke, a story, or all of the above.