On being happy

“You’re the happiest person I know,” he said.

I laughed. “Except when I’m not.” I suppose it’s true. I’ve been terribly unhappy at times, but realistically those times have coincided with pretty serious stresses — losing babies to miscarriages and getting cancer twice is not quite as easy to overcome as a hangnail might be. And most of the time I recognize how lucky I am to live this life of relative ease and comfort, to have a stimulating job that allows me to set my own schedule within certain parameters, to have a funny, smart, loving daughter who is dealing remarkably well with the challenges of being a teenager in these difficult times, to have a vet who gives me discounts when the littlest dog gets dental surgery (yesterday), to have a new car with decent gas mileage and the income to buy organic food and fresh produce — even to indulge Zeke in her love of pink lady apples at the outrageous price of $2.99 a pound. I have a window in a quiet condo that looks out onto a patio, a patch of grass, and flowering trees in shades of pink. Tulips line the fence in vibrant red. Pansies turn delicate purple faces towards the light. Everything glows in the resplendence of spring sunshine. I feel the sun even here in the shade of my living room.

It’s dangerous, of course, to think about it. It has taken me years to recognize the transience of both joy and sorrow. When my mood darkens, I know to breathe deep, take a walk, wait for the change. When I feel happiness lifting me, I know to enjoy it but not to become attached. There will be another storm. The mood will shift.

I have been thinking about happiness since I read Dale’s post on it. When I was younger, I always looked forward to the day I’d have everything I dreamed of. There would be the horse farm in Ireland, the reading tours for my book, the fame and acclaim and steady flow of cash. I wouldn’t have to think, “Do I really need this?” because I would have the money to buy it (and back then, of course, I didn’t even think about the fact that moneyed or not, we shouldn’t be buying things just to have them, just to start them on the path to the dump or the incinarator where they would loose toxins into the air.) And yet. And yet. Somehow I had an inkling. I remember my best friend from Ireland (who is still my best from Ireland 30 years on), not bothering to clean her tack. “One day,” she said, “I’ll have a job that pays me enough I’ll never have to clean my bridle. I’ll just buy a new one when the old one get too dirty.” I never understood that attitude. I cleaned my tack and oiled it and won awards for the “best turned-out” pony. The leather of the reins and the headpiece and the check straps and all the rest of it was buttery soft. And I still have that bridle, though one of my more recent horses chewed on the reins, and it is showing its age.

I have digressed, perhaps because an aspect of happiness for me is the sensualness of a moment, and I remember those reins in my hand, the living mouth at the end of them and the feel of our connection — my pony and I, and then I am drawn here, to this moment with my computer in my lap, the slow ache in my right knee that impinges when I think about it, and then slips away when I look out at the dew sparkles on the grass. Sadie breathes beside me, wrapped in a blanket as is her preference. Bridjy sleeps at the other end of the couch, half toothless and older than we thought when we rescued her, but still happy and a lover of walks.

Surrender, Dale says. He prostrates himself in his Buddhist practice, and I think of the rituals of Catholicism, the genuflection, the grace bestowed in the Eucharist, these moments that are also acts of surrender. I think of Islam, which comes from a word that means love and peace, but also surrender.

Sometimes I imagine myself forward to what might be. Nada and I might get a house together some day. Some terrible thing that I can’t name might happen some day. But I stop myself. Surrender is a surrendering to the moment, to Now.

To Sadie breathing beside me, to Bridjy with clean teeth, to clicking “publish” and heading upstairs to wake Zeke for school. To Now.