The Happiness Project (34 page)

My desire to be a happiness evangelist made me want to meddle. When a guy told me that he hated making small talk and so whiled away the dull hours of a dinner party by doing complex math problems in his head, or when a young woman told me she was going to dental school because she liked the hours that dentists work but that her fantasy was one day to do something involving flowers because flowers were her true passion, I could barely contain myself. “No!” I wanted to tell them. “You’re making a mistake, I’ll tell you why!” I’d become a happiness boor. In a scene right out of a Woody Allen movie, I practically got into a fistfight with someone about the nature of Zen. “You seem quite
attached
to the theory of nonattachment!” I said snidely. I kept interrupting, I wouldn’t shut up, I was such a crusader for the idea of doing a happiness project that I found myself practically shouting people down.

In particular, I kept trying to force clutter clearing onto my friends. My clutter was mostly gone, and I craved the vicarious thrill I got from tackling a truly messy closet. “Listen,” Jamie warned me one night. “You mean well, but you’re going to offend people if you keep pushing them so hard to clear their clutter.”

“But every time I help someone clear their clutter, they’re thrilled!” I said.

“It’s okay to suggest it, but don’t press the issue. You want to be nice, but you might end up rubbing someone the wrong way.”

I remembered how recently I’d walked into a friend’s apartment and immediately offered clutter-clearing help any time she wanted it. Even at the time, it occurred to me that she might have found my reaction a bit rude. “Okay, you’re right,” I admitted. “I’ll ease up on people.”

I called my sister. “Am I annoying you with all my talk about happiness?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Elizabeth said.

“Do you think I seem happier?”

“Sure!”

“How can you tell?”

“Well…you seem much lighter, more relaxed, and you’re not snapping as much.
Not,
” she added quickly, “that you snapped a lot, but you know.”

“I’ve been trying to keep my temper. Probably the fact that you noticed means that I was snapping more than I realized.”

“You also seem like you’re better about finding the fun in things.”

“Like what?”

“Like when we were talking about how to do Eliza’s hair for my wedding. That’s the kind of thing that might have made you tense before, but now you’re just letting her have fun with it without worrying about it too much. Anyway, did I tell you that you’ve inspired me to try some of your resolutions?”

“Really? That’s great! What have you been doing?” I was thrilled to think that my happiness project had influenced someone else.

“For one thing, I’m trying to exercise a lot more—Pilates, hiking, Cardio Barre. I’ve never had a hobby, so I’m trying to think of exercise as my hobby, you know, ‘reframing.’ That way it covers fitness and also the atmosphere of growth. Also, my dentist has been after me for years to get
my teeth fixed, so I finally ‘tackled a nagging task’ and got Invisalign put in. I’ve been eating at home more often; it’s healthier and cheaper. And I’ve been going away more on the weekends—spending money in ways that will make me happy.”

“And are these things making you happier?”

“Yes! You’re right, it really does work. I was actually kind of surprised.”

Keep a Contented Heart

A
TTITUDE

Laugh out loud.

Use good manners.

Give positive reviews.

Find an area of refuge.

M
y happiness project year was almost over, and for November’s resolutions, I had to make sure to cram in everything that I hadn’t covered. Fortunately, everything I had left to cover fit neatly into one category. Instead of focusing on my
actions,
I focused on my
attitude.
I wanted to cultivate a lighthearted, loving, and kind spirit. If I could put myself into that frame of mind, it would be easier to stick to all my other resolutions.

The British diarist Samuel Pepys reflected from time to time on the nature of happiness. In his entry for February 23, 1662, he wrote, “This day by God’s mercy I am 29 years of age, and in very good health, and like to live
and get an estate and if I have a heart to be contented, I think I may reckon myself as happy a man as any is in the world, for which God be praised. So to prayers and to bed.” (This last phrase, “and so to bed,” is Pepys’s signature sign-off, much like Walter Cronkite’s “And that’s the way it is” or Ryan Seacrest’s “Seacrest…out!”).

I was struck by Pepys’s inclusion of the qualifying phrase: “and if I have a heart to be contented.” It was easy to pass over these words without realizing their tremendous importance. No one is happy who doesn’t think himself happy, so without “a heart to be contented,” a person can’t be happy. That’s the Fourth Splendid Truth.

Did
I
have a heart to be contented? Well, no, not particularly. I had a tendency to be discontented: ambitious, dissatisfied, fretful, and tough to please. In some situations, this served me well, because it kept me constantly striving to improve my work and achieve my goals. In most areas of my life, however, this critical streak wasn’t helpful. When Jamie surprised me with a gardenia plant (my favorite flower), I fussed because it was too big. I was deeply annoyed when we came back from the hardware store with the wrong-sized lightbulbs—I just couldn’t let it go.

It’s easier to complain than to laugh, easier to yell than to joke around, easier to be demanding than to be satisfied. Keeping “a heart to be contented,” I expected, would help change my actions. I hit on several specific aspects of my attitude that I wanted to change.

First, I wanted to laugh more. Laughing more would make me happier, and it would also make the people around me happier. I’d grown more somber over the last several years. I suspected that I didn’t laugh, or even smile, very much. A small child typically laughs more than four hundred times each day, and an adult—seventeen times. I wondered if I hit even that number most days.

Along with a more humorous attitude, I wanted to be kinder. I’d considered kindness a respectable but bland virtue (in the same dull class as reliability and dutifulness), but researching Buddhism, with its emphasis on loving-kindness, had convinced me that I’d overlooked something im
portant. I wanted to practice loving-kindness, but it was such a vague goal—easy to applaud but hard to apply. What strategies would remind me to act with loving-kindness in my ordinary day?

I decided to start with the basic resolution to improve my manners, which weren’t as good as they should have been—not just my table manners (though those weren’t great either) but my actions to show consideration for others. Perhaps mere politeness wouldn’t engender loving-kindness in me, but acting politely would at least give me the appearance of possessing that quality—and perhaps appearance would turn into reality. I wanted to lose my New York City edge. Whenever I go home to visit my parents, I notice that midwesterners really are more friendly. In Kansas City, people seem less hurried (and they are less hurried—a study showed that New York has the country’s fastest-walking pedestrians), clerks in stores are more helpful and chatty, drivers give pedestrians a lot of space on the street (in New York, they practically nudge you out of the way with their bumpers). Instead of moving fast and speaking curtly, I wanted to take the time to be pleasant.

Also, I wanted to stop being so critical, so judgmental and finicky. When I was growing up, my parents placed a lot of emphasis on being positive and enthusiastic—to the point that my sister and I sometimes complained that they wanted us to be “fake.” Now I’d grown to admire my parents’ insistence on banning sarcasm and pointless negativity; it made for a much nicer household atmosphere.

Finally, as a way to help myself stay serene and cheerful, I resolved to discipline myself to direct my thoughts away from subjects that made me angry or irritable.

I wondered whether working on my attitude should occupy an entire month’s worth of resolutions, but reading Schopenhauer (oddly enough, given that he’s so well known for his pessimism) convinced me of the importance of a cheerful disposition: “Whoever is merry and cheerful has always a good reason for so being, namely the very fact that he is so. Nothing can so completely take the place of every other blessing as
can this quality, whilst it itself cannot be replaced by anything. A man may be young, handsome, wealthy, and esteemed; if we wish to judge of his happiness, we ask whether he is cheerful.” This month was all about cheerfulness.

LAUGH OUT LOUD.

By now I had no doubt about the power of my Third Commandment: “Act the way I want to feel.” If I want to feel happy and lighthearted, I need to act that way—say, by laughing out loud.

Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity. It can boost immunity and lower blood pressure and cortisol levels. It increases people’s tolerance for pain. It’s a source of social bonding, and it helps to reduce conflicts and cushion social stress within relationships—at work, in marriage, among strangers. When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.

I vowed to find reasons to find things funny, to laugh out loud, and to appreciate other people’s humor. No more polite smiling; no more rushing to tell
my
story before the laughter has died after a friend’s funny story; no more reluctance to be joshed and teased. One of life’s most exquisite pleasures is making people laugh—even Jamie seems more pleased with himself when I laugh out loud at his jokes, and it’s almost heartbreaking to see Eliza and Eleanor gaze into my face to watch me laugh.

The other morning, after Eleanor told me the same garbled knock-knock joke for the tenth time, I saw her lower lip start to tremble. “What’s wrong, munchkin?” I asked.

“You didn’t laugh!” she yowled.

“Tell me again,” I said. She did, and the next time, I laughed.

Most of all, though, I wanted to laugh out loud
at myself.
I took myself far too seriously. On the rare occasions that I did manage to laugh at myself, it was very cheering.

This topic was on my mind when I was stuck in a slow-moving line at a soup place (no more fake food for me). Two older women at the head of the line were taking a long time to make their selections.

“Can I try the Spicy Lentil?” asked one woman. She got her miniature cup of soup, tasted it, and said, “Too spicy! Ummm, can I try the Spicy Sausage?”

The clerk behind the counter moved slowly to ladle out another miniature cup and pass it over the counter.

“This one is too spicy too!” the tasting woman exclaimed.

The clerk shrugged without saying a word, but I could read her mind: “Lady, that’s why the soups are labeled ‘Spicy.’”

I was feeling very proud of myself for not losing my patience at this exchange, but the muttering behind me that suggested that others weren’t being quite so high-minded.

Just then the tasting woman turned to her friend and said, “Oh, listen to me! I sound like someone from
Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Make me stop!” She burst out laughing, and her friend joined in. I couldn’t help laughing, and the people behind me started laughing too. It was astounding to see how this woman’s ability to laugh at herself transformed a moment of irritation into a friendly moment shared by strangers.

It was difficult, however, to devise a way to make myself laugh more—at myself or anything else. I couldn’t figure out a clever exercise or strategy to get myself yukking it up. I considered watching a funny TV show each night or lining up a series of comedy DVDs to rent, but that seemed forced and time-consuming. I didn’t want to get stressed out about my laugh sessions. Was I really so humorless that I had to employ these extreme, unspontaneous measures? In the end, I just reminded myself, “Listen and laugh.” I slowed myself down to give people the big reaction that they craved.

Chesterton was right, it
is
hard to be light. Joking around takes discipline. It took willpower to listen to Eliza’s endless, convoluted riddles and to laugh at the punch lines. It took patience to give Eleanor the laugh
she expected the millionth time she popped her head out from behind a pillow. But they were so tickled to get me laughing that their delight was a great reward. What started out as forced laughter often turned real.

I also made an effort to pay more attention to things I found funny. For example, I’m very amused by the phrase that “X is the new Y.” So, for no reason other than I found it fun, I started a list (also keeping my resolution to “Forget about results”):

Why did I find these so funny? No idea.

I had the chance to laugh at myself when a book review mentioned the “newly popular genre” of “stunt nonfiction.”

“Look at this!” I said to Jamie, rattling the paper in his face. “I’m part of a genre! And not just a genre but a
stunt genre.
‘Method journalism!’”

“What’s the stunt?”

“Spending a year doing something.”

“What’s wrong with that? Thoreau moved to Walden Pond for a year—well, for two years, but same idea.”