HAPPINESS: Do we have it?
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi
A week or so ago, I heard someone remark on Radio 4, ' I think we are in the end of days'. Wow. Clearly an individual who doesn't hold a very cheerful view of our present world. But from my observations – and I freely admit to being an optimist – I think there are good things happening, despite the miserable and heart-rending stuff getting the most publicity. But like seeds in the ground, the good is often invisible until it erupts in the public consciousness.
So if you haven't already marked Tuesday, 20th of March in your calendar as a day to put on your biggest and sunniest smile now's the time! This is a particular Tuesday – the International Day of Happiness. In case you've forgotten, and frankly my memory is all too often like the proverbial sieve, it's the date fixed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012 to recognise happiness as, 'A fundamental human goal.'
All one hundred and ninety three sovereign member states, yes 193, actually agreed on something. It did happen! Ponder upon it for a moment. In the midst of the mind-numbing, befuddling negotiations over Brexit, to say nothing of quarrels over peace settlements in the Middle East and the latest stand-off with Russia, this must be an event to raise a cheer. First celebrated in 2013, the goals behind it – to end poverty, reduce inequality and protect our planet - are surely ones we can unanimously support.
So shouldn't we all be happy? It's not always easy when we're fed a steady diet of tragedy, mismanagement and woe. Over the years I’ve made my personal tally of, ‘What makes me happy,' trying to pin down the sometimes elusive state. It was usually a list and unsurprisingly included material things like a new heating system, an entirely new wardrobe and a bit more cash! But also a fair whack of detailed non-material delights like family, friends, animals, music and the sheer breath-taking beauty of nature. But did that catapult me henceforth into a state of continuous bliss? It certainly helped but I’d be the biggest teller of porkies if I said, ‘Yes, absolutely, problem solved, non-stop, 24 hour song and smiles from that moment on.’ Being of an inquiring disposition, recently I asked myself the question again.
It boiled down to three things: ‘Being kind, being helpful and being grateful.’ How straightforward is that? Yet simple doesn't mean easy – and it seems to me that those three qualities, if we all practised them a tad more – even for the briefest of moments - they would gradually expand outwards to create a more peaceful world. And peace, in my understanding is generally a very agreeable precursor to happiness.
Where does happiness get stifled? If I know what to do and how to be happy then sheer logic demands I should be happy twenty-four seven! But clearly there are many blindingly obvious impediments not just to my happiness but to everyone else’s. Major events like bereavement, health concerns and financial worries all have a thousand painful threads attached to them. Everyone is aware of this. None of us escape them all. But in my experience, if I am able to maintain those three fundamentally natural aspects of human nature, and not indulge in too much emotional flagellation of myself or judgement of my neighbour, my personal happiness goes shooting up.
So although I know how to keep my happiness levels in good shape, the real bummer is that I can still easily lapse into negative or critical thoughts of myself and others. The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh calls it, 'Habit energy.' Thankfully, this is gradually becoming a state so uncomfortable - practise, practise and more practise - that I now scramble to get out of it as fast as possible! It can make the measurements on my happiness thermometer drop faster than an incoming blizzard of minus fifteen centigrade.
So on Tuesday's International Day of Happiness, I thought I'd try and revive for myself those 'Acts of Random Kindness,' a movement that originated in the States in the early eighties. It’s so heartening when you find you’re short of change at a parking meter and someone offers you the missing twenty cents and waves away your thanks. Or the nice woman in the supermarket queue, with a trolley stacked to the ceiling, motions you ahead with your bottle of water and a couple of pots of yoghourt. To say nothing of those saintly souls who stop and let you make a right hand turn, when rush hour traffic is threatening to keep you in a side road until noon and you’ve got to catch the 9 am train.
Acts of kindness, be they simple, random, spontaneous or considered are almost always helpful. They are the very cornerstone of our humanity. As Mark Twain asserted, kindness truly is’... the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see.’ In short, kindness to others and, very importantly, to ourselves, makes us happy.
We can all hope the 2018 International Day of Happiness will certainly not mark the end of days. But it just may be the beginning of new and inspiring ones.