Published: January 06, 2009 09:11 pm      

One life to live, so choose happiness

EDMOND — Something about warm water showering on my skin loosens up my vocal chords and drowns out flaws in my singing ability. For some unexplainable reason, lately the song my neighbors and family are buying earplugs for goes, “Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens … these are a few of my favorite things.” Happily, we have a roomy shower so I can add the dramatic gestures as I rinse out the shampoo.

Our two songster children visited during the Christmas holiday and I loved that the house was full of music. On Christmas Eve, my son came into the kitchen and said, “Listen.” It sounded like an aviary with everybody whistling different tunes. Though my daughter-in-law thinks whistling is unrefined, to me, it seems to be an unrestrained expression of good cheer, and I love the sound. I’m not sure why we couldn’t all choose the same song, but the birds don’t so I guess it doesn’t matter.

It’s tempting to let loose of the cheer and charity we feel during the holidays and return to self-involvement and the pressing problems of adult life. But we don’t have to. Scrooge promises to keep the spirit of Christmas alive in his breast all the year through, and so should we. If we are happy during the holidays, sharing smiles and pleasantries with those around us, we can choose to continue in that mode forever. Happiness is a choice.

Obviously, we can’t choose all of our circumstances. I have a friend who is battling breast cancer and is currently in the midst of the worst part. She’s sick, weak and vulnerable to infections, so she’s also mostly housebound. In addition to this, there are serious challenges in her family. But she chooses to be happy. She has learned to think in terms of gratitude and joy and to focus her life on those elements that induce those sensations.

Learning to be happy despite trials is not a matter of pretending to be cheerful when you’re collapsing inside. A mode of happiness does not eliminate grief or pain, but is like water to a thirsty body in times of heartache. It can coexist with negative sensations and offset them. Here are some methods to improve your happiness index.

Oddly enough, smiling at people generates happiness. Not only do smilers stimulate a smiling response, when we smile before we feel it, pretty soon our face communicates to our heart and we’re happier. It’s weird, but it works.

Do the mental exercise of listing all the blessings, all the good things, in your life. Just as Peter Pan the adult in the movie “Hook” couldn’t fly until he grasped his happy thought (I’m a daddy!), when we take our blessings for granted and focus on the bummers in our life, it squelches happiness. Give thanks to God for your blessings and see how it magnifies them.

If we have misery-producing ingredients in our lives (could everyone in the department store I visited on Saturday really have felt as bleak as they appeared?), it is sometimes useful to write down the grievances and irritations and then write down anything we can do to make the situations better.

You might be surprised by two things. First, when you are proactive in solving the things that are bothering you, it often disarms the problem from much of its cheer-squelching power. Second, when you seriously consider your grievances that have no solutions but must work themselves out in time, it relieves you from worrying about it.

Give yourself permission to be happy. If your friends are all grumbling and hormonal, your cheerfulness gives them encouragement to let go of their worries and relax. If you do something to cheer someone else up, you’ll feel double the effect in yourself. Cheerfulness is more contagious than the flu, and kind acts or friendly smiles spread it more effectively than an uncovered sneeze.

An old soap opera was called “One Life to Live.” The program was an endless array of bleak, evil distortions of human life. If it’s still on TV, for heaven sake, turn it off! In fact, beware of any entertainment that poisons your happiness with dark images and depressing, depraved ugliness. We do indeed have only one life to live and it naturally will include sorrow and disappointment. But we can and ought to choose cheerfulness.



BETH STEPHENSON is an Edmond resident.