The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

begin their own Commandments.
     
    Last week-end my daughter and a friend met me at my mom’s house. My daughter is 28 and my mom is 86—I’m somewhere in the middle. My daughter and her friend started talking about the happiness project and some of the precepts they had learned there. My daughter’s friend mentioned the idea of really enjoying what you have—such as using the good dishes, not saving the dress for a day that may never come, etc. My mom, who is a VERY frugal woman, began to talk about some demitasse cups that had been passed on to her and how they were boxed up in the closet because she didn’t have a display case. I suggested we go to the furniture store and find one she could use, and surprisingly she agreed. We looked at two stores and left with good information about a curio cabinet. On the way out of the second store, Mom noticed a chair that looked very comfortable, and had a heating and vibrating feature that felt good. I ended up paying for half of the chair for her Christmas present and we later ordered the curio as well.
    We all know that happiness is not in things. However, at age 86 I was so glad that my mom could have a couple of things that she will really enjoy. Her chair was delivered and she reports that she may never sit anywhere else. When the curio cabinet is delivered we will have a great time putting together the display of her family heirlooms. Thanks for the inspiration!
----
    It made me very happy to think that my blog had helped contribute to the happiness of people I’d never even met. Of course, that was the purpose of the blog—but I was thrilled to discover that it was actually working.
    “Your year is almost up,” friends kept saying to me. “So, are you happier?”
    “Absolutely!” I answered.
    “But how do you really know?” one scientist friend asked. “Did you do any kind of systematic measurement over the course of the year?”
    “Well, no.”
    “You didn’t have Jamie score you each day or keep a mood chart on yourself or anything like that?”
    “Nope.”
    “So maybe you aren’t any happier, you just think you are.”
    “Well,” I conceded, “maybe it’s my imagination…but no. I know I’m happier.”
    “How?”
    “I feel happier!”
    It was really true.
    My First Splendid Truth says that if I want to be happier, I need to look at my life and think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth . I’d worked on all these elements, and it had made an enormous difference.
    For me, it turned out, the most significant prong was the feeling bad. My biggest happiness boosts had come from eliminating the bad feelings generated by my snapping, nagging, gossiping, being surrounded by clutter, eating fake food, drinking, and all the rest. In particular, it made me happier to be in better control of my sharp tongue. Nowadays I often managed to pause and change my tone, just a second before I started to rant, or to change my tone in midsentence. I’d even managed to laugh while chiding Jamie—about not dealing with the insurance forms or not looking for his missing library book.
    At the same time, I was having more feeling good —more laughing with my family, talking about children’s literature with my book group, listening to music I liked. I’d learned a lot of ways to get more bang for my happiness buck.
    Feeling right had been very important to my happiness when I was struggling with the question of whether to switch from law to writing, butit hadn’t been the source of many of my resolutions over the past months. At the start of December, however, I was hit by the idea for a goal I wanted to undertake to “feel right” in the coming year: I wanted to get involved in the issue of organ donation. We all hoped that Jamie would never need a liver transplant, of course, but his hepatitis C had made me much more interested in the issue. If I could figure out some small way, myself, to help boost the number of organ donations in the country, I’d feel as though I’d been able to transform an unfortunate personal situation into some larger good. I’d already started gathering a list of names and resources that I wanted to check out. I didn’t particularly enjoy this work, but I could see that this project would make me feel right.
    But what had surprised me most about the First Splendid Truth was the importance of the final prong, the atmosphere of growth. I hadn’t ascribed much weight to it, even when