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

I reuse razor blades until they’re dull, I keep my toothbrushes until they’re yellowed and frayed. There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it’s not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up. I often found myself saving things, even when it made no sense. Like those white T-shirts I bought. I’d surmounted the challenge of buying them; then came the challenge of wearing them. When I took them out of the shopping bag and laid them on my shelf—perfectly folded by the salesclerk as I’ve never learned to do—I could feel myself wanting to “save” them in their pristine glory. But not wearing clothes is as wasteful as throwing them away.
    As part of my happiness project I wanted to stop hoarding, to trust in abundance, so that I could use things up, give things away, throw thingsaway. Not only that—I wanted to stop worrying so much about keeping score and profit and loss. I wanted to spend out.
    A few years ago, my sister gave me a box of beautiful stationery for my birthday. I loved it, but I’d never used it. When I was mailing some photos to the grandparents, I hesitated to use the new stationery because I was “saving” it; but to what better use could it be put? Of course I should use those notes. Spend out.
    I looked through my apartment for ways to spend out. The toughest choices I made concerned things that sort of worked: the camera that had lost its zoom function, the label maker that didn’t print properly. I hate waste, but it would probably have cost me as much money (and far more time) to repair these items as to replace them—and using them in their crippled states weighed me down. I replaced them.
    My goal wasn’t limited to my treatment of my possessions; it also involved my ideas. For example, when I thought of a great subject for a blog post, I often found myself thinking “That’s a good idea, save it for another day.” Why? Why delay? I needed to trust that there would be more, that I would have great ideas in the future and so should use my best stuff now. Pouring out ideas is better for creativity than doling them out by the teaspoon.
    “Spending out” also meant not being rigidly efficient. The other night, Jamie and I rented Junebug —an extraordinary movie, all about the nature of love and happiness. I was tempted to watch a few of my favorite scenes again after we saw it the first time, but I decided that would be a “waste” of time. Then I remembered my resolution, which included spending out my time. After all, I know that sometimes the things I do when I’m wasting time turn out to be quite worthwhile. I went to “Scene Selection” to re-watch the scene at the church social.
    The most important meaning of “Spend out,” however, is not to be a scorekeeper, not to stint on love and generosity. This was related to my February resolution, “Don’t expect praise or appreciation.” I wanted tostop constantly demanding praise or insisting on getting paid back. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux wrote, “When one loves, one does not calculate.” I’m a big calculator, always looking for a return, especially with Jamie.
    “I gave Eleanor a bath last night, so you…”
    “I let you take a nap, so you…”
    “I had to make the plane reservations, so you…”
    No! Spend out. Don’t think about the return. “It is by spending oneself,” the actress Sarah Bernhardt remarked, “that one becomes rich.” What’s more, one intriguing study showed that Sarah Bernhardt’s pronouncement is literally true: people who give money to charity end up wealthier than those who don’t give to charity. After doing complex number crunching to control for different variables, a researcher concluded that charitable giving isn’t just correlated with higher income; it actually causes higher income. Some explanations for this surprising effect include the brain stimulation caused by charitable activity and also the fact that those who are seen behaving charitably are likely to be elevated to leadership positions.
    It’s certainly true in my household that spending out creates a wealth of love and tenderness, while calculation and scorekeeping build resentment.
    To keep this important yet elusive resolution uppermost in my mind, I maintained a relic. In one of my last visits to my grandmother before she died, I picked up the My Sin perfume that had been sitting on her bureau for as long as I could remember. The