Happiness

I recently became a grandmama again, with the adoption by my son and his wife of a beautiful baby boy. Their journey to adding a child to their family has been long and challenging, and now their desire has materialized in the form of little baby Hunter. When I look at their gallery of photos posted on the Internet, I see tangible "happiness." They may be tired, but they are very, very happy.

So the subject of happiness is on my radar. What constitutes happiness? We all seem to want it, sometimes we search for it. It can mean different things to different people. For David and his wife, it's a new baby, and gratitude for this expansion of loving relationships. For others, it can be radiant good heath, close friends, success on the job, financial freedom, a burst of creativity, or a spiritual "aha" moment.

Recently I saw the film, "Hector and the Search for Happiness," starring Simon Pegg as a successful psychiatrist disenchanted with his life...which he perceives as humdrum. Although he is living a life of privilege compared to most of the world, his patients bore him and his long-term relationship with his fiance, Clara, is stagnant. He decides to throw everything aside and research happiness, keeping a journal of his findings. He wonders, Is there a secret formula for happiness?

After each adventure or misadventure, he draws conclusions in his journal, such as:  making comparisons can spoil your happiness; a lot of people think happiness is being rich or important;  avoiding unhappiness is NOT the road to happiness; happiness is answering your calling; happiness is being loved for who you are; fear is an impediment to happiness; happiness is feeling completely alive (this after barely escaping death at the hands of kidnappers); or happiness is knowing how to celebrate. Basically he is on a journey of self-discovery, learning who he really is.

His big aha comes when he is rigged up to a machine which visually shows, in real time, his brain and how it reacts to different emotions.  He realizes that unhappiness for him would be losing Clara, and happiness would be becoming the man she would love to spend her life with. As his emotions unblock, the machine reveals to Hector that happiness is everything, especially LOVE.

As Ernest Holmes says, " Let us waste no further time looking for the secret of success or the key to happiness. Already the door is open and whosoever will, may enter.”

And so Hector enters, realizing in the end he already has the key to happpiness. He simply lifts and shifts his thinking, or as Ernest Holmes says, "Change your thinking, change your life."

Even Abraham Lincoln said: “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” And from Dale Carnegie, “It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.” 

So for Hector, as well as for all of us, we can know this:  If there is a secret or key to happiness, it’s already in us, in our thinking, which we can change and thus change our lives.

And so it is.


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