An unfamiliar quiet hangs over the lake today, a kind of waiting for the high-pitched shouts and laughter that danced over its waves on every sunny day since June. The children are gone, carried from their homes just after sunrise in bright yellow buses to the county’s schools. The kids, I imagine, were filled with excitement, glad for something new at last, for reunion with old friends, for moving once again toward grown-up. But here at the lake, it’s awfully quiet. I walk its shores and whisper to its waves, “I know. I know.”
You never know when you set out what your journey will bring. Anything you can imagine is possible, and then some. It’s all a gift, you know, a chance for you to explore your choices, to decide who you will be, to discover what you’re made of. Hold on to your hat. Hold on to your dreams. This gift’s an adventure, you know. Keep faith,and always remember that everything passes, and light always shines at the end of the road.
Acres of golden sunflowers, more than you could count in a day, nodded in the afternoon sun, each head, heavy with seeds, bowed as if in gratitude for the joy of such productive lives. Overhead, in a deep blue sky, floated a single cloud, looking like an angel with outspread gauzy wings, come to bless them. And a warm breeze, as light as feathers, wafted across the broad field, whispering its quiet amen.
How are you doing so far? Take a quick inventory and find out.
If you want to up your supply, one of the best things you can learn from genuinely happy people is to keep your options open.
You might think you’re limited by your age, responsibilities, circumstances, finances, or health, but the truth is you have countless options for expanding your happiness every single day.
The trick is to keep an eye out for them, and to risk grabbing the ones that wink at you as they appear.
One choice that happy people make is the choice to be free to try something new, even if it might make them look or feel silly, even if it violates their “shoulds,” even if it’s not “realistic” (and maybe especially if it’s not).
They ask themselves “What if?” and “Why not?”
They hone their curiosity.
They’re not locked in by plans, or by fears.
They’re flexible and daring.
They’re more driven by exploring life’s offerings and possibilities than by toeing the line in order to achieve an imagined security or success.
They trust life enough to let the conclusions take care of themselves.
Hunting for Happiness
Sometimes the something new starts with a new viewpoint, with asking, “How else can I look at this?” or “What opportunities are here?” or “How can I turn this into an adventure, or make it interesting or fun?”
Happy people cultivate a sense of play.
They teach themselves to see what they were viewing as a limitation as a challenge to their creativity instead.
For happy people, life is an art form, and they are the artists.
Dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille said, “Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what’s next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”
Happy people don’t expect all their choices to turn out well. But they expect to grow from each of them, to learn, to be enriched by all that they experience.
They know that the joy is in the journey, in taking the leaps.
Taking the Risk
Looking for options keeps us from living on auto-pilot.
It opens a view of possibilities, moment to moment to moment.
Asking “What are my choices?” keeps us aware and alive.
Refuse to accept the lie that you have no choice.
You always do.
Happy people teach themselves to look outside the box, to deviate from their routines.
They learn to risk letting go of preconceived notions and of caring what anyone else thinks about the choices they make for themselves.
I have a poster on my wall that says, “Trust Your Crazy Ideas.” I think that’s great advice.
Crazy ideas can turn out to be the start of learning a whole new skill, or of meeting new people and making new friends.
They can lead to the discovery of a talent you hadn’t known you possessed, of discovering treasures and wonders you had no idea were right around that next corner.
Happiness experts Foster and Hicks say “Every new day presents the potential for relationships, education, personal growth, professional development and just plain fun.”
What calls you? What crazy new idea could you try?
What if?
Why not?
Keep on the lookout for new options—moment after moment, day after day.
They’re in front of you right now.
Next week I’ll share with you one of my favorite keys to increased happiness, one of the most beautiful ones. Stay tuned!
In days of sunshine and those of trial, whether by happenstance or choice, life sends us the gift of companions for our journey, spirits to walk beside us, to share our laughter and our tears, our stories and our silences. Some stay only for moments. Some come, then go, then reappear. Some walk beside us for long miles, for lifetimes, and maybe more. Love, after all, never dies. And it is love that sends them, these companions, that each of us may know that we are truly never alone.
I fell asleep last night with a parade of flowers ribboning through my mind— the spring’s first crocuses at its start, the tulips, the lilacs the irises, peonies, and roses. When I woke, I sighed, sad that the parade would soon be at its end. But then the day brought mums, a little love note smiling at me from the grocer’s door, as if to reassure me the dance isn’t over quite yet.
So subtly August turns us from summer to fall, sliding the sun from its zenith, inching the pool of night onto closer shores almost without notice, as if it were a dream.
There on the hill, the first blush of crimson creeps onto the maple leaves. The young geese grow restless as their first migration nears.
The tillers of the land start the rituals of harvest. Fragrances we haven’t known for a year drift from kitchen doorways, smelling like home.
And we who dreamed summer would stretch on find that it’s changed now, its green losing its sheen. Oh, so subtly August turns us. So deftly she ushers us on.
The woods completely dissolve the idea that peace and stillness are the same thing, that serenity is motionless and silent. The trees say peace is an endless singing of possibilities brought into being, then gone, a rise and fall of notes echoing through the edgeless vastness, transcending time. And serenity is the embrace of the song, the welcoming of it, the joyous recognition that it is the Yes dancing, within and without, without end.
You, too, are a climber, reaching for the heights. Climb on. You, too, are meant to open to the morning sun. Open singing. You, too, are a star filled with inner light. Shine on, friend. Shine on.
All day, the air pressed against skin like steamed towels, heavy and damp. Not a leaf moved. Even the bees seemed slow, as if they were rowing from one drooped blossom to another. And through it all, one wish prevailed: Relief. Then, as if the one prayer had finally reached the required level of ascent, the sky took on the color of marmalade and the trees began to dance in its glow, buoyed by a cool wind filled with the fragrance of rain. And when it came, falling from the luminous sky, all the earth, revived and joyous, sang.
