Finding MORE Joy

The piece that I posted a few days ago entitled FINDING JOY prompted more response than I usually get to this blog, which is to say, maybe five people wrote to me about it rather than the two or three who usually respond. No matter. What I found interesting was the passionate intensity with which those five people responded. One was moved to tears. Another sent it to all her friends, and told them that "everyone on the planet should read this", or something like that. I feel like a struck a nerve somewhere.

What I think is this: People want to be happy, and some of us have forgotten how. I also think that most of us knew how at some point, certainly when we were children.

Most people who were not happy as children have grown into unhappy adults. Some have spent years and many thousands of dollars in therapy figuring out how to be happy, or have spent many years taking drugs to forget how unhappy they are.

Unhappy people come in many shapes, and they are fairly easy to spot. They are not necessarily frowning, but usually are (like that bus driver on the M4 route who my husband and I have nicknamed "Evilene"). They complain, bitch, moan, or say nothing when you say "hello" to them. They radiate bad vibes. Some of them pick up assault rifles and shoot other people for no apparent reason. Others spread rumors on the internet, prompting other people to jump off of bridges or hang themselves. Unhappy people are toxic, and best avoided if at all possible.

The rest of us, who had happy childhoods, and who now are happy adults at least some of the time, grab onto what happiness we can find, whenever and wherever we can. We don't spend a lot of time pointing out how unhappy we are, and when we are unhappy, do what we can to get happy.

Happiness is not a given, it is not a constant state, and it is not achieved by luck. It is, I believe, something that can be learned, cultivated, acquired. True happiness cannot be "bought", (although money can provide a semblance of it, temporarily, in a superficial way). Happiness can definitely be shared, and should be given away freely as often as possible.

Back to the childhood thing. Indulge me while I play amateur psychologist, please. I think that unhappy people were not loved enough as children, not in the way that counts. Nobody listened to what they had to say, or never let them say it in the way they wanted to say it. They were not allowed to express themselves, and consequently spend their adult lives trying to be heard.

There is probably more to it than that, but perhaps not.

I think that truly happy people are happy because they have found a way to express themselves, in whatever way they want. Art, music, cooking, parachute jumping. Knitting, throwing a football, standup comedy, race car driving. Snake handling, pole dancing, brain surgery, shoe designing. None of these things has anything in common with any other thing, other than the fact that someone likes to do it, for whatever reason she or he feels like doing it.

I met an artist in her 70's in a Brooklyn loft last week, who was one of the happiest people I have met in a while. She was greeting people as they came up the stairs to her studio, and smiling from ear to ear as she showed off the art on her walls. Not great art, some of it actually rather bad, made from paper clips, bottle caps, broken pottery, and pieces of toys. But it was her art, expressing whatever it was that she wanted to express, and her joy in sharing it was infectious.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I attended a one woman theatrical performance down in a tiny theater near the South Street Seaport. There were only about 11 people in the audience, and I had never heard of the performer before, but we enjoyed her small show more than we have enjoyed certain Broadway plays who tickets cost 10 times more. She absolutely did her "thing", really connecting with the audience, and the intimacy of that connection made a difference. She, truly, expressed what she wanted to express, in the way that she wanted to express it.

I think that there is a connection between "doing" what you want to do, and "expressing" whatever it is that you want to say. The "doing" is the "expressing". We are what we do. We are who we say we are. And, I think, we can be what we want to be, whenever we want to be it. Who can say that we cannot?

That, for me, is the essence of being an adult. There is no longer anyone to tell you who you can be or cannot be.

So, the key to happiness, then, might just be to connect back to whatever it was that we were trying to express when we were children, before someone told us to be quiet and go to sleep.

Children shoud be seen AND heard.