Thomas Fiffer looks no further than his wall for three keys to staying happy.
___
Words hold tremendous power, the power to alter our world.
|
Like most of you I’ve had my share of tragedy in life. Losing my father when I was nine, losing the love of my life to another, confronting infertility, getting divorced with young children, and most recently, having my full-time job terminated. Of course, I’m also grateful for many glorious blessings. Throughout it all, I’ve somehow managed to stay happy. What’s my secret? On my home office wall, to the left of my windows, I have three quotes on happiness, written on old, yellowed index cards dating from my college days. They’re just words, but words hold tremendous power, the power to alter our world, and I read these cards to recenter myself when my own world needs altering. Could the principles these passages embody be the three keys to happiness?
♦◊♦
My first quote comes from the Chinese philosopher Confucius: “To perform the duties of this life well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom.” If there is such a thing as the prime wisdom, this comes pretty close. While it’s possible to see this as an admonition to avoid pondering the afterlife, I interpret it differently. I believe Confucius means first, don’t worry about other people’s lives, and second, focus on living the life you have, not the one you may have wished for. The prime wisdom, then, is presence—inhabiting the life you’ve been born into, as it’s the only thing you hold the power to control. This is why trying to control others always creates misery, and the reason we describe happy people as comfortable in their own skin.
To deny that something hurtful happened drives a knife into the psyche, splitting it in two and giving the event power over you forever. It leaves the wound without the scar.
|
Presence sounds easy, but presence is hard, because it means being present in both sorrow and joy. Think of a tragic event in your life. Now ask yourself if denying it happened would make you any happier. To deny that something hurtful happened drives a knife into the psyche, splitting it in two and giving the event power over you forever. It leaves the wound without the scar. Remaining present denies the tragic event’s power to break you, breaking its hold and setting you free.
The other challenge to presence is distraction, the myriad escape routes and mind-numbing activities that life serves up daily. Unfulfilling but lucrative work. Fantasy entertainment. Drugs and alcohol. Even meaningless sex. These activities may distance us from discomfort. But we can’t be happy unless we’re present. We can’t experience any emotion—joy, despair, even indifference—if our thoughts are somewhere else. Hiding from our problems doesn’t make them go away; it just makes it harder for happiness to find us. Once we realize happiness isn’t an elusive goal or a magical place just over the horizon, it’s easier to be present, to position ourselves in the experience for happiness to come to us. Happiness lives in the moment when we live the moment, when we inhale it, accept it, embrace it, and squeeze it for all it’s worth. Happiness isn’t the gold at the end of the rainbow; happiness is the miracle of the rainbow itself.
♦◊♦
Similar to presence, patience is the art of positioning ourselves in time so that happiness can meet us.
|
My second quote is by filmmaker Federico Fellini. It reads: “Happiness is being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone.” This one sounded good when I copied it, but I didn’t fully understand it until I lived through a 15-year marriage trying to balance the pain of lying to myself with the torture of hurting someone I loved. How’s that for a no-win situation? Inevitably, our truth is uncomfortable for someone who doesn’t wish to accept it, but the larger truth is that we cannot abandon ourselves to protect another’s feelings. Fellini’s quote also transcends the concept of honest communication. I believe he means happiness comes from not just speaking but living your truth, from being fully who you are, ideally without endangering the well-being of others but realistically with that risk. We’ve all had to leave situations—places, jobs, marriages, even entire families—when staying precluded us from being not only our best self but from being ourself at all. While making these crucial shifts demands action, lasting change requires patience and the ability to make thoughtful, considered, and fully conscious decisions. Let’s face it. Impulsivity probably got us into trouble to begin with, and we must be patient with ourselves so we can learn from our mistakes, patient with people whose feelings we can’t change, and patient with our own progress that may seem painfully slow. Similar to presence, patience is the art of positioning ourselves in time so that happiness can meet us, and of understanding that things don’t always happen on our schedule.
Patience is not putting up with what doesn’t serve you, or blind acceptance of the status quo.
|
Many people misunderstand patience, seeing it as tolerating bothersome or hurtful things. Patience is not putting up with what doesn’t serve us, or blind acceptance of the status quo. Patience is the constant pursuit of sursum corda—that which lifts up our hearts and raises us to a higher place. Patience is not Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill, Prometheus suffering as his liver is pecked away, or Tantalus endlessly reaching for the grapes. Patience is knowing that change is messy, that transitions are not always crisp, that movement along the path to fulfillment takes time.
Patience is Michelangelo, who had the strength to pick up his chisel each day and chip away at the block of marble, to climb the scaffolding, raise his brush, and brighten the gesso with color. Patience is David. Patience is the Pietà. Patience is the Sistine Chapel. Patience is not standing still but active waiting.
♦◊♦
My third quote is from Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor revered for his wisdom. “When you are grieved about anything external it is not the thing itself which afflicts you, but your judgment about it. This judgment it is in your power to efface.” Put more simply, this means we have no power to change what happens but complete power to change how we feel about it. This identifies the third key to happiness as perspective, which is less about finding the silver lining in a cloudy situation and more seeing that situation from another angle, perhaps from above the clouds, or as the dry ground that needs rain. For example, when ending an unhealthy relationship with someone you’ve loved deeply, perspective guides you to a sense of peace. You may feel lonely, but you understand that staying in a dysfunctional situation will destroy you and your partner. Another way to look at perspective is to see it as positioning yourself in space so that your view of something takes in more than what you might see from the ground. The primary threats to perspective are blindness, tunnel vision, and the narrow outlook that accompanies a closed mind and a closed heart. Achieving perspective means staying open to new ideas and embracing new ways of seeing.
♦◊♦
Experience each moment fully. Accept its truth and be patient with how you feel about it. Use perspective to filter your reaction and formulate a response. Happiness is not flopping out on a recliner in Nirvana. Happiness is a constant balancing act, a juggling of presence, patience, and perspective to maintain a stance that enables you to be happy.
***
You can find more from Thomas G. Fiffer on the Tom Aplomb blog as well as on Facebook and Twitter.
If you liked this article, you might also like “The Happiness Formula.”
—
This post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: iStock