Finding and Holding onto Happiness

June 16, 2025 - As many of you who have visited are aware, one of my most frequent post themes has been on how to be happy. I get my tips from several wellness newsletters, magazines, friends, books, all kinds of places. Today from THE WEEK magazine comes this Yale University Study: "Take a few moments, a few times a day to slow down, pay attention and expand on those awesome moments." The awesome moments to which this sentence is referring were detailed in the article and included such small ordinary acts as stopping to admire some flowers, up close, on a walk with the dog, or the study the sky and the clowds while in a paprking lot, or to enjoy the swirl of a rising flock of birds leaving the ground and entering the sky. You can examine the veins in a dew dropped leaf on a tree beside your driveway, or enjy the yellow layer of buttercups in bloom rising up over a green yard, or the first bloom of the orange tiger lilies (which I just saw in their warm elegance along the fence at the end of my driveway. One of the ways I admire and get close to such things is to paint them! I keep a small 6 by 8 watercolor pad in the table by my sofa and a small Windsor Newton water color set there too and sometimes I just make some small watercolor paintings of, for example a group of red tomatoes from the supermarket joined by their green twisted branch, or a plucked branch of my neighbor's hydrangea which is a glorious shade of perriwinkle blue.

Anyway, the article goes on to say how these moments of awe and admiration can stave off depression. I believe that to be true and I believe it to be part of why I am so happy so much of the time.

Believe me, I am just as subject as anyone else to the sorrows of the world and the anxiety caused by the chaos and violence in our current period (the assassination of the Minnesota political couple, or the young Jewish couple in Washington DC the ongoing bombins in ISrael and Iran, the famine in Gaza, the suffering of the people in Ukraine). You would be blind and stupid to be unaware of all this, but as the serenity prayer reminds us all, we must be aware of what we can control and what we can't. I only have a few years left in this experience of being alive on planet earth and it is enormous - much bigger than these passing troubles.

One thing that reminds me of this regularly is to sit in silent worship at my Quaker Meeting in Woodbury where the Meeting House is 300 years old. As I sit on the benches made by the families of the founders and contemplate all the generations that have sat there worried about childbirth, crop failures, smallpox, wars (at least 4 in that span of time) the deaths of loved ones, the births of new ones, I am reminded that all things pass, but the aged trees in serene watchful splendor outside in the burial ground, and the old building are still here. All things pass. I will pass too, and my ashes will sit in the earth next to all the other human worriers who lived and loved an died and re-entered the earth from which we all originally sprang. So let me enjoy the infinity and power of the leaves, the trees, the birds, the clouds, the oceans, rivers, the squirrels, the purring affection of my companion cat and be grateful for what I have in this world of wonders.

Really importantly, if you are feeling down - GET OUTSIDE! Go for a walk or if you are too droopy to get up to a walk, go for drive and park in a nearby park and roll down the window!

Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com