Cultivating Happiness

Happiness needs to be sought, cultivated, and appreciated. 

I have recently started a gratitude journal. Every day I list the things that I am grateful for. It's a nice way to focus on the positive things in my life. 

Today I am grateful for SC suggesting a last minute getaway and for S&J for making us feel welcome and at home, as always ...

We arrived at our secret hideaway and were greeted outside by the resident dog. Boundless energy and affection. she looks like Sprocket from Fraggle Rock. 

Then we were shown to our room by our ever gracious hosts where champagne and chocolates awaited us. 

We then watched a herd of deer crossing the river. 

Do deer travel in herds? anyway ...

Dinner was stuffed chicken, potatoes, yams, and broccoli. Soooo good. We sat around and chatted for hours. Then a good night sleep. 

We awoke to a gorgeous sunny day. 

And had breakfast which included my special request: avacaos in maple syrup. Mmmmmm .... happiness can be cultivated when you stop to enjoy the multiple flavours of a good meal. each bite, savoured and paid attention to. 

Now we are trying to get up the energy to go out. The plan is to go watch ice racing which is a bunch of crazy people having car races on ice. 

*****

Yep ... ice racing was as crazy as I imagined. Slipping. Sliding. Crashing. Spraying the spectators with snow.  

The rest of the day was spent adventuring; this means driving with no destination and finding ourselves on roads the GPS can't find. Then discovering beauty ... you can cultivate happiness by being still when surrounded by nature and taking in how beautiful each season truly is. 

*****

Sunday we went to visit family. Got hugs and kisses. Played a long card game. And then drove back to the hideaway for dinner - ribs and fettuccine alfredo. 

I may or may not have had 3 glasses of wine and a glass of champagne. 

We have packed up for the morning. We leave after breakfast. I don't really want to go home! It's so nice here. 

I also keep running into images of butterflies, which I will blog about later:

find your happiness by nurturer it. enjoy the happiness that finds it's way into your life. happiness can be as simple as finding a good book on sale. and you can cultivate that joy by purchasing the book and making time in your busy day to stop, be still, and read it. 

xoxo

...

catching air in my hands ...

i had the most fantastic day. 

i laughed so much my abs hurt. 

and then i came home and felt happy, and joyful, and i was trying not to get my hopes up and yet i was convinced that a switch had been "flicked" and that the new meds were working and that i was feeling better and that i was going to get to go back to work early! i started thinking about all the things that i was going to do back at work. the people that i miss. and i was excited. 

i was smiling and snuggling and feeling like i was on top of the world. i rolled over to go to sleep and listened to the gentle breathing of the love of my life beside me. and then it was like i was trying to hold onto air in my hands as the joy and happiness slipped through my fingers. 

and i started to cry. 

no reason. nothing that i can identify anyway. no trigger. 

just the slowly fading feeling of happiness that had filled me trickled out of me and was replaced with the empty feeling that has haunted me for so long. 

i wanted to be able to hold onto that happiness. i wanted that joyful laughter that filled my afternoon and evening to fill up all the empty places inside of me. 

instead, i feel hollow and sad. and inconsequential. 

so i decided to reach out to my blog readers tonight. how do you hold onto happiness? how to do you keep the joy inside of you? please leave your comment at the end of this post, or contact me by email using the contact form on the right side of this page. let me know if i can share your ideas with my readers. 

xoxo
...

sing like no one is listening ...

a bubble of happiness. i used to know how to create those ...

once i ate an entire box of strawberry shortcake cereal in one sitting and the sugar and red dye entering my bloodstream and creating a hypoglycemic nightmare in which i literally was bouncing off the walls (and the floor, and the bed, and anyone who got in my way). i was sent to my room to let the sugar and dye work it's way through my system while my cousin L begged me to eat the protein i was being bribed with in an attempt to bring me down from my over-the-top-ridiculous sugar high. but i didn't want to come down from the bouncing goodness. 

another time, the bubble was created by lying on the raft in the moonlight, holding hands with O, after a weekend fraught with drama. and we left all the drama causing people alone with their drama and found time to be with each other, in the moonlight, sharing our compassion for each other. 

click here for photo credit

bubbles of happiness don't happen on their own. they aren't random. they need to be sought out, created, and maintained. they might be spontaneous and unplanned ... but they still need crafting and care. 

i wanted to share one of my bubbles of happiness from my childhood ...

when i was 7 years old, my cousin B and i used to have weekly sleep-overs, mostly at my house. we would make up ridiculous games, like building a snow village for little plastic bunnies that our grandmother gave us for Easter. or naming the yellow foam rabbit from my magic kit "honey bunny." those sleep-overs are one of the highlights of my childhood. B was older and wiser and beautiful and smart. and fun. purely joyfully fun. i bet that when she reads this (and i will be sending it to you B, because i WANT you to read this) she will be taken aback by some of the words i used like "beautiful" - our childhoods were not built around people telling us that we were beautiful, or smart ...

as the years went by, the 4 year age difference between us became too much of a gap and we spent a period of time being cousins, but not friends. at 13, i was only 9 and that was too big of a gap. 

when B went to university, and i was in high school, i went to visit her. and it was so kind of her to take me in for a week and show me her life. over the years, we have traveled in and out of each other's circles, losing touch and finding each other again. always connected by our friendship and by our family ties. 

but this post isn't about B or how important she is to me. this post is about being little, loud, obnoxious girls on the danforth. invincible, noisy, and not caring what anyone else thought about us. 

i have no idea where we were going. it could have been ballet class, or the library, or just the store. but for some reason, we were being taken somewhere and we had to walk for awhile along the busy danforth. and B and i decided that it would be a GREAT idea to sing. loudly. a song we made up. at the top of our lungs. 

i remember walking along the street feeling pure and unbridled JOY with B. 

picture this, the busy danforth on a sunny day. people out walking, shopping, running errands, or just enjoying the day. and then 2 little girls skipping, arm in arm, scream-singing at the top of their lungs:

1, you're a nun!
2, a piece of poo!
3, a drop of pee!
4, shut the door!
5, stick your head in a beehive!
6, pick up sticks!
7, go to heaven
8, shut the gate!
9, drink some wine!
10, START AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and then we would repeat our made up song. and then after that, we would repeat it again. 

i don't know why that was so much fun. i don't know why scream-singing about pee, and poo, and beehives, was hilarious and joyful and exciting and made us so damn happy. but we were giggling and singing and skipping and yelling. i wish that i could recreate that feeling, bottle it, and give it away. because everyone needs to feel the elation of scream-singing on a busy street in the sunshine while skipping arm-in-arm with a cousin-friend, not giving a shit about what anyone else thinks because the joy of scream-singing a made up song puts you in a bubble of happiness that is even better than a blue duvet cocoon. 

i wonder if B would be willing to skip arm-in-arm scream-singing with me now? i think that perhaps i need to find a new way to create the bubble of happiness. maybe i can teach her children our song and find joy by enabling the joy of watching them scream-sing and embarrass their parents ... 

any other ideas? 


xoxo
...

enabling joy ...

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.” 

― Rumi

last night i was brainstorming with DS about how i could go back to being 3 years old and finding pure  joy and elation just from eating cotton candy. he suggested that i could find a random 3 year old and give them cotton candy, revel in their  joy, and then give them back to their parents for the fallout of all that sugar. i thought it was a funny idea, but not what i was looking for. i wanted to FEEL the  joy myself. and DS said, how about "the  joy of enabling  joy?" 

PAUSE

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river 

moving in you, a joy.” ― Rumi

i had to think about that. the  joy of enabling joy. 

what brings me  joy? what brings you  joy? for me, it can be singing, or holding a happy baby, or seeing the faces of my children when they master a new skill ... and it occurred to me that in fact most of the times i feel truly  joyful is when i have enabled  joy in someone else. 

“I don't think of all the misery, but of 

the beauty that still remains.” 

- Anne Frank

if anne frank could still find  joy, then who am i to focus on misery?

earlier this year, i had a truly  joyful experience. one that has few words to describe it. i was able to bring a pile of donations to a family in need. i often experience the let-down of giving to someone and having them behave as though they are entitled to what i have given them. but this time it was different. this loving and humble family welcomed us into their home, and experienced pure joy at receiving coats, and scarves, and art supplies. their gratitude was so sincere. their happiness was heart-warming. and their  joy brought me pure  joy. i couldn't stop smiling as their tried on their winter coats, and planned out who would get to keep the markers in which bedroom. 

“Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.” 

― Terry Pratchett

i found  joy by enabling  joy.

“To get the full value of joy 

you must have someone to 

divide it with.” 

― Mark Twain

DS is onto something. he spoke to me about his work, and how he finds job satisfaction by the unconscious smiles of the people he works with. it reminded me of my own work and the  joy i find through working with others. 

joy: let it fill you. let it wash not over you, but through you. 

i leave you with this thought ...

“Sometimes your joy is the 

source of your smile, but 

sometimes your smile can be 

the source of your joy.” 

― Thích Nhất Hạnh

xoxo

...