"You're only as happy as your least happy kid"

At dinnertime, night after night this autumn, the kids trip over each other to tell stories about their day at school. They interrupt each other; they even interrupt themselves. They don’t interrupt their parents only because we sit there silently listening, nodding attentively but, at least in my case, secretly marveling at the miracle of their apparently unadulterated happiness.

Tim wants to talk about Math League, Writers’ Guild, helping out in the first grade gym classes, an idea for the eighth grade science fair. Holly cuts in to tell us about a recess game, a science quiz, a plan she and a friend made to dress alike the next day.

And while I act like it’s all perfectly normal, as I listen I just can’t get over their contentment. Over and over again, I repeat silently to myself, nothing beats having kids who are happy at school.

Although you wouldn’t know it from our dinnertime conversation, there’s plenty to worry about and plenty of problems on which to dwell, and more than enough sadness and anxiety to go around: locally, nationally, globally. Whether it comes via a friend’s phone call or an NPR broadcast, bad news happens all around us. And somehow it seems impossible that my two children can be so happy right now.

But they are. They like what they’re learning and doing in school; they value their friends; they bear a notable absence of fear. They’re not worried about the price of college or the prevalence of cancer or the fiscal cliff. They’re just….happy.

Yes, it’s remarkably self-absorbed and solipsistic. But, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, so’s childhood. An acquaintance recently made a comment that I had never heard before, though he claimed it was nothing original: You’re only as happy as your least happy kid.

So maybe that’s what it is. I have plenty to worry about; we all do. Every sentient adult recognizes the peril and fragility all around us. And yet….my kids are happy these days. Really happy. If you’re only as happy as your least happy kid, it’s no wonder I end most days with a sense of peace despite all that I could instead be focusing on. My kids are happy, and so in many respects, I’m happy too. They’ll have darker times and so will I. But this fall, they’ve got math league and community service and dress-alike day at school, and it’s all good. For them, and by extension, for me.

When gratitude hurts (other people)

“The reason I don’t like looking at Facebook is that everyone is just bragging about how happy they are!”

The sentiment came from an acquaintance during an informal group discussion about social media recently. Although I don’t know the woman who said it well, I do know that she has faced some very difficult obstacles in her life recently. But it surprised me nonetheless. I had never thought about expressing happiness as a form of bragging. I just think of it as, well, honesty. And an outward display of gratitude. And almost everyone agrees that gratitude is a good thing, don’t they? In Thornton Wilder's words, “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

And yet I’m sympathetic to this acquaintance, who has endured with courage particular problems that are very alien to me. I don’t even think she and I are connected on Facebook, but her words gave me pause and made me think about whether there are times when it is insensitive to express gratitude.

Yesterday I thought of her as I sat down at my computer to dash off a quick update. Yesterday was the kind of day that was wonderful for its very ordinariness. I barely left home, except to teach Sunday school in the morning. Sunday school is far, far from being one of my favorite things to do, but it’s a little like the Vaudeville joke about why the man is hitting himself with a pipe: it feels so good when I stop, and after a successful class – which I define as one in which all the kids stayed attentive and contributed to the discussion – I feel great about the time I put into preparing for it. Better still, I had fit in a run before church, so I didn’t have to go through the morning with the thought of fitting in a run hanging over my head. After church I bought some fresh fruit, went home and made everyone lunch, and read the paper for a while. Then I put together a pot of vegetarian chili and let it simmer while two friends and I went walking in the woods for an hour, and after that I made chocolate chip cookies and spent the evening with my family.

But is it bragging for me to admit that? Or is it expressing gratitude? Of course, the fact that one person said she doesn’t like hearing about how happy other people are doesn’t make it uniformly wrong, but her opinion means something to me. I’m well aware of how many people face challenges that I don’t, or for whatever reason have not found themselves in the same fortunate circumstances I have. Is my being happy anathema to their sense of well-being?

I don’t know the answer. As I said at the outset, I was surprised that she said she didn’t like to read about other people’s happiness. I don’t think any the worse of my friend for her honesty. And even knowing that one person might be made to feel worse than necessary for my posts initially made me hold back from writing about yesterday’s pleasures.

But actually, I don’t think my expressions of gratitude are necessarily what she was talking about anyway. I wasn’t bragging about my children’s successes or my vacation plans. I was just taking pleasure in an ordinary day. And my guess is that she would understand that – the gratitude itself, and the good intent behind it.

Lessons in happiness - from without and from within

During my run yesterday, I listened to a Talk of the Nation podcast from last week in which guest host Andrea Seabrook interviewed CBS News national correspondent Jim Axelrod about his new book, "In the Long Run: A Father, a Son, and Unintentional Lessons in Happiness.”

In a way, it was a familiar story: middle-aged man comes to an epiphany regarding the fact that he has reached a significant (and long-sought) level of professional success but sacrificed his physical health, his family life and his general well-being in the process. And in a way, the path Axelrod followed to remedy his problems were familiar too: he started training for a marathon, cut back on work commitments, and spent a lot more time with his children.

Still, sometimes it’s the repetition of familiar, even archetypal, stories that seems to resonate most, at least for me. As if hearing something repeatedly is what it takes to buy into the story’s importance and relevance.

One of the most useful implications in Axelrod’s story, from my perspective, was the point that it really helps to identify your personal priorities. I wrote earlier this summer about looking to my kids to figure out what’s fun – this is similar, but it’s about being able to defend to your own conscience just what matters to you. Or sometimes not being able to defend it, but making it an ongoing goal to reach the point where you can. Another topic I’ve written about a lot lately is feeling overwhelmed with – and resentful of – volunteer commitments. I still can’t defend to my conscience why the right thing for me to do is to shed some of these responsibilities, which seem important and worthwhile but only serve to annoy me when the time comes to execute on them.

One reason that the week I spent in Colorado last month was so meaningful to me was that it provided the ideal Petrie dish as far as experimenting with where my priorities truly lay. On my own, without my family to care for, my house to maintain, or my friendships and other daily social interactions to nurture, I could become self-absorbed, attending only to that which truly mattered to me.

And what I ended up doing with my time during those glorious, luxurious, wide-open six days wasn’t so much a revelation as a confirmation. It turned out I was right, all those times when I sat in church meetings or carpool lines telling myself that if I had no other responsibilities at this moment, here’s what I would be doing. I spent tons of time outdoors in physical fitness pursuits: biking, hiking, running, power-walking. I pursued writing assignments along with unassigned writing projects. I attended almost, but not quite, as many of the author talks and panels at the Aspen writers’ conference as I possibly could – once in a while I opted for another hike or leisurely stroll through town instead of the lecture hall, and that too helped me define my priorities. I kept up with the newspaper and tried to fit in some additional pleasure reading as well.

In “real life,” as opposed to escapes from real life like the Colorado trip, my primary responsibility is to my children. They are still young, and I consider caring for them to be my highest priority right now. But in order to pursue happiness, as Jim Axelrod pointed out, it helps to identify one’s other priorities as well. I’ve decided that not only volunteering but also yoga and editing jobs are less important to me than I once thought. I’ve also decided that opportunities to write, hike, bike and read are and will probably continue to be vital sources of happiness and inspiration. And as Jim Axelrod explained and many of the show’s callers supported, crystallizing those issues is a critical step in the process of self-actualization.