Joy: No Longer Just for Dishsoap

My father is one of the happiest guys you've ever met. He's the man of eternal sunshine. I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't just take to him right off the bat. He practically emits little rays of smiley-face essence from his pores, much like a jolly Buddha. He finds the good in every situation, every person and every broken-down, thrown-away piece of junk that's ever existed. I've never known him to be judgemental or unkind. To some extent, his affability makes him gullible, but this just adds to the aura of lovableness that follows him around. My dad has been diagnosed with Leukemia, and has been lying in the hospital taking chemo for a month now. Yet he smiled at me yesterday and said, "life doesn't get much better than this, Sis." That's the kind of man my Dad is.

So I ask you: what makes you happy? Careful, this is a trick question. Know why? Because nothing makes you happy. Now, I know I sound like a man having a fight with his wife, but bear with me here. It's an issue of semantics. Let's suppose that I say puppies make me happy. See it's not really about the puppies. It's that the puppy produces a sensation inside me that is pleasurable. Let's say that I tell you money makes me happy. But it doesn't really. If I was stranded on a desert island a bajillion miles from civilization, all the money in the world wouldn't make me nearly as happy as a crate of Skippy peanut butter. It is not about the money, it's about what I do with the money and how that makes me feel on the inside. What if I say it's my spouse or having great sex that makes me happy. Well, they don't really do that either. If I found out my spouse was having sex with my best friend, then I wouldn't be very happy (especially since my best friend is a guy...). What makes me happy is how I feel in response to him, within a very narrowly defined set of parameters. Marriages end all the time because people change, and because what makes us happy is completely impermanent. Same with sex. Even though it might make me really happy to have sex right now, if I was stuck in a burning building, I could probably care less whether or not I was going to get laid in the next fifteen minutes. Or if I had pneumonia. Sex probably wouldn't make me nearly as happy as a bottle of Nyquil.

So you see, this teaches us two very important lessons about joy and happiness:

1) It is a futile endeavor to expect our external property and experiences to fulfill our internal needs. Happiness is not produced out there, it's produced in the mind, in the soul - on the inside. This is why there are some people who are never happy, no matter what's going on, and then there are people who can be just as happy while they're dieing of Leukemia in the hospital as they are when they're doing anything else. It's all in your head, man. Beauty can be found in the ugliest setting. Happiness is a choice, maybe even a habit, of seeing things in one light rather than another, and that is all it is. Of course, there are circumstances that make us unhappy: life is full of tragedy. But I mean in a general sense, a day-to-day sense. Grief is a part of everyone's life at some stage, but you choose whether or not it becomes a permanent part of your everyday life.

2) Joy is momentary. Now, this may sound like the cliche about happiness is fleeting, but it's a little bit different concept. What I mean is that happiness occurs from moment to moment. This is another reason that nothing outside of you can make you happy. What seems to bring you happiness right now will not make you happy forever. A puppy that makes you happy right now can make you very unhappy if he attacks your mailman or eats your favorite pair of pumps or digs up the bushes you spent all day yesterday planting. Money can make you very unhappy if you get sued or divorced or have to work through your children's school plays. The thing that seems to make you happy right now gives no guarantee of making you happy tomorrow.

This is the secret. Happiness is an internal process, and the harder you try to make it an external one, the more you're setting yourself up for disappointment. This means that it is completely possible to be happy no matter what your circumstances are. Read that again. How many of you really believe that? Those few that do are the ones that will be happy; the rest of you will always find something lacking, something missing. You will spend your whole life thinking, "just over that next ridge I will find my happiness. Once I find that thing or fix this thing, or get rid of that person, or make more money... then I will be happy." Your happiness will always be fleeting and you will grow old and bitter wondering why. Joy lives in the moment - joy IS a moment - and it asks nothing more of the moment than what's already there. Can you do the same?