“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence” Aristotle

The recent opening of time in my life has shined a light on this ancient and wise perception of life’s meaning. Relaxing the tempo opened up a golden moment of togetherness today at the lake with my four children and one of their oldest friends. We sat on a giant floatie in the middle of a beautiful nearby lake. Having all the kids together these days in a shared activity is increasingly rare as they get older and all the more special for its infrequence.

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“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need….” -Rolling Stones

This song starts to play in my head at interesting moments. Lately it is on instant replay as I sort through current events and try to organize them in categories of what I want and what I need. Here again I seem to be proving the Daniel Gilbert’s theory  of Stumbling Around Happiness, which demonstrates that we humans have as little accuracy in remembering what happened in the past as we do at predicting how we will feel in the future. Our mental filters are selective in both directions and our belief that our experience is unique prevents us from really learning from others about things, which we have no experience.

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“I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of wellbeing. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the principal source of success in life. Since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. The key is to develop inner peace.” -Dalai Lama

The day was marked by ease and grace. I am in travel mode, on the road to a medical convention to share the wonders of Good Clean Love. These travel days can be stressful with so many details and unknowns mingling together; I have had many days, when what should have been easy was incredibly challenging, and other days like today, when things are so easy, that it seems just my presence is enough to make things click.

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“When people think of ‘science’, they naturally think of atoms, planets, robots — things they can touch and see. They know that subjective experiences such as happiness are important, but they believe that such experiences can’t be studied scientifically. That belief is dead wrong.” – Daniel Gilbert.

I often think about Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness when I find myself in exactly the situation he described in the book. Based on his work in the research science lab at Harvard in “affective forecasting,” which investigates how well people make predictions about the emotional impact of future events, the results of our collective capacity on knowing what we want and how it will make you feel is not promising. Humans are not terribly successful at predicting the reactions of our future selves to our current desires.

Our brains and our eyes mislead us. They conspire together to support each other in believing the distortions of reality to fit our expectations. Gilbert explains: “Distorted views of reality are made possible by the fact that experiences are ambiguous­, that is, they can be credibly viewed in many ways, some of which are more positive than others. To ensure that our views are credible, our brain accepts what our eye sees. To ensure that our views are positive, our eye looks for what our brain wants. The conspiracy between these two servants allows us to live at the fulcrum of stark reality and comforting illusion.”

What this all means to me tonight is that like most of us, it is hard to remember that the life we are having is precisely the one we choose, and frequently have worked very hard to maintain. But then you look around and realize that you thought it would feel differently, having achieved what you wanted. I am on the brink of some big changes in my work life and with my family. My children growing up and away still need to be attended as much as they want their freedom and the balance of contact is precarious and unpredictable for both sides.

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“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” -Mahatma Gandhi

Today should not have required so much effort to stay positive about the changes in life. The interesting thing is how something that you really wanted presents limitations that you didn’t include in the vision of having your desired outcome. Change feels harder than you think even when you precipitate the change yourself.
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“Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all” –William Faulkner

I like the idea that gratitude exists in the world like an electric current. The more that it is expressed and experienced, the more energy that gratitude builds. I know I am not alone in having felt appreciation for someone’s help or effort and not expressed my gratitude for their thoughtfulness or trouble. Do other people experience our gratitude when nothing is shared? It has been said that silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone and as I think of the moments when I walked away without communicating my gratitude it did feel a little like a short circuit in the energy of life.

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“We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” -Paul Bowles

This thought often is my wake up call in life. It occurs to me when I am in the midst of a moment that is true. Today my son, on the brink of becoming a much older version of himself, walked with me around the park and lamented about all the time that my work takes up, away from him. I reminded him of the days he is gone with his friends, and the hours that I spend accompanying him to his athletic events, but still he was sad and hardened by a feeling of missing something.

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“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” -Havelock Ellis

Today was a closet purge. I finally packed up all of the size 10 pants and jeans that no longer close around my waist. I have been waiting to fit into these clothes for at least two years now, if not three. Some still had their tags on, so I know I must have been close to that size not long ago. It is a little discouraging, given my regular exercise routine and that I actually am conscious about what I eat. It is alas the inexorable march into midlife; my body, like the skin on my neck, is changing, too.

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“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” ~G.K. Chesterton

In a houseful of teenagers, preteens and young adults I rarely know how many there will be for dinner. It could be as small as the three of us left, or as many as twelve with the steady boyfriend or girlfriend, or the clan of boys surrounding my younger son. It is rare, however for it to be all four of the kids and my husband and I. The last time we had any consistent time as a family unit was last Christmas when we spent two weeks in Hawaii. I treasure the moments when it is all of us, if only because I see the writing on the wall and I know that these times will increasingly become the family holiday.

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“A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” ~Lois Wyse

Lunch today with my friend Lucy was a great gift. Our friendship started through the friendship of our sons and has grown well past theirs. She is one of the most optimistic realists I have ever known. Ever the voice of thoughtful reason, her positive spin on the facts have directed large-scale local political campaigns, tamed wild spirited teenage insanity and put her dear husband to rest way before his time.

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