How to be Happy: A Refresher Course

Before you read any further, let me begin by making it clear that not only do I have no expertise in the field of mental health but I am also aware that there is quite a bit of evidence to prove that I am not a very good happiness role model. I have chosen to put this on the table, right in the beginning, in order to keep us from being dragged into the exhausting quagmire that would surely result from even the smallest amount of research into my daily moods.

Because I am someone who was raised in a family that prided itself on maintaining a steady, unbreakable level of gloom, my working definition of happiness has, until now, always been “Any time that you are not in the middle of something miserable, you are experiencing happiness. Congratulations.” But today, for purposes of this piece, I am going to attempt to broaden this definition for all of our sakes.

Obviously, ‘happiness’ is difficult to define because everyone experiences it differently. My favorite example of this phenomenon can be found in the classic Frank Capra comedy, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” a movie I somehow avoided watching until recently. (Probably because no one could believe I hadn’t seen it and it was becoming a personal point of pride.) However, once I finally sat down to watch it, I was taken by its vivid illustrations of how my version of a happy life was Frank Capra’s vision of a gut-wrenching tragedy.

The example to which I am referring takes place while the angel who is showing the Jimmy Stewart character, George Bailey, how sad life would be if he had never been born, finally gets browbeaten into revealing to George how life without him would have turned out for his devoted wife Mary. Because this is definitely a pivotal scene, you can be sure that when Frank Capra created this piece of the plot, he was keenly aware that it would be necessary for him to place Mary in the midst of the worst imaginable fate in order to make his point resonate. She was a critical piece of the puzzle that made George Bailey re-evaluate everything.

So when George demands to know “Where is Mary?” the angel, at first reluctant to tell him the truth, begins to speak in a voice filled with agony. It is meant to cue us that something truly sad has happened to Mary. What can it be? Has she been kidnapped by psychotic meth addicts, then beaten to death with a rake, and left to rot in a shallow grave?

“You’re not going to like this, George,” says the angel, so overwhelmed by emotion he can hardly bring himself to spit out the truth. “She’s an old maid. She never married. SHE’S JUST ABOUT TO CLOSE UP THE LIBRARY.” And underneathe his words, we hear an alarming musical sting that slides into the medium shot of Mary as she exits her place of employment.

So there she is, looking well-groomed and fit, dressed in a smart little tweed two- piece suit and sporting a very nice pair of rimless glasses, (almost identical to the pair I picked out for myself just yesterday!)

Here is Mary living her life without George. But she is not smiling. Can you guess why? I don’t know why I am asking you…You’ve already seen the movie a dozen times.

Upon seeing this scene, my first thought was “Wow. What an interesting, progressive plot twist! I wasn’t expecting to hear that Mary did okay for herself without George!” That was before I realized that Frank Capra had deprived Mary of the lipstick she is wearing in every other scene in the film. To make (what he apparently felt) was matters worse, he has dressed her in what today’s fashion websites would call “A boyfriend blazer” with a fetching color-coordinated hat. Upon examining this wardrobe choice a little more closely, we notice that it is similar to the one Jimmy Stewart’s character is wearing in the rest of the movie because it is a subtle way of warning the audience that something is terribly wrong with this picture. (Ed. Note: This was thirty some odd years before Gloria Steinem was famously quoted boasting “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.”)

Here is George Bailey in a smiliar outfit.

Now let’s have a look at the face Jimmy Stewart makes when he hears the horrifying news of Mary’s fate and watches her exit her place of employment.

He is totally horrified. That is because Frank Capra’s vision of a life so tragic that it is practically not worth living has Mary, apparently in good health and looking spiffy, heading home to what might be a perfectly nice house full of artfully arranged furnishings she picked out and paid for herself because there was no one to argue with her. For all we know, she loves her job as a librarian. Maybe she thinks of the library as a happy place full of many of the best books ever written, and the people who want to read them! But none of that counts because she is single. Nothing else matters.

The Hell Hole….framed with ice, snow and the spooky shadows of leafless trees.

That I initially misread the intentions of this scene in this classic, ageless and beloved film was a jarring reminder to me of how out-of-sync my instincts can be. I believe that makes me what is known as “an unreliable narrator”. That is why I decided it would be a good idea, in this discussion of happiness, to try to broaden my view by consulting the many, many, carefully numbered charts full of rules, habits and tips about happiness that the internet offers.

PHASE ONE: A DAY AT A TIME

To begin, I decided to try placing my happiness quotient in the capable hands of a famous greeting card company by purchasing their “365 Days of Happiness” desk calendar. And I have to admit, just the act of handing over the enormous responsibility of maintaining happiness to a large, solvent corporation made me begin to feel happier right away.

Day One started out strong with this, my first suggestion.

Bingo! What a great idea it was to kickstart a radical shift in perspective.

That was my thought until I realized that by taking this idea seriously, I was also causing myself to spiral into a depression. “Oh God,” I thought,” Here I felt so well when I first woke up. And now, before I have even had my cup of coffee, I am faced with this kind of earth shattering news. How am I supposed to become happier while looking down the barrel of my very last day on earth? Maybe what I should really do is drop everything and move to Rochester, Minnesota to be as close as possible to the Mayo Clinic?”

After I calmed myself down, I decided that the thing that best served my quest for happiness was to throw away this first suggestion and simply advance to Day 2.

‘Sensational!” I thought, as I read this second suggestion to myself, “My life has just begun and look at the progress I am making already!! Here I am, just one day old and already a home owner! Plus, this time around, I am starting out with the verbal skills of an adult! In my last life, it took me six months just to learn to pronounce the word “cookie.” But in this, my new life, all I will have to do is show up anywhere in a diaper and read a few passages outloud from anything and I will instantly be acknowledged as the most incredible one day old baby who has ever lived!”

The only detail that struck me as a little bit concerning was the rate at which I already appeared to be aging. Because if what I was seeing in the mirror was my starting point at day one, how decrepit was I going to be by the time I hit highschool? “I’m going to be far too haggard to earn a proper place among the cool kids in the in-crowd hierarchy.” I thought, growing ever more despondent,“And no way I’ll ever get any dates. Plus in every school play, I’ll never get cast as anything but the grandmother.” And that was when it hit me: even with all these new day-one advantages, everything was going to turn out exactly the way it did the last time.

This was the point at which I decided to abandon the desk calendar entirely and move on to more user-friendly happiness guidance.

PHASE TWO: THE LISTS

In this phase, my plan was to take advantage of the seemingly infinite quantity of readily available internet happiness charts. And voila! In no time at all, I discovered that there was a separate chart full of happiness tips for every number between 1 and 30.

Here are tip groups numbering from one to seven.

And here are some of the lists for numbers 8-17.

The one thing that all of the lists, no matter the number, seem to agree upon is gratitude. Most of them also endorse ‘positivity’, ‘optimism’ and ‘meditation’. But as the number of tips becomes lengthier, they all begin to sound like a nagging parent: Eat right! Stand up straight! Smile! Do some exercise! Get more sleep! Get your hair out of your eyes!

Once we move into the double digit lists, they appear to have been faced with the desperate need for padding. In fact, the only way the author of “TWENTY Ways to Be Happier” was able to get all the way to twenty was to include several well-known happiness destroyers: #4: Go for a cup of coffee and people watch. And #19: Check out the news. Obviously, there is not a single soul living on planet earth right now who can stay in touch with anything remotely like happiness after agreeing to do the latter.

I don’t know what the author of “SIXTY Simple Habits for a Profoundly Happier Life” was on when he compiled his/her list but “Clean regularly” and “Be more conscious when you shop” are not only scraping the bottom of the happiness barrel but also painting a weird portrait of the audience for whom these tips are intended. Then there is #3, which is“Wake Up Earlier” and is a very bad suggestion if you are talking to me, a person who already gets up at 5:00 a.m..

So what did I learn from this reading-of-all-the-happiness-lists-in-the-world from one to sixty? Well, it is this: the best way to find the list that fits your needs is by throwing some dice

Now type whatever number comes up into your favorite search engine. And follow the tips that go with that number, no matter what they turn out to be..

By using this method, I was able to locate the following list and it has turned out to be a godsend.

Though to be honest, I am already ignoring tip number one, since the idea of always smiling seems like a good way to make people think you are psychotic. But as it also turns out, I am absolutely GREAT at tip number three. And I find Happy Potato to be as direct a route to happiness as any.

IN CLOSING: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

It’s The One Year Anniversary of this, my substack page (which, by the way, is still entirely free.) Somehow during that year I posted SIXTY EIGHT (68) pieces and only a few were from my personal archive. Most of the 68 were NEW!! I have to admit that I’m impressed with myself for cranking out so much content just trying to live up to my completely self-imposed substack deadline. I think it helped that I am a person who has spent her whole life obeying deadlines so life feels somehow incomplete without a deadline looming. And anyway, it’s always been the finding of premises to write that have not been thoroughly digested by everyone else on the internet that is the really hard part.

A short review of my substack year reveals that “Women No Longer Have Any Idea How to Eat Cake” (which I wrote almost a year ago, in July ‘23) was the piece that got the most LIKES. But “Bob Dylan’s Christmas Lights, a Scholarly Treatise” which I posted last December, got the most views (because…um….:the fan base of Bob Dylan will apparently read anything that contains the words Bob and Dylan.) A close runner up in terms of views was “Women Who Write Lying on their Stomachs” (June ‘23) (which got a boost from the great cartoonist Ruben Bolling but did not receive even a tiny bit of help from Bob Dylan .)

In closing, what have I learned by being on Substack for a year? Well, I have learned that it is unnerving to be continually confronting and examining stats after posting a piece of writing. On the bright side, it can be kind of delightful to see that new people are subscribing. But on the darker side, it can be kind of unsettling to see that people are leaving. But the truth is that I never had either kind of adrenaline rush when I published my work in print. In that format, once I submitted my work to a publisher, I might never again hear a reaction of any kind from anyone. It was a bit like putting a message into a bottle and then throwing it into the sea. So I want to also add that I have enjoyed the chance, here on substack, to chat with some of the people who have read my work. It’s nice to know that they actually exist.

This brings me to my final tip on how to be happy: Just say you are, and leave it at that. No one is going to argue with you. If you say you are happy, then you are happy. And that is as good a path to happiness as any.

Except maybe Happy Potato.