An Algorithm for Happiness
Feast your eyes on the new, German-made fermentation crock
my husband bought this week. It’s the real deal, designed simply and smartly to
hold and protect whatever food you’re fermenting, while looking very
amazing on the kitchen counter. I lifted it once; it probably weighs about 20
pounds. Solid as a rock.
My husband wants homemade pickles. He loves pickles, and he’s very fussy about them: not too soft, not too firm; sour but too much so;
soft-skinned; and spicy, but not hot. I’ve never known anyone who valued a
pickle more than him.
I’m into kimchi and sauerkraut. But this beauty would also
work for making coconut yogurt, kefir, and jun. I think it’s going to get a lot
of use.
We had big snow yesterday, and
everyone was released from work early. I headed home, climbed under a blanket
with our dog, read, and relaxed. Heavy snow blew sideways outside. I drew the
blanket up under my chin, and sipped hot tea.
Often, I’ll find myself snuggly
and warm on a day like yesterday – at home, comfy and dry, my pup by my side,
my husband an arm’s length away. We have great food to eat, lots of hot,
soothing tea, and a fire in the living room. We have each other’s presence.
We also have the typical
worries, concerns, and burdens of a working-class couple, but we’re
not cold, hungry, abandoned, or alone. We don’t have wealth or celebrity or any
manner of excess, but we have what we need - and a little more. In short, we’re
good.
Physicist and author Steven Hawking
has died. ‘A Brief History of Time’, released in the late 1980s, was the book
that triggered my interest in theoretical physics and started me on a lifetime
of inquiry. This is the book that got me thinking outside the limits of my own
experiences. I was turned on to the interconnectedness of everything, and what the
cosmos shows us about ourselves.
I was shocked to hear he was
gone, but also grateful for what Hawking’s work did: it reached out to the
ordinary person – the common man like myself – and laid to waste the notion of
‘mineness’. He wrote clearly and convincingly about the strange and beautiful
harmony of the universe, and the interrelatedness of it all. We are all at the center of some incredible network. The things I say and do don't spell just my fate, but the fate of everything that exists. This book of his
became the call to action for my own personal journey.
Hawking also taught me not to dwell in regret. Diagnosed with ALS early in life, he endured the
slow and steady decline of his body. Dealt a lousy hand, Hawking didn’t dwell on his disease, but instead blossomed into one of the
most important people of his time. Life, as hard as it had become, was meaningful.
He set the example for dealing with what we have when there’s no other choice. What
a triumph.
So anyway, this - in tandem
with yesterday’s muse on the couch - got me to thinking again today about happiness.
The longer I live, the more I see that the algorithm is very straightforward: happiness
is not about what the world gives me. Happiness is about how I view what the
world gives me. A simple equation. That's it.
My husband and I have no money
to hop a plane and go where it’s warm and sunny until this long winter passes, or even for a weekend.
But we have a soft couch, warm blankets, and hot tea on a snowy afternoon. We
have each other’s company, hopes for the future, and opportunities to be of
service to others. We can express compassion, empathy, and love to everything that lives. We can live life joyously, as it's meant to be lived. If we move this awareness to the part of our mind that recognizes the goodness of these things, then it’s more than enough. We’re happy. We’re all set.
Barbie xo
