Happiness: A Miracle? Or Scientifically Predictable?

Thanks to a passionate lesson in poetry from Anne Loecher, I now know the answer is — both.

Anne introduced her happiness poetry workshop by sharing the poem titled “Happiness“, by Jane Kenyon.  The poem begins:

“There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.“

Immediately I felt the need to interrupt.  “But Anne,” I said, “there is so accounting for happiness.  Scientists have researched happiness, and can say what leads to greater happiness, and what undermines it.  Happiness isn’t that mysterious.”

Balloon happiness

Fortunately, Anne was patient with me.  She gently but firmly suggested I try being a little less literal, that I listen for the magic, for the beauty, for the musicality, for the miraculous.  And, fortunately, I had the good sense to take a deep breath and try again.

The poem goes on:

“And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
       It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.”

Gorgeous.  Stunning.

Of course, I could say, equality in life circumstances is crucial to happiness.  That is, if you are a monk in a cell, and you have more or less the same amount of possessions and quality of life as those around you, you can settle into happiness — though a monk coveting the possessions of a handsome young wealthy neighbor would be less happy.  Or, I could suggest many specific reasons why that clerk is happy.  Or question the viability of genuine happiness for the pusher.  Etc.

Or …  I could and did decide to just sit with the beauty of the poem, savor the poet’s insight, and appreciate the ineffable and unknowable qualities of happiness.  For me, this revelation also opened my heart to the value of poetry itself, more open than I’ve been since my teens.  It was a transforming moment.

Our conversation about Jane Kenyon’s poem reminded me of a recent feed from the online service, The Daily Good, which explored the scientific underpinnings of Bobby McFarrin’s classic song, “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”  According to that article, McFarrin got the “why” just right.  And yet … perhaps the mere existence of that brilliant piece of art is nothing short of miraculous.

To be clear, given our messy and unhappy world, particularly the threats posed by climate change, I believe it is critically important to individually and collectively understand the scientific underpinnings of happiness much, much better than we do.  We need this understanding as a guide for making wiser choices than our GDP-obsessed culture currently presses on us.

And, thanks to poetry, I have been reminded of the wisdom in both approaches to happiness.  Yes, it is miraculous.  Yes, it can be scientifically understood, quantified, and predicted.   Just typing those two sentences makes me smile.  How cool to hold both concepts as valid!

Here’s something else that’s smile-inducing: a link to the Daily Good article analyzing “Don’t Worry Be Happy”  and, a video of Bobby McFarrin the song itself:   http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=105  Together, they prove the point quite nicely!

The Happiness Poetry Project

In his brilliant book, The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World, environmental activist and academic Paul Gilding writes that we are headed toward a “happiness economy.”

Of course, we won’t get there easily.  Systems and individuals alike are heavily, heavily invested in the growth economy and will not give up gently.  Gilding posits that economic and environmental disasters will inevitably force the change.  In his discussion of the transition “away from our current obsession with personal material wealth,” he states:

“We need to start thinking now about what this new economy is going to look and feel like.  I don’t harbor any delusions that we’re going to move to this in the next few years, but we are going to at some point, so the more we consider, debate, and experiment with the ideas involved, the better off we’ll be when the time comes.”  (p. 200)

In other words, as I see it, building the new happiness paradigm will take an enormous amount of creativity, from countless numbers of us, each in our own way.

Yesterday, two visionary members of the Vermont legislature — Representative Susi Wizowaty (D) and Senator Anthony Pollina (P) — introduced a series of forward-looking bills, including one to use a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to guide budgetary policy decisions.  I think of GPI — which the state of Maryland already uses — as sort of a politically acceptable way to sell the Gross National Happiness concept to lawmakers.

So that’s one way.  Encouraging wide-ranging and collaborative thinking through the arts is another way — one more suited to me, that’s for sure.  The idea of zeroing in on poetry specifically came from discussions with my good friend and across-the-street neighbor Anne Loecher, who just received her M.F.A. in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts last week.  With her as a resource, launching a Happiness Poetry Project is a natural choice.   Through this project, we can more deeply and yet playfully explore what each of us thinks happiness looks like for individuals, the community, and Planet Earth.

Poet Anne Loecher, discussing ways to kick-off The Happiness Poetry Project

The project, which we will officially kick-off at The Happiness Paradigm Store and Experience in Maple Corner on January 21st from 11 AM to 3 PM, will give Anne a chance to share some of her knowledge.  She will give provide potential poets of all ages and skill levels with ideas, information about structuring poems, inspiration, and generally good vibes.  I’ll pass out my list of 18 happiness tips.  And, Anne is  adding extra happiness to the day by offering to bake chocolate chip cookies!

In 2011, David Budbill, an accomplished and popular poet from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, published Happy Life.  His poems are personal reflections, yet seem to fit well with a happiness economy paradigm that measures a life well lived according to one’s work, family, community, time in nature, and simple pleasures.

With the Happiness Poetry Project, we can all take a turn.  Haikus, sonnets, limericks — whatever suits your fancy.  You can be whimsical or exceedingly serious.  And you don’t need to live anywhere near Vermont, much less Maple Corner, to join this project.  Just email your contributions to: Happinessparadigm@gmail.com.

I’m also going to try my hand at writing happiness poetry.  I wrote reams of poetry in high school, and again in my mid-20′s — until an acquaintance who taught poetry termed my work simplistic and one-dimensional.  The heck with that kind of thinking!  Now is the time to encourage creativity, not quash it.  I’ll be brave. How about you?

Contemplating happiness poetry will benefit us individually, also, by helping us focus on what we really care about.  In Living A Life That Matters, Rabbi Harold Kushner writes of “a Native American tribal leader describing his own inner struggles.  He said, ‘There are two dogs inside me.  One of the dogs is mean and evil.  The other dog is good.  The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.’  Someone asked him which dog usually wins, and after a moment’s reflection, he answered, ‘The one I feed the most.’” (p.58-59)

To me, this story is all about where we put our energy, our thoughts, and our time.  Thus, even though I’m a cat owner, I have to say, let’s feed our happiness dogs with some good poetry thoughts.

Vermont Does Happiness

From the Statehouse to the school house, Vermonters are on the happiness path!

Two days from when I’m writing this, there will be a big press conference in Montpelier announcing three new visionary ways for lawmakers to “Build a Better Budget.”  Representative Suzi Wizowaty (D) and Senator Anthony Pollina (P) will introduce three new bills.  The first one proposes a Genuine Progess Indicator, much like a Gross National Happiness paradigm for policy making.  Indeed, GNHUSA co-coordinator Tom Barefoot will speak at the press conference.

The "Golden Dome" that tops the Vermont Capitol Building

Bill number two will address income inequality.  As this brilliant TED talk by Richard Wilkinson illustrates, income inequality is perhaps the most corrosive threat to societal happiness.  http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html  We simply must, must address this threat to well being.  The income inequality gap is dragging us all down.

The third bill seeks to create an expert panel to to explore the development of  a State Bank in Vermont.  I frankly know next to nothing about this idea.  If you all have thoughts to share here, please do!

If you are in the Montpelier area, and want to stop by, you’re welcome to come to the press conference: January 17th, 2012, 1:00, in the Cedar Creek Room in the Statehouse.

Meanwhile, in the school house …

Liza Earle-Centers, a fifth and sixth grade teacher at Calais Elementary School, shared a poem compiled from her students’ writing after watching Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 speech.  I’d say their wisdom is a pretty good guide to a much happier world.  Here it is:

Our Dream
I have a dream that one day everyone will have a friend.
I have a dream that one day people who are poor will get homes and food.
I have a dream that one day all humans will be equal in money, and in health—that no one will be hungry or forced to work to death.
I have a dream that everyone will have food and water and that no one in this world will starve.

I have hope and faith we will be able to help endangered animals, give them homes and treat them well.
I have a dream that people will stop abusing animals.

I have a dream that one day everyone will be safe.
I have hope and faith that we will be able to adopt kids that need help, be there for them and give them care.
I have a dream that all kids will get their own rights and learn to have some kind of freedom.

I have a dream that one day all people will be nice to each other.
I have a dream that one day, everyone can just be friendly, not mean or hurtful.
I have a dream that we will stop the flow of harmful words.
I have a dream that one day we will stand up against bullying and that bullying will stop.
I have a dream that that the people who were getting bullied will be happy.

I have a dream that everyone, no matter what race, will be friends not foes.
I have a dream that one day there will be no nuclear bombs or nuclear power of any kind.
I have a dream that one day this nation will make peace with other nations.
I have a dream that one day this whole world will be in peace, and that angry wars will come to an end,

I have a dream that one day everyone will show the people of the world that they care about what they need.
I have a dream that one day our nation’s weak will be strong, and the strong will be stronger.
I have a dream that our nation will carry on together and with strength.

I have a dream that one day everyone will get along.

Along with the legislators, the children” words inspire hope in me that Vermont, at least, takes happiness seriously.

New Years Eve: Embrace Your Sadness

In my last post, I wrote of paradoxes.  Here’s another: to find genuine happiness, I believe it is important to accept — even embrace — your sadness.

This is a fundamental tenet for many spiritual leaders, in contrast to Western culture which encourages us to keep pain and suffering at bay.   The  Dalai Lama, for example, has written extensively on the intersection of happiness and suffering.  In The Art of Happiness, he observes that while upbeat Western views  can lead to “a happier and healthier life … the inevitable arising of suffering undermines these beliefs  … (Even) a relatively minor trauma can have a massive psychological impact as one loses faith in one’s basic believes … (and) suffering is intensified.” (p.147)

My mediation training also illuminated the importance of “leaning into the thorns,” as instructor Alice Estey put it.   Shining a light on difficult issues (there’s that mindfulness piece again!) provides the opportunity to get to the root of conflict — or any other source of sadness.  Appreciating the cause of pain is a good first step toward fixing or ameliorating the problem.

Sadness can even be a building block for happiness.  Through the commonality of suffering, we build relationships, community, and compassion.  It is sadness that provides the backdrop which allows moments of happiness to glow.

I had the opportunity to personally appreciate these benefits a few weeks ago when I woke up deep in the blues.  In addition to my own disappointments, I have a large family and many friends — some of whom were in the midst of crisis. It all weighed heavily on me that day.  I didn’t feel hopeless, and I didn’t feel like wallowing or being sorry for myself.  I was just sad.

I decided to write about my sadness on Facebook because I like to share my genuine emotions on my FB page.  Also, I don’t want anyone to think my focus on happiness means I believe anybody, me included, should try to be chipper all the time.

Immediately, I got that sweet boost of support Facebook friends can provide.   Simply, I felt the love — but I was still sad.  I read all my friends’ lovely messages, and just wanted to cry.  Obviously, I needed to embrace my sadness.

When I arrived at yoga that evening, still on the verge of tears, the most amazing thing happened.  A yoga classmate had a present for me.  Liz Snell said she and her husband John had thought of me when they were at a craft fair in July and spotted small, handmade happiness quote books.  Now, on this dark early winter night, she gave me the one they bought for me (pictured above).  I was surprised, moved, and grateful.

No doubt, if Liz had given me the book on a sunny summer evening when I was riding the wave of a good mood, I would have sincerely appreciated the gift — but not in the same way.  Now, every time I look at the book, or read from it, I have tangible proof that I am not alone in sorrow.  That is so, so comforting.

Giving from the heart, and receiving heartfelt gifts, are both manifestations of compassion.  I’ll close this blog with an observation on how suffering builds compassion from one of my all time favorite spiritual books, Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life, by longtime yoga teacher and Yoga Journal columnist Judith Lasater.  I love Lasater’s book because it’s so real, completely accessible — yet profound at the same time.  In the chapter on compassion, Lasater writes:

“The old axiom wins out.  Charity begins at home.  So, too, with compassion.  You must begin with yourself.  To be compassionate toward others, you must first understand that you suffer.  This awareness allows you to see that others suffer, too, and to respond with clarity to this condition, which is shared by all living beings.” (p.51)

So, to all you living beings, from another — here’s a heartfelt wish for a happy — and sad — New Year!

So Many Ways to Be Happy

I love paradoxes, including this one: happiness is unique AND happiness is universal.  A chalkboard in front of The Happiness Paradigm A-frame captures individual responses to the question, “What makes YOU happy?”  Some of the recent answers have been doggie kisses; ukuleles; snow; Baby Charlie; and video games.  Not everyone likes video games or, if you can believe it, ukuleles.  And most of you don’t even know who Baby Charlie is!

But happiness research, which started, oh, around the time of Aristotle, has found consistent paths to happiness.  Some of those ideas are captured quite pithily in a book my sister Peggy sent me, The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It,” by David Niven, copyright 2001.    For example, # 16 is “Believe in Yourself.”  #17, however, is “Don’t Believe in Yourself Too Much.”  Gotta love it.

In England, the New Economics Foundation — originators of the Happy Planet Index — has developed five keys to happiness: lifelong learning, connection with others, mindfulness, physical activity, and giving to others.  There’s a lot of good information at their website.

The Pursuit of Happiness project — a group of academics with a mission of teaching us all to be happier, has seven correlates to happiness: relationships, caring, exercise, spiritual engagement, positive thinking, flow, and strengths and virtues.  Click on the science of happiness tab at their website  http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/ for a fuller explanation.

Bhutan‘s Gross National Happiness policy grid for determining whether policies will actually lead to greater well being for the Bhutanese has nine pillars and 72 indicators. Most of these measurements fit well with our western culture.

Much more simply, I recently read that there are just three happiness fundamentals: feel good, do good, and be good.  Voila!  That’s all there is to it!

Happiness Inspiration Cards

I’m not a scientist or an academic, but based on my reading (including all the fine resources above), I’ve developed my own list of 18 happiness tips that are, hopefully, both accessible and personally meaningful.  I’m embedding these tips in handmade paper, illustrated with snippets from magazines and catalogues, that I turn into happiness inspiration cards and greeting cards. Here’s my list, in no particular order:

1. Connect with others: a few close friends, or a large community.

2. Eat well, & get a good night’s sleep.

3. Give from the heart! Helping others makes us happy, too.

4. There’s so much to be grateful for!  Be sure to say thanks.

5. Stay physically active. Take care of your body!

6. Play, hike, dig, breathe, swim, ski: connect with nature.

7. Get in the flow: create, exercise, sing, concentrate.

8. Measure your happiness.  Truly! We focus more on things we measure.

9. Foster a positive outlook.  Optimists are happier!

10. Resilience: bounce back when bad stuff happens (‘cause it will).

11.  Be creative! Write, garden, solve problems, paint, dance, cook!

12.  Be a lifelong learner – ie, keep exercising your brain!

13.  Mindfulness: Be aware of the world around you, and within you.

14. What are you good at? Work from a place of strength.

15. Happiness is universal AND unique. What makes YOU happy?

16. Tread lightly on Earth.  If Mother Nature ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

17.  Have a purpose. A meaningful life is a life with meaning.

18. Nurture your spirituality, whatever that means to you.

Phew!!  So many ways to be happy!  I’m sure you all have more, and I would love to hear what they are.

Is Shopping Bad?

Having just opened a store, albeit a highly unconventional one, I think you can safely assume that I do not believe shopping is bad — not entirely, at any rate.

Shopping has been getting a lot of negative attention lately.    This year’s Black Friday videos were disgusting and distressing –  particularly the one of the woman who couldn’t stop to pull up her pants lest she lose out on a $2.00 waffle iron.   Our cultural obsession with accumulating more stuff is not making us happier individually or collectively.  It also wreaking havoc on the environment.   If you haven’t yet watched “The Story of Stuff” http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/, I highly recommend you do so.  It will be 20 minutes well spent.

And it alternately makes me sad or pissed off to hear even National Public Radio extolling the glories of higher holiday shopping totals.  Yo, NPR, wake up: more Walmart sales are a nightmare.

Yet …  I think the shopping story is more complicated than that.  Many people — me included — find shopping to be a fun activity.  Farmer’s markets are highly social, and, I think beneficial to community well being.    Speaking of community building, this summer I participated in a community-wide yard sale, which was great fun.  Shoppers and sellers alike were all smiles.

Further, not all shopping afficionados can be easily pigeonholed.  For example,  a six year-old boy who I’ll call Max lives across the street.   His family is loving and attentive.  They are hard-working Vermonters who grow their own veggies, raise chickens and heat with firewood they cut and stack themselves.  And … Max loves to shop! When he came in my store, he excitedly told me that his town now has two stores!  (Our town is very small.)

I offered to teach Max how to make paper, but he was much more interested in shopping.  His mom finally went home, while Max continued to carefully consider every item in the store.  Eventually, he chose two flowers made from old produce wrappings.  Then he happily went home.

Sometimes I think people turn to shopping to fill a spiritual emptiness.  Or, to get another fix of the temporary high of a new purchase.

But maybe we’re hard wired to shop.  What if it’s part of our hunter-gatherer instincts, a basic survival skill?

In any case, I suspect we can more easily move toward a happier, more environmentally sustainable world if we create new — or recreate old — ways of shopping that honor the work of tradesman, artists, farmers, etc. while not adding to landfills and pollution.  When I look at the gnome caves (pictured above) that were crafted by Rob Smart, Maria Smart, and Hannah Smart from leftover materials, I am hard-pressed to see anything “bad” about selling them.

Perhaps, as with so many areas of our lives, the key to “good” shopping is mindfulness.   We need to be aware of our shopping choices, because the impact of poor shopping decisions can be extraordinarily negative — not only on our own unhappy psyches but on others we’ll never see or know.

In The Right Attitude to Rain, one of Alexander McCall Smith‘s Isabel Dalhousie books, Dalhousie’s ponderings remind me of the moral necessity for shopping mindfulness.   Dalhousie, a fictitious philosopher and editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, had published a discussion of “the lifeboat question.”  That is, if a ship is sinking and there are not enough lifeboats to go around, how do you decide who to save?

Then, Smith writes:

“…the focus moved on from real lifeboats, which were, fortunately, manned by sailors rather than philosophers, to the earth as lifeboat, which it was, in a way.  And here the issues became very much ones of the real world, Isabel thought, because real people did die every day, in very large numbers, because the resources of the lifeboat were not fairly distributed.  And if we might feel squeamish about throwing a real and immediate person out of a real lifeboat, then we had fewer compunctions about doing those things which had exactly that effect, somewhere far off, on people whom we did not know and could not name.  It was relentless and harrowing — if one ever came round to thinking about it — but most of our luxuries were purchased at the expense of somebody’s suffering and deprivation elsewhere.”  (p.221,The Right Attitude To Rain.)

I’d say it’s definitely time “to think about it.”  As my daughter might say, “For realz.”

Who’s the messenger? What’s the message?

Yesterday, listening to a discussion of the astonishing Russian protests against reportedly rigged elections, I couldn’t help but think of Mohammed Bouaziz.  He was the 26 year-old Tunisian fruit seller whose self-immolation nearly a year ago sparked the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring continues to inspire uprisings worldwide — Israel, Spain, Occupy Wall Street, and now Russia.  The on-the-scene reporter in Russia yesterday marveled at the protesters’ lack of fear when the police showed up.  In the past, she said, the appearance of police sent protesters scurrying for safety.  Not anymore.

Obviously, there is no way, no way that 26 year-old could possibly have imagined how his actions would resonate throughout the world.   He was an unknowing messenger of hope and courage.  I believe his actions said, “Enough is enough.  The time for change is now.  Be brave.  Be strong.  You are not alone.”

Sometimes I take comfort from the idea that we’re all just pawns in the giant chess game of history.  That relieves the burden of trying to carry the the whole world on my shoulders.  However, unlike pawns, we move ourselves.  We should choose those moves wisely, because we — like the Tunisian fruit seller — cannot know what lessons those around us will take from our actions.

Books, like Eric Weiner‘s Geography of Bliss, can contain powerful messages; Weiner’s book was the first place I read about Gross National Happiness.  His chapter on Bhutan changed my life.

Amy Noyes Demonstration

Often, though, the messenger is close to home.  For me, most recently, the messenger was Amy Noyes, a friend and former work colleague while I was at Home Share Now.  I knew she’d written a book on non-toxic house cleaning — I’d even seen a copy of the book’s Chinese printing.  Very impressive!

It wasn’t until Amy came to The Happiness Paradigm Store and Experience to do a demonstration that I finally understood: using items like vinegar and baking soda to clean can lead to greater health and happiness for me, and greater help and happiness for the planet (I know I’m behind the curve here, that many of you figured this out long ago).

Messages don’t land in vacuums.  Amy’s message finally resonated with me because I am using happiness as a frame for her book Nontoxic Housecleaning .

Also, thanks to the dramatic shift in U.S. zeitgeist brought on by Occupy Wall Street, I can now appreciate how changing my cleaning ways is a statement against corporate power and greed.  Really, who makes all those fancy-schmanzy cleaning products that are so colorfully displayed in the grocery store, and who makes all the ads trying to convince us to buy things we don’t need?  Lotions and potions that may well undermine our well being, and that of the planet?  Occupy the kitchen!

It may surprise Amy to know what her visit taught me.  Similarly, I suspect, all of us might be surprised to know where, when, and how our words and actions were especially meaningful to others.  If you chance to watch It’s a Wonderful Life this holiday season, remember — it’s not just George Bailey.  We’re all having wonderful lives.

Love, Not Blame

A few weeks back, I sat on the sunny and warm front porch of my daughter’s Alabama home.  I’d come to visit during her pregnancy — a very happy development.  While she worked on lesson plans for her theater students, I read Paul Gilding’s amazing book, The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.  

Gilding uses a ream of scientific evidence to demonstrate that there is simply no escaping a devastating environmental and economic crisis.  It is on the way, maybe even here already.  Some countries will end up underwater.  Many species will die out.  Millions of lives will be lost.

But then … and this is the part I really like … we humans will discard the growth economy, and create instead “the happiness economy.”  His words, I’m pleased to say!   Indeed, Gilding says millions and millions of people all across the planet are already creating new systems and new ways of being for the post-growth economy.  Since that’s what I’m trying to do with The Happiness Paradigm, I felt a great sense of belonging.

Somehow, I managed to slide right past the “millions of lives lost” to the “happiness economy.”  Well, why not?  I can’t at this point save those lives.  My energy can be better spent on helping to inflate the life raft of hope.

On my way home, I went straight from the airport to the Unitarian Church of Montpelier for a workshop on “Climate Change and What You Can Do About It.” One of the speakers was Kathy Blume, a particularly bubbly environmental activist who ended her presentation by displaying a green heart decal.  The decal, she explained, symbolized a commitment to adopting an approach of love as we face a future with enormous environmental, economic and social challenges.

Gilding’s and Blume’s optimism definitely spoke to me — on some deep level, it seems.  I woke up the next morning determined to make green heart pins from recycled paper and leftover glitter, beads and other fun items folks have been donating to me.  Wearing these pins can be a very visible declaration of love — love for our beautiful planet, for the plants and animals and for all the wonderful  humans who make us happy and also drive us crazy.

So I got to work and created these pins.  Whenever I sell one, I also explain what they symbolize.  Maybe they’ll even catch on, like pink ribbons for breast cancer research.  Maybe the pins will just result in a few smiles.  Either result will be a good one.

Sad Santa Letters and Grandmothers-to-be

What do these two discussions have in common?

• This morning my GNHUSA colleague and environmental economics expert Eric Zencey started a Facebook thread about the “mildly depressing” kids’ letters to Santa published in the local paper.  Although there was an occasional note that said, “I’ve been good,” the letters mostly read like orders to the factory.  The kids wanted stuff, stuff, and more stuff.

• Later, while I was getting my hair cut, my hairdresser Lisa and I chatted about the fact that we are both about to become first time grandmothers.  Both of us are going to have granddaughters.  Both of us are very happy this.  Very.  Happy.

So, tying the two threads together, what is one thing grandparents are infamous for, in this country at least?  Getting lots of stuff for their grandchildren! Uh-oh.  I know from Eric and others that our obsession with stuff is trashing the environment.  Furthermore, the Raising Happiness folks say, “Wanting more stuff — and getting it — doesn’t make us happy.”

What are new grandmothers to do?

My friend Andrea, who has two adorable young daughters, raised this question and provided some answers at a recent climate change workshop.  She said to the group, “Just try telling your children’s grandparents not to buy anything new for your kids.”

Later I asked her, “Really?  Nothing new?”  She said, firmly, there are so many children’s clothes out there, there is no need to buy anything new — then, she gave me links to sites that sell very cool upcycled kids’ clothing.

Of course this stuff topic is much bigger than what baby clothes we pick out.  It is emotionally complicated, more deserving of a PhD dissertation than a blog.

For now, I want to pose the question:  are there loving ways to approach this dilemma?  Lisa mentioned that she hates the phrase, “cutting back” — as in, we need to be environmentally conscious, so let’s cut back on gifts this year, okay?  Ugh.  There must be a better approach.

Here’s my plan:  I will try very hard to walk the talk and buy only (or at least, mostly) recycled, re-purposed and upcycled gifts for this baby out of love for my granddaughter.  I want love, not deprivation, to frame my decisions about what I give my granddaughter.

And, since I want her to be as happy as possible, I will continue learning more about what makes children genuinely happy.   Like Raising Happiness, the Pursuit of Happiness project is overflowing with resources on teaching happiness to children: http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/teaching-resources/

What about the rest of you?  Parents?  Grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles?  How do you approach stuff when it comes to the children you love?

Tis Better to … Receive?

I am a big fan of the Saint Francis of Assisi prayer.  Thirteen of its fourteen lines resonate deeply within me.

I’ve been mulling over this one: “for it is in giving that we receive.”  Happiness research makes clear that giving is, indeed, one of the most vital elements of happiness.  I am all for it.  Big time.

But how can there be giving without receiving?  Are the receivers to be only those in need — economic, emotional, or otherwise?  Or do all of us have a spiritual obligation to be good receivers as well?  And, is that, too, a path toward happiness?  To rephrase the prayer, is it not in receiving that we provide others the opportunity to give?

I suspect that many of us are better givers than we are receivers.  Receiving — even complements — may make some of us uncomfortable (“oh, it’s nothing!”).  Perhaps we can learn to give greater happiness by learning to accept gifts in all their forms with greater grace.   It is in receiving that we give.

I’ll end by sharing a gem I found while looking for the exact wording of the Saint Francis prayer (and the correct spelling of  “Assisi!”).  It is a stunningly beautiful and powerful rendition of the Saint Francis prayer by singer Sarah MacLachlan.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VSyuar6oF8

And now I’ll happily receive your thoughts on this topic!