An Ability to Be Happy

I recently read a lovely line in a novel. The main character is considering her future and deciding what she is going to do with her life. There is a man whom she deeply cares for with whom she has an opportunity to travel and expand her business. In thinking about her choices she realises that he is a person who has the ability to be happy.

"The ability to be happy."

It struck me as I was reading the words that there are people in the world who really have such an ability. I have seen extremely poor people sharing a joke, telling a story and finding amusement in the everyday events that make up their lives. People respond to those who find joy in the ordinary. When I think of people I would like to share a cup of tea with it is those who allow the light of living to shine that first come to mind. Which is not to say that one always has to be happy or content or enjoying the place where one finds oneself.

Small children have the ability. Watch them dancing, singing, playing, eating, snuggling or doing just about anything and you will bear witness to the happiness they find in the simplest of things. Perhaps it is easier for them because they are not self conscious. Once we become concerned about what others think of us, say of us, want from us the ability to be happy seems to wane. If a child feels that they are being too closely observed she will become anxious by trying to please. Parents who continually ask their children to perform for family and friends do a disservice to their children. There are many adults who never escape from that sense that there are expectations placed on them when they are in company that they can not achieve. A sense of failure is all to often the byproduct of 'show them what you can do' parenting.

As we age we seem to lose most of that innocent ability to celebrate being alive. I grew up in a household where academic expectations were such that it was virtually impossible to be regarded as successful. It superseded everything. I could be witty, cheerful, loving, caring but unless there were good exam results everything else was second rate. By the time I was in my midteens I accepted that being happy was not something that my family was good at. If there was too much laughter we were being noisy and not serious enough. If there was none we were being sullen and disrespectful. Either way we could not win so it seemed sensible to simply be a quieter, less happy version of oneself in order to stay under the radar as much as possible. Away from home was where the three of us blossomed. I was blessed with having two close, dear, kind friends whose houses were refuges. There I could be loud, chatty, funny, happy. Which I think is not all that rare a situation for many teenagers.

As I have grown older I have come to appreciate that being happy is not something we can make other people. We can be kind. We can encourage laughter. We can nourish individuality and contentment but we can not make others happy. We can influence another person's level of happiness only as long as they allow themselves to be affected by the happiness around them. If a person has little desire to be happy and would rather dwell on negative aspects of life there is nothing any one else can say or do that will change them. Which is why my parents might have done me a favour raising me they way they did. Each of my parents had the willingness to be happy when they were away from each other. My mother could be a complete riot when she was relaxed. My father could find humour in difficult situations and had a keen sense of humour. By the time I was a teenager they just rarely managed to ever be happy at the same place and time.

Perhaps the ability to be happy is lost because we undervalue it. As we grow up and start working the harsh realities of life can build up to the point where a jest from a partner seems to be an accusation. Where laughter becomes irritating. The weight of daily living becomes a burden that crushes. We forget to cast our eyes around and see that there are others in the same place as us and many, many others worse off. We forget to find humour. We forget to sit quietly and be happy. We forget that we are not traveling alone.

I recently found some old letters that my father had written to my mother just before they married. There on sepia coloured sheets of paper was my father's handwriting. I could hear his voice as he wrote about going fishing, waiting for her to return from England, having dinner with friends, anticipating the start of their life together. For the first time in my life I was able to see my parents as they had been. I was given the privilege to hear my father's love for my mother. In the time that I never knew, in a land long forgotten those two people had shared the ability to be happy with each other. I pray that each of them remembered that as they struggled with the ordinary world in which they later found themselves. And I hope that beneath the layers of demands that the world placed on them there were quiet moments when they looked each at the other and smiled - happy.