How Happy Are You Right Now?

That's the question of the day from the pages of Simple Abundance (herein, SA). Oyyy....do I really have to answer that? Honestly? Do you mean, how happy am I in general, or at this exact moment in time? Can I plead the 5th? If not, I'm gonna say... I have absolutely no idea how happy I am in general, but right now I feel pretty darn happy to be sitting here, frittering away my Friday morning, pondering what might make me happy. Guess it can be said, as it has all along, that it's truely a luxury to have the time to ponder such things.

The quote of the day (from SA):

"Perhaps if one really knew when one was happy one would know the things that were necessary for one's life." - Joanna Field

After I read today's passage, asking me how happy I am, I did some research. Joanna Field, it turns out, is actually the pen name for British psychoanalyst Marion Milner. Had never heard of either, so went to Amazon to see if I could find her journal, A Life Of One's Own, published in 1934. After reading the reviews, found a used copy for 99 cents, and it's now on it's way to me. I love finding treasures within treasures. Would add here, literary treasures make me happy.

Anyway, Sarah Ban Breathnach (herein SBB, author of SA), likens Field's journaling to detective work, as she "searches through the minutiae of the mundane in hopes of finding clues for what was missing in her life." Quick sidenote. I had to look up minutiae - n. pl. mi·nu·ti·ae. Small or trivial details.

This idea of wading through the trivial crap encountered throughout the average hum-drum day struck a chord instantly with me, as it describes a fair number of my days, and I had to find out what Ms. Field was journaling about. Apparently, she kept the journal so that she could find the triggers of happiness in her day-to-day life. Seems logical enough. Since I just started journaling again as well (separately from this, to save anyone who might read my blog from the snoozefest comprised of the detailed thoughts rolling around up there), I'm going to take my cue from Joanna, and jot something down every time I find a way, as SBB puts it, to "savor small, authentic moments that bring us (me) contentment."

Funny how the simplest thing can be suggested and sound like an epiphany, no? Directions: write down your feelings, most specifically your happy feelings, when you have them. Not exactly rocket science, is it? Also interesting that as I sit here typing away, I feel happy. Nobody around to ask for something. Phone set on 'silent'. Sound of water trickling in the background. Just me, myself, and I piddling away on the laptop. Maybe I'm on to something here.

Let's go back to A Life of One's Own for a minute or two. Imagine, that a few weeks before Christmas, purely coincidentally (I'm actually not a big believer in coincidence), I finished reading a book that I picked up in the $3 bargain bin at Big Lots. That book is called A Life of One's Own, by Ilana Simons. Different book entirely, same title. What are the odds that a month later, I would stumble across Joanna Fields' version, published 73 years earlier, and feel the need to order it.? It's not as if one literary work referenced the other -- they came to me completly independent of one another. Very strange. And yet, comforting. For me, it's very simply a matter of the Universe sending me a message. The message is not that I need to go out and get a 'life of my own', per se, but rather that both of these books have an important message for me. After reading the first, I'm convinced.

Simons' A Life of One's Own is almost written in journal-like format, but is called a 'guide to better living through the work and wisdom of Virginia Woolf'. I have never read a single word of a Woolf novel, even in college. After finishing the book/guide, I very quickly decided that (1) I will read her 'guide' a second time and (2) that can happen only after I read To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. Since I don't know much about her novels, even after reading a book based on her thoughts and ideas, I played close-your-eyes-and-point and decided that To The Lighthouse shall be my first (and who knows, perhaps my last) Woolf novel. It is also en route to me. It appears that I'm going to have to clear my schedule next week and plan on some quality reading time 'of my own'.

The beauty, as I read back on my post today, of having nobody really tuned in to my ramblings, is that I am able to follow the point I'm trying to expand on, and that is all that really matters. The point, in summary, with something like coincidence thrown in for good measure, is that it's universally important to identify, to seek out, the things in life that make someone happy. None of us do that often enough...find the quiet moment where all is well in the world, and there is a feeling of contentment. As I mentioned earlier, I have it right now. Question is, why can't I keep it indefinitely :) In any event, I will spend the weekend focusing on finding that awareness, the ability to recognize when I feel happy. That's homework worth doing.