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by Rabbi Dana Saroken
There was a hilarious 4 minute segment that was circulating from YouTube last week…it was a clip of an interview between late night talk show host Conan O’Brien and comedian Louis CK. The headline of the clip was: “We live in amazing times and nobody’s happy”. And as I watched and returned to the headline again and again…I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry because there was a great truth to Louis’ claim:
He talked about how incredible the changes in the world are that have happened in his lifetime. He talked about the days when he was a kid and people had rotary phones that they actually had to stand right next to and he reminded us of the annoyance we felt toward people who had zeros in their number because it meant more work. He talked about a time when there were no ATMs or money cards and if you wanted money you actually had to walk inside a bank and stand in line and write yourself a check and when you ran out of money, you would just go, ‘well, that’s it… I can’t do anything more right now. He spoke about the miracle of air travel and suggested that instead of complaining with horror about delays, we should spend our time marveling that we can actually take a plane across the entire country in just five hours. It’s amazing, he said! Just think about flying!!! Everybody on every plane should just be spending their entire time in the air going ‘oh my gosh’ – wow!!! You’re sitting in a chair in the sky!!! But they don’t. Because we’re living in the most amazing of times and nobody’s happy.
And he was right. We do live in amazing times but the happiness that new technologies, developments and material things bring is fleeting unless we take the time to marvel at the chair in the sky and to say, wow! And in such a busy world….it’s far easier to get used to these amazing gifts and to take them for granted.
Our ancient rabbis knew that it would be difficult for us to maintain a sense of awe and appreciation for the world we live in and for the lives we lead and they also knew that feeling gratitude would be essential to our sense of happiness. So they suggested that we cultivate these feelings by beginning each day by thanking God for returning our souls to us – by thanking God for each new day the moment we open our eyes. They also suggested that throughout each day, we continuously verbalize our appreciation; for wise people, for beautiful smells, for our miraculous bodies, for eyes that see and ears that hear, for beds that are cozy and for cars that liberate us…the blessings are countless and we’re encouraged to stop and articulate our appreciation 100 times a day. Our ancient rabbis had great insight and wisdom because they knew that by doing this, we would be reminded that even in the worst of times, we are still incredibly blessed and that most of the time, we have everything that we need, in fact we probably have more than we need… to feel happy.
I was reminded of this when we were over at a friend’s house and their teenagers were watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The beautiful part about the show seemed to be that at it core its about a whole community coming together to create a home for their neighbors who are in need and finding happiness, meaning and purpose through the process. This particular episode featured a family of seven (seven big people I might add) who were living in a 600 square foot home in West Virginia. The family was a very generous family who were contributing to the community in all sorts of ways but yet neither their work nor their volunteer positions made them wealthy so they were living in this tiny house with a floor was unstable, kitchen cabinets that were falling off, some were sharing a twin size bed and the rest were sleeping on the floor…Until the crew of the show came to town and that was a spectacular moment! The bus pulled up in front of their house and all seven members of the family began jumping up and down, screaming and cleaving to each other in the hugest hug you’d ever seen. Teardrops ran down my face as I watched them… and my children watched me, whispering knowingly “tears of joy” right mommy?.
As I watched this scene, I couldn’t help by wonder: what tangible gift could I receive that would make me that happy? Can you imagine some thing – anything -- making us that happy?!! And what was particularly moving to me, was that this family had more love and more togetherness than they had space. And that is a beautiful thing! But what happens when they have more space and more things? I only hope that they will be able to appreciate each gift and each other the way as they once had. It’ll take work though…It takes work to appreciate our lives and to allow our blessings to bring happiness into our lives especially when we have so much..
Most people in America today are struggling with the opposite concerns and fears: Our economy is a mess and many of us are doubtful that anyone knows how to fix it, our deficit is growing by the mili-second, our bank accounts and savings have shrunk to the point of great concern to many of us, many people have lost their jobs and are struggling to make ends meet; people are worried sick about their retirement plans, the changes in health care, and how and if they’ll be able to pay for their children’s educations. People that have jobs are working harder in their jobs and most working people are earning less than they feel they should be. Most of us have loved ones that aren’t doing well, and we’re all living in a fast paced world unable to catch our breath. None of these things are easy. Most of these things are beyond our control. But what we can control is our response. We can commit ourselves to being happy with our lot.
If you ask most people nowadays what they want out of life, many will say: “All I want is to be happy.” They buy books, attend classes and change their lifestyles in order to find happiness. But in spite of everything, it seems that most people most of the time do not feel happy. Happiness is elusive for those people who haven’t gotten what they want out of life and also, for those who have. If all people want is to be happy” though why is it so difficult? Carl Jung believed that most people suffer from the feelings of senselessness and emptiness in their lives. Maybe it’s the absence of meaningful endeavors for some. For others though, perhaps our busy-ness has left us little time to stop and feel the wonder or appreciation. Maybe we haven’t left ourselves any time to really experience anything – not even happiness – as we rush from activity to activity and place to place. Or maybe… it’s because of our expectations. People are searching for constant happiness that they believe is somewhere out there and if they could only put themselves in the right place, the right relationship, the right job…that perpetual state of happiness can happen to them, too. But these expectations aren’t realistic. No one feels happy all the time, I promise… and if they do, they’re missing out on feeling so many other profound feelings and neglecting so many sad and tragic parts of the world and the experience of being human.
A few weeks ago, I spoke on Shabbat about the song: Escape (otherwise known as the “pina colada song” written by Rupert Holmes. The song was about a man who was bored with his wife and bored with his life. So he decided to respond to a personal ad in the paper. The woman was looking for someone who liked pina coladas, getting caught in the rain, that liked making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape, she was looking for someone with whom she could escape. The man found her offer so compelling that he responded to the ad and went to the bar and waited to meet this mysterious and intriguing woman. Soon enough, his wife walked through the door. It was she that had placed the ad. It was she who was looking for something more. The more I thought about this song and this story over the past few weeks, the more I’ve realized that both the man and the woman had everything they needed to be happy right beside them but they hadn’t realized. But they hadn’t journeyed into the unknown together. Here they both thought they needed something else or someone else to be happy and yet they were both yearning for the same thing: something new, something fun, something exciting and someone with whom they could share their adventure – share their escape.
So many people in our society – are looking for an escape. So many people find their jobs boring, their marriages boring, their friendships boring, their day to day lives boring. “And so in desperation, they search for a movie, a vacation, a trip, an outlet of some sort to lift their lives above the level of mundane.” Or else, they change jobs, change husbands or wives, change friends, change homes…anything to escape from that feeling one has when they look at that never-ending pile of laundry that needs to get folded for the thousandth time or realize that they’re having the same conversation that they’ve had a million times before at the dinner table. From the many, many people I’ve sat with and been with through their early life, mid-life and later-in-life crisiis over the years… I’ve come to believe that the opposite of happiness isn’t sadness…it’s boredom. But life can’t always be exciting yet we’ve created that expectation in recent years -- that every moment of our lives should be a happy one; filled with passion, romance, and excitement and that if it’s not something is wrong and needs to be fixed or changed. .
Our Torah tells us otherwise though. It teaches us that we can do great things in the world, we can be accomplished and have lives filled with meaning and we will still struggle to be connected with the ones you love most and with experiencing happiness. Abraham and Isaac are a prime example: the two walked together toward Mount Moriah for three days and barely exchanged a word much less share a conversation. It doesn’t take much for any parent with a teenage child to imagine that experience. Nothing to say – no interest in sharing. If they had made that journey today, I imagine that Isaac would have been texting his friends as they walked – leaving his father feeling shut out, and then I imagine it would have been likely that Abraham, his busy, important dad, would have probably been on his blackberry, too, checking his emails, returning some calls… I can’t imagine that either Abraham or Isaac were feeling the love as they journeyed silently yet moments like these are inevitable. Our Torah reminds us that life is filled with all sorts of moments; boring ones and even painful ones, too. Life is not always going to be happy nor is it intended to be easy.
The urgent search for happiness has been relatively recent. Despite millennia of folk wisdom, it wasn’t until about twenty years ago that researchers really began to explore happiness. Psychologists and behavioral economists both turned their attention to the money-happiness nexus. They mapped financial statistics against people’s self-reported happiness and they found that the connection between wealth and happiness was pretty weak. “It wasn’t a zero correlation but it was a particularly weak correlation.” For the most part, money doesn’t make people happy. But a recent study from British Columbia and Harvard created one exception to this general rule: This research found that “pro-social spending” did increase people’s self-reported happiness. Meaning that when people used their money to buy gifts for others and to make donations to charity they actually felt happier inside. And this past Sunday, another breakthrough was reported in the New York Times when researcher Clive Thomson reported that happiness is contagious (and so is unhappiness). That happiness is passed from friend to friend like a contagious virus and conversely, and that unhappiness is also transmitted in this way. As it turns out, according to this research; clusters of friends can – and do – make each other happy or make each other unhappy.
So we can reassess the way that we spend money and start giving more away and buying those we care about more gifts, we can reassess our friendships and make sure to surround ourselves with some happy people knowing that this too will increase our happiness. But we can also focus on experiencing happiness. Gretchen Rubin, the author of a book and a blog called “the happiness project” and a former Manhattan lawyer who left law to pursue happiness affirmed this idea: “If I’ve learned one thing from the “happiness project”, it’s that if I want my life to be a certain way, I must be that way myself.” If I want my children to be thoughtful, I must be thoughtful. If I want my marriage to be romantic, I must be romantic. If I want my parents to be appreciative…I must be appreciative. If we want our lives to be a certain way…we must be that way ourselves. Stephen Covey shares his insight: If we’re having trouble loving, he says… love anyway. Sacrifice. Listen. Empathize. Appreciate. And love some more. Love until you recapture the feeling. And if its happiness that’s missing from your life…work to create and to foster the feeling.
And so today on this day that we begin anew… we ask ourselves: Are you happy inside? Are you happy in your soul? Does your spirit sing or dance? Do you delight in this precious and all-too-fleeting gift called life? Not always but sometimes…And if you’re not happy in your soul or you’re not sure… then try doing something for someone else or for the world that will bring happiness into your life and into the lives of others. If you’re not happy inside your soul then work on re-capturing the sense of appreciation and awe that can lead you to happiness. If you’re not happy in your soul -- schedule some time to play; to climb a mountain with someone you enjoy, to jump up and down with uninhibited delight, and to drink pina coladas with someone you love. And if you’re not happy in your soul – take responsibility for creating the happiness that you yearn for deep inside. Each of us has everything we need right beside us, within us and around us… all we have to do is zochreinu l’chayim…remember to live – not just exist – but truly live and to allow the happiness in!
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