Living Happiness

Today I am giving up, giving in, not doing it any longer.  Running that is.  Running in pursuit of happiness.  No more pursuit.   No more chasing.  I’m going to lie down right here in this field of wildflowers and let myself be.  Happiness, if it wants me, knows where to find me.  I’ll be finding shapes in the clouds and looking for ladybugs.

I think the Greeks would agree with me.  Their idea of happiness was that it just happens to you — you are granted favor by the gods, and often for willy-nilly reasons that no one can even explain.  Even Aristotle took time out from teaching his Golden Mean to admit, “Hey, I’m not sure if these things actually make a person happy, but perhaps they’ll help.”   The ancients must have been on to something.

Even now, happiness is one of those words that doesn’t really have a verb.  It’s not actually something we can do, even though it does sound nice when we say things like this to ourselves.  We can be happy.  We can see and experience happiness.  But do happiness?  It’s all in the word itself.  Happiness … from hap … which simply means “chance.”

This was true for the Latin word for happy: Felix (from which we get today’s word, felicitous) simply meant lucky.

And this was also true for the Greek word, eudaimion, which in its literal translation meant something like “good spirit,” something like what we might call today a guardian angel or a spirit guide.  To be eudaimion in ancient Greece, therefore, was to basically have the favor of your guardian spirit.

How to get or ensure this favor?   That’s what the old, sage philosophers –like Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato – were going on about: Which actions produce it?  What do I need to do to make my guardian angel favor me?

And over that subject there was a lot of debate, and still is, even to this day. And it’s probably from them that we get the whole idea that happiness can be found or earned somehow, rather than basically be something that just seems to … happen.

So what are we knocking ourselves out about? I sure as heck don’t know.

But I’m going to take my cue today from the ancients … and from actress Lindsay Duncan.

Lindsay is the lovely Katherine, an eccentric ex-pat living in Italy, in Audrey Wells’ film, Under the Tuscan Sun.  In one of my favorite scenes, she becomes exasperated with her friend Frances (Diane Lane) for all of Frances’ constant boohooing over whether she is happy or unhappy, and finally says to her:

I used to spend hours looking for ladybugs. Finally, I’d just give up and fall asleep in the grass. When I woke up, they were crawling all over me.

What she says is not all that much different from what Nathaniel Hawthorne, two hundred years ago, said either:

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

So, if you’ll excuse me now, I’m tired of all this running.  I’ve got a field I want to go lie down in, with a patch of daisies calling my name.

Care to join me?

Ladybug wishes,

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Photo Credit Jeff Kubina

The little money I have – that is my wealth,
but the things I have for which I would not take money – that is my treasure.
~Robert Brault

Last night at midnight, I was sitting in a little taverna off of one of Chania’s many curvy side streets. It was a balmy summer evening, and the wooden tables where we sat were warmed by the yellow glow from the overhead lamps. In front of us were carafes of wine – red and white – and half-eaten plates of mezedes: taboule, falafel, pastourmadopites, spicy cheese balls, and bread. Other diners laughed and clinked at the tables outside. We laughed and clinked at our own table inside as we sat and dished, six of us girls, fresh from the nighttime showing of Sex & The City II.

The night was golden.

The whole day had been. A morning plan (for G and I) of coffee and newspapers became coffee and newspapers in beach chairs by the sea. We read, we dipped, we napped. And then we ate kalamari … and arrived home later, lightly bronzed and mellow-y in that way one can only be mellow-y after a day by the sea.

As I sat at midnight, looking at the golden faces of the ladies around me, I knew that this was the wealth G and I had worked so hard to find. Not a wealth that could be measured in dollars or euros or safely tucked away in any bank, but a different kind of wealth, one not prone to moth, rust, or decay.

I realized last night that the dilemma G and I are facing is, in some ways, a dilemma of which wealth to choose: the wealth of euros and dollars that we can steadily accrue and which will help us out immensely on the road to fulfilling our (fairly modest) dreams OR the wealth of friends, contentment, and quality of life, things that (I realized last night) we seem to have in abundance.

Of late, it feels very much like we are being asked to choose between them, the one rather than the other, when what we would really like to choose is both together.

We ask ourselves, “Is it possible to choose the latter and yet still have the former if we remain in Greece?” As of yet, the only answer we can still come up with is “No.”

Common good sense also tells us that there is no reason why choosing the first should preclude us from laying claim to the second. We can also make new friends without forsaking the old, wherever we are. We can re-create and honor the way of life that we’ve come to love and embrace here, anywhere. But … it’s so difficult. And will we give up this different kind of wealth in Greece for the promise, the allure of material wealth, more financial stability somewhere else?

We do not know the answer.

I have spent the morning looking through inspirational quotes, trying to find some hint, some clue that may present us with a new way of looking at things.  The only ones that have stood out for me are these:

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price. ~Kahlil Gibran

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. ~Henry Ford

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service. ~Henry Ford

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. ~Oscar Wilde

What do you think?

What is wealth to you?

If you were in our shoes, what would you choose? Is it possible for us to choose both?

Your insights are (more than) welcome.

In abundance,

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