What is Your Happiness Quotient?

“Just show up. Presence is always a present, a gift.” …. Diane Ackerman, Dawn Light (in press)
5 A.M. The tiny lights of Wildwood glimmer through the screen of the water and grass that back onto our cottage. Nearly dawn. Time to play. Quickly, I slither into bedside sweats. On the way out the door, I grab the ancient 35 mm Leica that is my buddy. I make my way to the path at Wetlands Institute nearby.
Safe landing. Not quite awake, I cajole my feet to take me to the marsh path. I can taste the quiet. I can feel the darkness. I have landed in the playground of the birds and the grasses. I am welcome there. We are old friends. The 75-120 lens does not want to snap onto the camera. Still dark, dawn will come soon and I want to get my eyes into the world of my telephoto lens. Wide-eyed and omnipresent, my Leica lens gives me one gift after another, sunrise after sunrise, as the marshlands wake me up to meet my day.
6:30 A.M. The sun spreads out along the shore line. Before me hovers a filmy coating of old English rose, dusty taupe, and ivory. The colors create compelling striations over the homes in Stone Harbor Manor. The little community never looked better. Light slowly bathes the horizon and my sensibilities register anticipation. Oh, boy. We are almost there. I cock the camera to my eye, peek into the lens.
Tall marsh grasses invite me into their secret world. How did they look ordinary only yesterday in the daylight? Now, sunlight rising slowly up their stalks, they tousle their fuzzy hairdos jauntily at me and boogie in the light wind. If I am very lucky, I can shoot this moment. What could be better than to remember it in a decade? I point my lens and shoot. Click.
The solid Leica shot breaks the noisy silence crisply. Not ready to quit, I shoot again. The sun is midway up the long legs of the marsh grasses, almost to the frizzy-headed Afros they carry in fall. I cock the lens, correct the aperture and look again. It’s a wow. A real wow. My lens shows an amber-pumpkin-raspberry-azure skyline.
I can grasp the image if I am very lucky. Cock. Focus. Hope. And shoot. Done for the day, it is time for coffee with John. It is time to gear up for a worthwhile day of office hours, life stories, and dog walks. But my day has already brought me more joy than many of us get in a week. Not too shabby for a September Monday. My day starts happily.
Poet-writer Diane Ackerman is able to engage wonder. She writes of the psychology of meaning, the foundation of my clinical psychology career. Slow down, she says. Pay full attention. When you get distracted by life in the fast lane, stop. Savor moments when “time suddenly snags on a simple Wow!” And dawn, she states, gives us a fresh start with cleansed vision before our familiar day routines overtake our joy in pleasurable moments. Boy, do I agree.
Curious about what makes people happy, I seek research. Starting with late 1970’s research about happiness, I remember vaguely that Columbia Psychologist Jonathan Freedman did groundbreaking psychology research on the complex underpinnings of a happy life. Professor Freedman informed us that there is a complex package for happiness. It includes:
• A state of mind that varies between peace of mind and excitement
• Comparing ourselves with others, and assessing that we are doing better than others
• Having a higher level of life satisfaction than we customarily do in our lives (better than usual)
• Being satisfied with having most of life’s needs met most of the time
But what interests me most is what I call “The Happiness Quotient.” Freeman says “almost nothing, except perhaps an awful, terminal illness, makes happiness impossible (p 234). In fact, some people manage to have a talent for happiness pretty much regardless of what life brings.
These lucky adults have a larger personal capacity for happiness than others, in my words, a high happiness quotient. Grinning broadly at dawn on a crisp September morning in the silence of the marshlands is a byproduct of my own Happiness Quotient. For me, and for many others, life in the present-lane is the avenue to moments of simple happiness. And you?
To consider: What details of your life would make you happy if you stopped to pay attention? A quirky orange pumpkin? A banana muffin? And just how might you add that moment of joy to tomorrow? Please do.
To Read: Jonathan Freedman. Happy People. NY: Harcourt Brace. 1978
(Coche of Stone Harbor educates the public in mental health issues. She can be reached at jmcoche@gmail.com or 215-859-1050.)