It’s tough to focus on happiness these days, I know, but evidently quite a few of you enjoyed reading about it yesterday in my column, which I’ve posted in full text after the page turn. My voicemail was full this morning of women sharing their girlfriends-saved-my-sanity stories, and others just thanking me for a ray of sunshine in this tough season. And since I got my quarterly 401(k) statement last night (the graph goes right where you’d suspect — straight down), it’s worth reminding myself, too, that money doesn’t equal happiness. It’s the people in our lives who do that.
Global economy doesn’t affect most folks’ happiness
What makes you happy?
Not much you read in this newspaper these days, I’ll bet, or hear on the news, or get as regular updates into your e-mailbox. There’s no doubt that this is an anxious time, as we wait to find out who will be president and how much will be left in our 401(k) accounts when the roller coaster ride of the global financial crisis has finally come to an end.
But you might be surprised to learn that a weak economy doesn’t really mean most of us are less happy. And studies show that it takes a lot more money to increase our happiness even a little bit.
I got to thinking about happiness this way the other day when I listened to a radio commentary by Eric Weiner, who last year wrote a book called “The Geography of Bliss, One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World.” A sort of travelogue/self-help guide/memoir, Weiner’s book looks at the state of national happiness from Iceland (good) to Moldova (not so good) and every place in between.
What he discovered, and what he tried to convey in his commentary, is that real happiness doesn’t have to do with money at all.
Now, if you’ve lost your job, or your house has been foreclosed on, or you can no longer pay for your kids to go to college, money certainly is a big concern.
But for most of us, it is the other people in our lives who give us the most chance at happiness. The folks on our speed dial, the relationships that give our days shape and meaning and laughter and tears. The folks we trust with our most intimate secrets.
It’s probably no accident that Weiner’s commentary made such an impression on me. I was on the road home from Nashville, where I’d just spent the weekend with the woman who has been my best friend since seventh grade. As we have for more than 30 years, we fell into the goofy vernacular that we use only with each other, as we bumped around Music Row and discovered a new cafe in a historic neighborhood. We talked about kids and jobs and husbands. We drank wine and laughed. We hugged, hard, as we said good-bye.
So I was already thinking about how to keep that feeling going as I was flying down I-40 toward home. And I realized that there are so many things that make me happy, even as there are plenty of things that make me worry for the future:
The sound of Tomas’ giggle as I act out his spelling words on the way to school in the morning. (The week that one of them was “microphone” was an especially good week.)
Getting a voicemail from a pal — “just checking in” — on a busy, difficult day.
Standing with my husband on the sidelines of (yet another) soccer game, watching our son romp and run and grow.
So, what makes you happy?
Leanne Kleinmann is editor of skirt! magazine; e-mail kleinmann@skirt.com or call 521-1927.
