Business of Happiness - July 24, 2011

Thirty days ago a friend offered a challenge: Each day for thirty days, take a picture of something that makes you happy. 

The challenge was based off of a class experiment from Stanford University wherein all of the students were charged with the exact same task, and at the end of the thirty days, the "happinesses" were analyzed.  I think it was actually some kind of marketing experiment (and since the challenge was offered to me by a marketing professional that makes sense), but I'm not going to analyze my thirty days from that line of thought.  I'm not even going to try to analyze them at all.  The non-definition of "happiness" aside - What qualifies as happiness?  Is it mere joy?  Pure elation? - this experiment for me was more than just determining what gives me pleasure.  It was more about finding pleasure, period.

My thirty days started the Sunday after I buried my mother.  To say that I was consumed by grief would be wrong; my emotions surrounding that event are much more complicated than that.  However, the challenge definitely came at a time when I was confused and struggling to figure out exactly what I felt, and of all the conflicting emotions in me, I can safely say that happiness wasn't one of them.  At first I balked at the notion of even completing the challenge.  To think that I could find something each day to be happy about (whatever happy was) seemed ridiculous.  But something inside of me, that little niggling part that loves a challenge, no matter what kind, couldn't resist giving it a shot.

I thought it was going to be difficult to come up with something every day.  I thought I'd have to manufacture my happiness, and for the first few days, maybe I did a little.  I had to search.  I had to really think about what to claim for my happiness each day.  However, as the month wore on, it became easier.  Some days the item or event presented itself with a giant neon light of real pleasure.  Others I had to settle for something smaller and just pleasing.  Either way, I always managed to find something.  And in finding those "somethings," I found something more: happiness is as much created as experienced.

Initially I expected to slog through the challenged; I would complete it, but I wouldn't take anything from it.  It was less than two weeks in, however, before my seach each day became a pleasurable experience.  I wanted to find something to be happy about.  And I realized that it didn't have to be the big things.  Sometimes it's the little things like a cat napping beside you or a new favorite color of nail polish that really do get you through, that really do bring happiness into your world.  I learned not to expect happiness to find me, but to search for it, enthusiastically and hard, if need be.  At a time when I needed all the happiness I could get - in whatever way I could get it and whatever way I could recognize it - this challenge took on a life of its own.

As my thirty days started to come to a close, I became a little sad.  The every day hunt for happiness was ending.  True, I could still just take that moment each day to savor the little things that come my way, but there's something special about publicly celebrating it.  It makes the search more real, and it makes the pleasure experienced more real, too.  So I've decided that instead of ending at thirty days, I'm going to make this a year-long experiment: 365 days of happiness.

The first half of 2011 was bad for me.  It felt like everything was out of my control, and everything tht happened was negative.  I'm not suggesting that searching for a little bit of happiness each day for the next 335 days is going to change my collective luck, or the world's efforts to bring me down, but a little happiness each day - sought or stumbled upon - surely can't hurt.