I did the big year-end retrospective a couple of weeks ago, but December deserves a mention all of its own.

(And -- warning -- this is going to be long... It's more a Velvet Cushion-type post really, but it is all part of the Big OE, so I thought I'd put it here. There are some nice purple photos, but even so, feel free to skip...)

By the end of today, it will be a whole year since I began this new phase that I think of as "taking a break".

And I'm really happy...

Whoa... Wait. Slow down. What am I saying? Happy?

The superstitious bit of me still thinks I might be calling down my own destruction by making such a bold, fate-tempting pronouncement.


But a bigger perspective on life -- such as the one I am trying hard to understand and embrace more fully -- assures me that this is nonsense.

So... Happy? How?

It's not that I used to be a notably UNhappy person. I don't think so, anyway. A bit Eeyore-like, perhaps, and definitely prone to finding the cloud in front of any silver lining. And angry or despairing from time to time, as well, usually when things at work were just too stupid, or I felt I was getting "stuck" .

But I was never a massively discontented or misanthropic or ungrateful person.

And I've not undergone some weird personality change. I still worry (uselessly) about stuff I can't control. I still grieve and rage at the state of the world around me. The "planning" part of my personality still finds it really hard to just let go, and sink into the precious, all-we've-ever-really-got time that is the present moment.

But -- with all these provisos and qualifications -- I'm happy.

And, being of an analytical turn, I have to inquire as to why. (I know -- if you take it apart, you risk breaking it... Nevertheless...)


1.
A lot of my current state of mind has to do with the absence of work-stress.

John O'Donahue:

***
When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone...
***

Yep, I was definitely feeling that before I quit my job.


And I guess you only realize how much stress there was when the burden is lifted. Slowly, you feel an increasing lightness; and over time -- like the springs of an old sofa -- you begin to regain your original, unstressed contours.


2.
Relatedly, my sense of happiness comes partly from the massive increase in our flexibility.

We don't have unlimited flexibility, of course, because we still have various constraints and commitments, and a finite supply of resources. Nevertheless, we have much more freedom than we did when I was working, and that is exhilarating. (My ever-present, don't-get-too-carried-away internal monitor is already insisting that one's sources of happiness need to be independent of uncontrollable circumstances like degrees of flexibility. And that's true. But this factor is certainly helping at the moment.)


3.
There is quite a bit of research that indicates that people tend to get happier as they get older.

It's the U-bend syndrome, whereby people's sense of happiness increases once they've passed a certain life-stage.

(The late 40s is the nadir of happiness, it seems, although Gen Z is already doing it tough, and German sociologist Hans Bertram refers to parents between 30 and 45 as "the exhausted generation". But hopefully, things will eventually get better for them too...)

4.
What I find most interesting, however, is that my increased happiness quotient is partly due to a process whereby I'm actually LEARNING to be happy...

There is so much good to be found in simply choosing to do less...

I do know people who manage to adopt this life-approach despite busy careers. I was never one of them, unfortunately. But now I'm really starting to appreciate that less is more.

O'Donahue again:

***
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you...
***

Beautiful, no?

That way of living is akin to the mindfulness expressed here by Willa Cather (and brought back to my consciousness by Maria Popova):

***
The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
***


5.
Just "being" is important (and I wish I could "just be" more often and more effortlessly). But actively seeking sources of happiness is significant too.

A book that went straight onto my to-read list recently is The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Popova summarizes thus:

"Each day, beginning on his forty-second birthday and ending on his forty-third, Gay composed one miniature essay... about a particular delight encountered that day, swirled around his consciousness to extract its maximum sweetness. (Delight, he tells us, means “out from light,” sharing etymological roots with delicious and delectable.) What emerges is not a ledger of delights passively logged but a radiant lens actively searching for and magnifying them, not just with the mind but with the body as an instrument of wonder-stricken presence...

"Page after page, small joy after small joy, one is reminded -- almost with the shock of having forgotten -- that delights are strewn about this world like quiet, inappreciable dew-drops, waiting for the sunshine of our attention to turn them into gold."

For me, walking is an important way of encountering "delights" (we have averaged 13,127 steps a day this year). And writing and photographing are important ways of drawing longer-term sustenance from them (we aim to take at least one new photo every day).


Looking back through my posts over the years, I think I've always had what Gay calls "a delight radar". But the wonderful things it unearthed and pondered on were never quite enough to balance out the constant strain of work (imposed by myself every bit as much as by others). Now, there's no major life circumstance to impede the effect of these tiny delights.

And it's pretty hard not to be delighted in Borneo...



_*_*_

OK, so I'm sure that by now I'm starting to detect some murmurs of demurral. From you, maybe. But certainly from my own ever-present inner critic.

Is this not all terribly self-centred? After all, there's a whole big crappy world of suffering human beings out there. Why are you sitting around learning to be happy when you are still well enough to be contributing something?

I don't honestly know whether there's a good answer to this.

But I have three -- What? Partial answers? Or excuses?

The first is that I still feel as though I'm in recovery mode, and at the moment I primarily need to focus on keeping well.

The second is that we do make our little contributions as and where we can.

The third is that I want to find a better way of contributing, and I can do that only from a place of greater wholeness.

Parker Palmer:

"[There are] moments when it is clear -- if I have the eyes to see -- that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. [That was exactly the realization that pushed me towards my "break".] In those moments I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like the river beneath the ice. And... I wonder: What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be?..."

He continues:

"The deepest vocational question is not 'What ought I to do with my life?' It is the more elemental and demanding 'Who am I? What is my nature?'...

"Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks -- we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as 'the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.'...

"Contrary to the conventions of our thinly moralistic culture, this emphasis on gladness and selfhood is not selfish. The Quaker teacher Douglas Steere was fond of saying that the ancient human question 'Who am I?' leads inevitably to the equally important question 'Whose am I' -- for there is no selfhood outside of relationship...

"As I learn more about the seed of true self that was planted when I was born, I also learn more about the ecosystem in which I was planted -- the network of communal relations in which I am called to live responsively, accountably, and joyfully with beings of every sort."

May it be...

In the meantime, the end of the year and the decade approaches.

We're hoping the rain will stop long enough for everyone to enjoy the fireworks.

And we're looking forward to another year, brand-new and still immaculate.

May the Big OE continue...