The Trick to Happiness

Last week I bought our lab-hound mix, Finn, a different kind of food. Before I poured it into his dish, I spent some time talking it up a bit so he'd give it a fair chance. Finn knows the word "food," and he's a typical lab, so naturally he started to wiggle and made this face:

He stayed happy until I opened the bag and poured the food into his bowl. At that moment, he realized it wasn't his usual mix of kibble with actual dried beef. Instead, it was a pale, crunchy mix whose only resemblance to meat was the bone-shaped bits. In an instant, his happiness evaporated. 

This week in church, the readings were about Israel in the desert and their reaction to hunger. It's always amazed me that God literally rained bread from heaven onto the grass in front of them, and they ate it happily enough until someone asked, "Yeah, but. . . where's the beef?" 

The bread of angels poured down from the sky, but it wasn't enough to keep them happy. 

And I guess that's the tricky thing about happiness. The moment the endorphins die off, the happiness wanes, and we're left wondering why it’s never quite enough. 

After all, if happiness depends on bread or meat (or meat-flavored kibble for all my dog readers), it's going to elude us at some point. 

The truth is, happiness is one emotion on the color wheel of feelings we experience. Sadness, loneliness, anger, joy, anticipation - they all have a place in our lives. Even Jesus cried sometimes. 

And I wonder sometimes - if we were always happy, how rich would our lives really be? 

Think for a moment about your most difficult season in life. What really helped you get through that time? Was it the taste of rich food, the warmth of wine, the pursuit of money? 

Or was it the voice of a friend on the other end of the line - the simple reassurance that you weren't alone even in pain? 

So maybe happiness isn't what makes life worth living. Maybe, in the end, it's connection.

Happiness can connect us to others, but those moments when we feel most connected, most supported, most loved - might also be the toughest moments of our lives.

And listen, friends: If even a dog can't be happy all the time, what makes us think we can? If happiness goes up when we're eating steak and down when we're eating bologna, is it really what life is all about? 

Maybe a better pursuit would be contentment: shifting our thoughts from not-enough to it's-enough. 

And maybe that simple change could, in the end, make our lives just happy enough. 

Enough for Today Anyway, 

Becki