In July of 2012, I found myself in a bookstore in an airport en route to Haiti. We had an eight (!) hour layover and I had made the mistake of not bringing along a book, not just to while away the hours in the airport, but on the plane itself, which to me is prime reading time. I mean, what else can you really do on a plane, except sleep or get annoyed by the in-flight entertainment system? My eyes landed on the bright blue cover of The Happiness Project and dare I say? – the rest of my life changed.
What could Gretchen Rubin, an New York lawyer-turned-writer, who lives on the Upper West Side of New York City – arguably the most affluent neighborhood in Manhattan – have to say to me about happiness? And how would this edify my trip to Haiti, which was still reeling from the devastating 2010 earthquake?
As Rubin points out in a subsequent book, Happier at Home, we can actually learn a lot from one person’s idiosyncratic experiences than from more general or philosophical treatises on such subjects as happiness. And it turns out, it’s actually the little things – maybe only important to us – that can make us happier.
Although Rubin structures her project over the year, each month tackling an area of her life for improvement and awareness, I think it’s in the overarching principles in the two lists at the beginning of the book that I learned the most: Gretchen’s Twelve Commandments and her Secrets of Adulthood.
The first commandment? Be Gretchen. This in and of itself absolves her of any need to write this book for Everyman. While she is very good at acknowledging that most other people are not like her – quirky, un-adventuresome, and, pretty square actually – she is unapologetically Herself. I like that so much. One listen to the podcast she hosts with her sister Elizabeth and you can quickly pick up her enthusiasm for the most mundane aspects of life (like going to bed early) and other people’s happiness idiosyncrasies (like learning Latin – for fun.)
Hot on the heels of that sentiment is one of her Secrets of Adulthood: You can choose what to do; you can’t choose what you like to do. Wait, what? I always thought that with a good attitude you could learn to like anything. But the truth is, a good attitude will help you get through Latin lessons even if you hate it, but nothing can make you like it if you just don’t.
This was revolutionary for me to admit to myself. I always thought that if something was good, you were supposed to like it, or else it signified a flaw in your character. But not everyone – thank goodness – is the same. Why can’t we dislike things that may seem good to someone else?
Take my trip to Haiti. As a church group we participated in two activities: visiting and playing with kids at an orphanage and working in 90-plus-degree weather building a cinder block wall on the site of the new orphanage. On our last day, we were given the choice: go for one last visit with the kids or stay and work the rest of the (hot) afternoon on the wall.
I chose the wall. It was exhausting work, but physical labor has always been a preference for me. The kids were lovely when we visited – I had several “hairdressers” preside over me and cornrow my hair in a matter of minutes and some kids just wanted to be cuddled or play soccer. But it just wasn’t my wheelhouse. I still believe pouring into the kids was more valuable, but I couldn’t make myself like it more.
Happiness, as Gretchen Rubin found out, is not something that just happens. Maybe instead, it’s already there inside of us and we just need the right focus to recognize it.