The Happiness Project Page 10

  If I write another “forty ways” biography, I’m sure I’ll benefit from your comments. For example, I debated about whether to reiterate the material from my Churchill book about why the number “forty,” the tradition of multiple ways of seeing (Wallace Stevens, Monet, Rashomon—alas, I didn’t read Julian Barnes’s brilliant Flaubert’s Parrot until after I’d written my Churchill book), etc.—but it struck me as somehow pompous to go over all that again. Now I see that of course it’s frustrating to the reader not to see that argument set forth afresh.

  Good luck with your work, and best wishes, Gretchen Rubin

  The minute I pushed “send,” I felt terrific. No matter what David Greenberg did, I’d changed myself. I felt magnanimous, open to criticism, sending good wishes to someone who had hurt me. I didn’t even care if I got a reply. But I did. I got a very nice response.

  Dear Gretchen (if I may),

  Thanks for your note. I admire and applaud you for taking the review in stride and for making the overture to me. I know that when I received mixed or critical reviews of my book, I certainly didn’t react with such aplomb. But on such occasions, more experienced authors reminded me that any review is just one person’s opinion, and in the end the reviews vanish with the next day’s papers while the books endure (which is why we write books, in part). In any event, whether or not you felt my comments were apt, I hope you considered the tone and treatment to be respectful and fair.

  Again, it was good of you to write, and I return the good wishes to you in your work and pursuits.

  Sincerely,

  David Greenberg

  Having an effective strategy to deal with criticism of my work made it easier to enjoy the process of working. Also, this exchange had an added benefit, one that I, as the one being reviewed, didn’t consider at first. We often dislike those whom we’ve hurt, and I bet David Greenberg wasn’t very pleased to see my name pop up in his e-mail in-box. By initiating a friendly exchange, I showed that I bore no hard feelings and let him off the hook. If we were ever introduced at some cocktail party, we could meet on friendly terms.

  Nevertheless, even while I was writing about happiness and focused precisely on the issue of handling criticism, I never did manage entirely to “Enjoy now” with no anxiety about the future. I spent a lot of time arguing with imaginary critics of my happiness project.

  “You have it easy,” one whispered in my ear. “No cocaine, no abuse, no cancer, no divorce, no three-hundred-pound weight loss…you didn’t even have to quit smoking!”

  “What about the millions of people who go to bed hungry?” another added. “What about people who suffer from real depression?”

  “You don’t care about plumbing the depths of your psyche.”

  “You’re not spiritual enough.”

  “The idea of a one-year experiment is stale.”

  “You just talk about yourself.”

  Oh, well, I told myself, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. If I do my project my way, I’m unspiritual and gimmicky; if I tried to do it a different way, I’d be inauthentic and fake. Might as well “Be Gretchen.”

  March’s focus on work and happiness highlighted a tricky issue: the relationship between ambition and happiness. There’s a common belief that happiness and ambition are incompatible. Many ambitious people I’ve known seem eager to claim that they aren’t happy, almost as a way to emphasize their zeal, in echo of Andrew Carnegie’s observation “Show me a contented man, and I’ll show you a failure.”

  Perhaps the happiness-thwarting feelings of dissatisfaction, competitiveness, and jealousy are necessary goads for ambition. If I remained ambitious, was it impossible to be happy? If my project made me happier, would I become complacent? Was the arrival fallacy an important mechanism to keep me striving?

  Studies show that many creative, influential people in the arts and public life score above average in “neuroticism” (i.e., they have a greater propensity to experience negative emotions); this discontent arguably urges them to higher achievement. Other studies, however, show that people tend to think more flexibly and with more complexity when they’re feeling happy.

  But whatever a wide-ranging study might show about the connection between ambition and happiness generally, I realized that for my own part, I was much more likely to take risks, reach out to others, and expose myself to rejection and failure when I felt happy. When I felt unhappy, I felt defensive, touchy, and self-conscious. For example, if I’d been feeling unhappy, I doubt I would have proposed forming a writers’ strategy group. I wouldn’t have wanted to open myself up to rejection or failure.

  “So,” Jamie asked one night at the end of March, as we were getting ready for bed, “do you think your project is making any difference?”

  “Oh yes,” I said without hesitation, “it’s working. Can’t you see a change?”

  “I think so,” he said. “But it’s hard to tell from the outside. You’ve always seemed pretty happy to me.”

  I was pleased to hear him say that, because the more I learned about happiness, the more I realized how much my happiness influenced the people around me.

  “I feel a little blue today myself,” he sighed.

  “You do? Why?” I said, crossing the room to put my arms around him. (As I’d learned last month, a hug is cheering.)

  “I don’t know. I just felt low all day.”

  I opened my mouth to start firing probing questions, but it was obvious that Jamie didn’t really feel like talking.

  “Well,” I said instead, “let’s turn off the light. If you’re feeling down, you’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.”

  “Did you read a study about that?”

  “Nope, I offer that little nugget of wisdom on my own authority.”

  “Well,” he said, “I think you’re right. Let’s go to sleep.”

  It worked.

  4

  APRIL

  Lighten Up

  PARENTHOOD

  Sing in the morning.

  Acknowledge the reality of people’s feelings.

  Be a treasure house of happy memories.

  Take time for projects.

  My children are a tremendous source of happiness. They’ve given me some of the high points of my life and also many of the small moments that make the days happier. I’m not alone in this. Many people have told me that the very happiest moments of their lives have been the births of their children.

  Of course, my children are also a tremendous source of worry, irritation, expense, inconvenience, and lost sleep. In fact, some happiness experts argue that although parents—like me—insist that their children are a major source of happiness, this belief isn’t true. One study that examined a group of women’s emotions during their daily activities showed that they found “child care” only slightly more pleasant than commuting. Marital satisfaction nose-dives after the first child is born and picks up again once the children leave home. From my own experience, I knew that Jamie and I squabbled far more often once we had kids, we had fewer adventures, and we had less time for each other.

  Nevertheless, despite these findings, I had to reject the experts’ argument that children don’t bring happiness. Because they do. Not always in a moment-to-moment way, perhaps, but in a more profound way. After all, in a poll where people were asked, “What one thing in life has brought you the greatest happiness?” the most common answer was “children” or “grandchildren” or both. Were all these people mired in self-deception?

  In many ways, the happiness of having children falls into the kind of happiness that could be called fog happiness. Fog is elusive. Fog surrounds you and transforms the atmosphere, but when you try to examine it, it vanishes. Fog happiness is the kind of happiness you get from activities that, closely examined, don’t really seem to bring much happiness at all—yet somehow they do.

  I identified fog happiness during a party. My host was bustling around the kitchen, juggling the preparation and presentation of the three
major dishes he was serving to thirty people.

  “Are you having fun at your own party?” I asked him, when I probably should have gotten out of his way.

  “Mm, not really right now,” he said distractedly. “I’ll have fun when it’s over.” Really, when? I wondered. Doing the dishes? Rearranging the furniture? Carrying sticky bottles of wine to the recycling bin? Where and when, exactly, was the fun?

  That started me thinking. Many activities that I consider enjoyable aren’t much fun while they’re happening—or ahead of time or afterward. Throwing a party. Giving a performance. Writing. When I stop to analyze my emotions during the various stages of these activities, I see procrastination, dread, anxiety, nervousness, annoyance at having to do errands and busywork, irritation, distraction, time pressure, and anticlimax. Yet these activities undoubtedly make me “happy.” And so it is with raising children. At any one time, the negative may swamp the positive, and I might wish I were doing something else. Nevertheless, the experience of having children gives me tremendous fog happiness. It surrounds me, I see it everywhere, despite the fact that when I zoom in on any particular moment, it can be hard to identify.

  Before I actually gave birth, the aspect of parenthood that intimidated me most was its irreversibility. Spouse, job, work, location—most of the big decisions in life can be reconsidered. Change might be difficult and painful, but it’s possible. But a baby is different. A baby is irrevocable. Once Eliza was born, however, I never gave another thought to the irreversibility of parenthood. I sometimes miss the freedom and leisure of my pre-Mommy days, but I never regret having children; instead, I worry about being a good enough parent. My standards for parenting aren’t especially high: I never fuss much about whether my daughters’ food is organic or whether their rooms are tidy. But when I started my happiness project, I was uneasy about the fact that I wasn’t living up to my own standard of behavior. I lost my temper, I didn’t make enough time for fun, I knew I didn’t appreciate enough this fleeting time in my children’s lives. Though the stages of diapers and dress-up clothes and car seats seem interminable, they pass quickly, and too often, I was so focused on checking off the items of my to-do list that I forgot what really mattered.

  Eliza, bright-eyed and snaggle-toothed at seven years old, is even-tempered, loving, and oddly sensible for a child. She’s wildly creative and loves any kind of imaginative play or homemade project. Apart from the occasional histrionic sulking fit, she’s a delight. Eleanor, at age one, with her dimples, her big blue eyes, and her never-growing hair, is a darling toddler. She has a wide emotional range—she laughs easily, and she cries easily. She’s friendly to everyone, fearless, very determined, and already frustrated by not being able to keep up with Eliza.

  My goal for April, the month dedicated to parenthood? To become more tender and playful with my two daughters. I wanted a peaceful, cheerful, even joyous atmosphere at home—and I knew that nagging and yelling weren’t the way to achieve that. I had two healthy, affectionate little girls, and I wanted my actions as a parent to rise to the level of that good fortune. I wanted to stop my quick bursts of temper—I indulged in that behavior all too often, and then, because it made me feel bad, I behaved even worse. I wanted to be more lighthearted. I wanted to take steps to preserve the happy memories from this time.

  Eliza was old enough to grasp, dimly, that I was writing a book about happiness, but I didn’t tell her that I was working on my parenting skills. As a child, I would have been shocked to learn that my parents gave any thought to how they behaved as parents; they seemed all-wise, practically all-powerful, without any self-doubt. Eliza, I figured, would be unnerved by the notion that I was questioning my actions as a mother.

  But although I didn’t tell her what I was doing, April Fool’s Day conveniently presented me with an opportunity to keep some of my resolutions on the very first day of the month.

  The night before, I’d put a bowl of Cheerios and milk in the freezer, and on the morning of April 1, I presented it to Eliza with a spoon—and watched as she tried, unsuccessfully, to dig in. Her puzzled look was hilarious.

  “April Fool’s!” I said.

  “Really?” she answered, thrilled. “It’s a real April Fool’s joke? Great!” She examined the bowl closely, then ran to show it to Jamie. She got a big kick out of the prank.

  The night before, I’d already gotten into bed when I realized that I’d forgotten to prepare the bowl, and I’d been tempted to drop the whole idea. I remembered my goals for April, though, and hauled myself out of bed. When morning came, I was so happy that I’d taken the time to set up the joke. The fact is, life is more fun when I keep my resolutions.

  SING IN THE MORNING.

  In a family, it’s worth the effort to find ways to get mornings running smoothly, because while mornings set the tone for everyone’s days, they also tend to be stressful as adults try to get themselves organized while also chivvying their children to get ready. From a conversation with Eliza, I got the idea of my resolution to “Sing in the morning.”

  “What did you do at school today?” I’d asked her.

  “We talked about how our parents wake us up in the morning.”

  “What did you say?” I prodded, with curiosity and trepidation.

  “With a good-morning song.”

  Why she said this, I don’t know, because I’d done that only a few times in her whole life. After hearing her comment, though, I vowed to make a habit of it. (This conversation also reminded me that just as adults counsel themselves not to do anything that they wouldn’t want reported in the newspaper, parents shouldn’t do anything they wouldn’t want featured in an essay displayed on the wall for Parent Night.)

  As soon as I started, I saw that singing in the morning really had a cheering effect. I’d become a true believer of the “Act the way I want to feel” commandment; by acting happy, I made myself feel happy. After singing a verse of “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket,” I found it easier to resist slipping into a hectoring tone.

  Singing in the morning reminded me to follow my Ninth Commandment, to “Lighten up.” I tried to free-ride off my children’s laughter—Eleanor especially has always been unusually quick to laugh, even for a little kid—by pushing myself to enter into the mood, to have at least one moment of pure fun with Eliza and Eleanor each day, to laugh at Jamie’s playfulness, and to take a light tone even when I’m chastising, nagging, or fending off complaints.

  Easier said than done. On day three of my resolution, I woke up with a swollen, sore eyelid. I’m casual about most health-related matters, but because I’m so nearsighted that I’m legally blind, I take any eye problem very seriously. I’m prone to sties, but this didn’t look like a sty.

  Singing in the morning was the farthest thing from my mind.

  Because Jamie was traveling on business, I couldn’t leave the girls with him while I did some amateur medical diagnosis. Eliza is allowed to watch cartoons in the morning until Eleanor comes to the kitchen (I know, I shouldn’t let her, but I do), so I sent her to the TV and left Eleanor singing to herself in her crib while I checked Internet health sites. I poked around until I assured myself that this was probably nothing serious.

  By then, Eleanor was roaring “Up, up! Mama!” so I went in to rescue her. She pointed to her diaper and said, “Hurts.”

  When I took off her diaper, I discovered an angry diaper rash. I also discovered that we had only one lone baby wipe left in the entire apartment. As I changed her diaper, using every inch of the sole wipe, Eliza, still in her favorite cherry-printed nightgown, came charging in.

  “It’s 7:18, and I haven’t even eaten breakfast!” she wailed in accusation. Eliza hates to be late; in fact, she hates to be on time; she likes to be early. “I’m supposed to be done eating and getting dressed by 7:20! We’re going to be late!”

  Did I burst into cheering song? Did I laugh in a merry but comforting way? Did I murmur reassuringly, “Don’t worry, sweetheart, we have plenty of time”?
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  No. I snarled in my most menacing voice, “Wait a minute!” She backed off and started sobbing.

  It took every ounce of my willpower not to keep yelling more, but after that first terrible moment, I managed to hold back. I gave Eliza a quick hug and said, “You go get dressed while I make breakfast. We still have plenty of time until school starts.” (“Make breakfast” in this case meant spreading crunchy peanut butter on toast.) We did in fact have plenty of time. Because of Eliza’s concern for promptness, our mornings have a sizable cushion—especially since January, when I began doing the evening tidy-up. Even after the commotion, we managed to make an on-time departure.

  The effort to stop yelling taxed my self-control to the uttermost, but as we walked to school, I realize how much more pleasant our morning had been than it would have been had I kept yelling. As we walked down the street, I started singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” until an embarrassed Eliza hushed me up.

  The most effective way to lighten up—but also the most difficult, because a whining child sucks every particle of humor out of my head—is to make a joke. One morning when Eliza whined, “Why do I have to go to class today? I don’t want to go to tae kwon do,” I wanted to snap back, “You always say you don’t want to go, but then you have fun,” or “I don’t like to hear all this grumbling.” Instead, even though it wasn’t easy, I sang out, “‘I don’t want to go to tae kwon do’—you’re a poet and you don’t know it!” After a minute I added, “I don’t give a snap about going to tap.”

  Eliza answered, “I want to stop going to hip-hop.”

  I hate every kind of bathroom humor, but she loves it, so I whispered, “I don’t give a fart about going to art.”