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Happy 101

January 9, 2012

By Umesh Jain

I hope everyone has started their New Year with my advice regarding Funny (see Jan 2/12 blog post…). Let us continue our dialogue of humour by understanding happy. Of course, happy and humour have a lot in common but they are quite different in many respects. The purest form of happy that I can depict for you is the Arrivals Gate at the airport. They should have an audience section there for depressed people just to see and feel the happy energy. There is the anticipation, followed by the shriek of acknowledgment that someone has arrived and then the hugs and kisses start flowing. I love the occasional person who kisses the floor. I’m home.

Another place of happy is at the finish line or the medal podium. It is an exhausted happy. Sometimes it is so overpowering that the person breaks into tears of joy. Metthias Steiner of Germany did it the best in the 2008 Olympics on August 20 in the superheavyweight class win for the gold. His wife had just passed away and before she died he said he was going to win the gold for her. When he won, he tore off his shirt and with tears streaming from his face he held up the picture of his late wife and said, “Of course, this gold is for my wife….”.

The common ingredient in these two examples is the getting of something and what makes the happiness extreme is the recovering of something we had lost. Just as in my Joke Album Diary example, another little task for you is to document and hold on to Happy Moments. You know this is already captured in the mounds of videos of your children and/or your past, but make it something you sit and hold on to filling all of your senses with the information so that you don’t lose the moment into a snapshot within your life. ADDers, unfortunately don’t spend enough time to remember their happy moments often perceiving them as relief or a passing event because another crisis is looming.

Right now, while you are thinking of it, close your eyes and remember the happiest thing that ever happened to you. See if you can remember the event, the sounds, the smells, the people and mostly the feeling. If you can, put this into words and write it out or dictate it into a message or videotape yourself remembering it. You will have captured it for posterity.

Think HAPPY.

(Click on the picture to view our interview with Olympian Jake Wetzel!)

3 Responses to “Happy 101”

  1. cloud1 says:
    January 12, 2012

    You are so right about the airport. Traveling a lot for business during periods of my life it was a fun spectator sport and such a joy to see such joy!

    You are equally right about the elusive thoughts and not staying in the moment. So much goes undocumented in the brain and only the negative merits a permanent log. In various places I’ve read to keep a gratitude journal so when I remember I jot down a brief note of something good that happened or what I am grateful for at bed time. Your exercise will also be encorporated during the day along with a funny video of some sort. Time to make happy a bit of a priority, I think it is there if we look hard enough and redefine it.

  2. Larynxa says:
    January 10, 2012

    You mean “happiness”. “Happy” is an adjective, not a noun.

    Please correct your paper and hand it in for re-marking.

    ;-P

  3. nellie says:
    January 10, 2012

    Wow , you’ve really given me something to think about! Coincidently it is a topic that’s been on my mind recently. I’ve never thought of myself as an unhappy person but I can’t think of any event that triggered that sort of highly emotional response. Relief feelings as you say yes but certainly nothing like that. I always wonder at airports when people get that excited to see someone and bring flowers. It has always seemed sappy to me. I often go to sporting events as well but unless the game is highly charged or during the playoffs find it hard to excited over a goal. But I do often people watch and wonder what it would be like to be so excitable that a goal would lead you to high five evryone in the row your sitting in:-)
    And all I wanted was some simple distraction while drinking my morning coffee, now I have to think of being happy to darn it :-) !

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