Happy?

Last summer a friend started talking about a book called What Happy People Know by psychologist Dan Baker. Every time I saw her she shared what she was learning and how much she liked the book. After two or three months she asked me if I had bought the book yet. Finally, last fall, I bought the book and started reading.

The subtitle of the book is "How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better." Baker uses people's personal stories to explain the brain science behind fear and love and how those two things affect happiness.

I decided to make the effort to read the book because my friend was impressed with what it had to say and, at first, my interest was half-hearted. Then on page 29 Baker writes that there are two parts of the brain that send fear messages and one part of the brain that counters the fear because, "It has the amazing ability to say, 'Nothing is wrong - calm down!'" Now he had my attention. Apparently there is a part of my brain that I'm not using or that isn't getting my attention. I kept reading.

My friend asked me how I liked the book. I told her it was okay, but that I was still waiting to read about how to find the secret of happiness. She said, yeah, we all wanted the secret but that it's not that easy.

I liked some of the personal stories, although at first I had a hard time believing that there are rich people who really aren't happy. Then Baker would describe the situation and conversations he had with the client, and it became obvious that the person was miserable despite the appearance of having everything a person could want. Finding happiness is a process that has little to do with what is happening in the material world and everything to do with a person's thinking, feeling, and ability to stay present. This is a theme that runs through many of the books I have read in the past year.

Last night I finished the book. As so often happens, I understood more of what the author was saying as I got further along. Then, if there is something that speaks to me, I plan to re-read the book once I am tuned to hear the message. In this book that something was the last paragraph on the last page: "This is happiness: bittersweet, often broken, a poem sometimes left unspoken - full of longing and opportunity missed, made wise by sorrows that never last, a promise to ourselves, from deep in the past. A future with fears that never arrive: This is happiness - this moment, this now - this being alive." (p. 259)

That message was worth the wait.