It was the summer of 1962 in an upstairs room at the Canadian Legion Branch in Morell, PEI. Bill Aylward, Eddie Hawbolt, Garth Blaxland, Fred Blaxland, Albert Baker and I were playing poker. During a lull in the game, when everyone else had either gone to the washroom or the bar, I asked Al, a seemingly happy lifelong bachelor then in his early 40s, why he never got married. “Well,” he answered with uncommon candour, “Anybody I ever wanted didn’t want me. And I always figured I’d be happier wanting something I didn’t have than having something I didn’t want.”
Walking home that night I reflected on Al’s philosophy and realized it was both simple and profound. Until then I’d thought happiness was a complex emotion that depended mostly on what was going on around us. But Al’s comment convinced me that attaining happiness is usually pretty simple, and although we’re all good at yearning for it we’d be far better off creating it. The time to be happy is now and the place to be happy is wherever we happen to be. As has often been said, happiness is a journey not a destination.
One of the best ways to enhance happiness is to avoid people who make us unhappy. Considering that this could include relatives, neighbours and co-workers, it’s not always easy to do, but it’s important that we spend as little time as possible around such people. What may be even more important is to not waste time thinking about them.
While playing Junior B hockey in Toronto and Senior A hockey in the Maritimes, I discovered another important element of happiness. During this ten-year span I was always a backup, never the number one goalie. I was often asked if I was unhappy in my role. My answer was always that I was perfectly happy as a backup because, during all those years, at no time was I the better goalie of the two on the team. What had I learned? That happiness includes recognizing our limitations.
I mentioned earlier about avoiding being around people who make us unhappy. The other side of that coin is to be around people who have a good sense of humour, are able to see the amusing side of a situation, and who laugh a lot. I believe that truly happy people don’t laugh because they’re happy, but are happy because they laugh. Except for this year and last year, I’ve been blessed to spend the summers at Lakeside, PEI, a community that abounds with such folks.
Here’s another important aspect of happiness. Have you ever seen a perfectly happy perfectionist? I haven’t, and I’ve been around a lot of perfectionists. Wanting everything to be perfect is a surefire recipe for discontent. It’s expectations that cause frustrations, and frustrations breed unhappiness. Happy people don’t necessarily have the best of everything, they make the best of everything.
We don’t have to look far and wide for happiness. If we have our health, people to love, activities we enjoy, nice neighbours, a positive attitude and things to look forward to, we should be happy. We need to ensure there are happenings in our everyday lives that make us feel good. And we should never look to others to make us happy; it’s probably not going to happen, and even if it does it’s not apt to endure.
Now, my next happiness point may seem ridiculous to most people; all I’m saying is that it works for me. I firmly believe that a leisurely breakfast contributes enormously to a happy day. I began leisurely breakfasts as a teenager when I boarded with the McBride family in Toronto. Breakfast was never rushed, included passing around sections of the Globe and Mail, talking about whatever anyone wanted to talk about, and relating interesting anecdotes. Ever since, it’s always taken me at least half an hour to have breakfast (even alone in a restaurant), and it’s not unusual for me to spend even more time than that slowly savouring my food while reading newspapers or an interesting book. On days when I don’t, it takes a while for my day to become enjoyable. (Incidentally, I annoyed a lot of people during my career by steadfastly refusing to have “working” breakfasts.)
As Abraham Lincoln so wisely observed, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”