The Happy Is

These walks with the dog, you must understand, carry a  unique agony. My current home is in a neighborhood filled with houses painfully beyond my means. I can only thicken my skin and blind my gaze as I loop past them several times each day with the mutt in tow. The irony is that I inhabit one of these wide-shouldered Fairfax County single-family homes. Yet even from within the quiet embrace of this neighborhood, I cannot see a clear path from where I am into a home (or a car, or an education for my son, or a suit of clothes) of a quality anything like the ones possessed by my neighbors. Living as a grown-up with one's parents is to wake up every day on the back side of the looking-glass.

I caught my attention drifting on a walk recently. That doesn't sound so bad, right? Unless your brain is well accustomed to blindsiding you, a little bit of drift is a fine idea. Unfortunately, mine is a tricky foe. I was strolling along with the pooch on a lovely spring afternoon, all budding wisteria and chirping birds. A sanitation truck roared up the street, workers hopping off to empty the bins into the gaping back. As it passed me and I waved my hello, I heard the whisper of this thought echo through my mind:

"They should throw me in the back. That's where I belong."

The thought was so fleeting, it almost disappeared before I could catch it. Indeed, even the slightest distraction, and it might have skittered into the dark corner before I ever noticed it had bared its fangs. Taking a breath, I decided not to let that one stick around. I went back home (such as it is) and began to write.

The tone: simple, clear, light. The objective: list things that make me happy.

Walking the dog. Hugging my son. Zumba on a winter morning. Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. Naps. Growing snow peas. Singing "the green grass grew all around." Oil pastels. Reading Carolyn Hax's column. Hiking the Manassas battlefield. Grabbing that last spot of free street parking. A seat on the metro. Taking the stairs. The plants in my office. My job. My students. My boss.

The smell and sound of garlic popping in olive oil. A good, sharp knife. Setting the table. Washing the dishes. Warm laundry from the dryer. Picking apples. Steam sauna. Contra dancing. The phases of the moon. The sound of peepers. The call of the geese.

Poems by Mary Oliver, Maxine Kumin, Billy Collins. The sound of Eva Cassidy's voice. Laughing over dinner with my parents. Reading the Gettysburg Address etched on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial. Racing down the hill to the woods with my boy. Mud. Rain. Snow. Frost. Swimming nude in fresh water. Sunflowers. Weddings. Alexander Calder. Stretching on the living room floor. Cold watermelon.

Writing a letter. Finding a letter in the mailbox. Listening to Cornel West speak. Girls' night out. Stretching. Kissing. A lazy conversation with an old friend. Smiling at strangers. Learning someone's name and using it. Teaching. Writing in my journal. Saying what I am thankful for. Telling my kid what I like about him. A campfire. Eight hours of sleep. Waking up to the faint memory of a delicious dream. My skin, my skeleton, my heartbeat, my breath.

As I write this list - one that is very hard to draw to a close, by the way - something stunning occurs to me. While my sole constraint was to write what makes me happy, I listed only things that exist in my life or are right within reach. My everyday world is astoundingly full of things that bring me joy. In fact, almost everything I do makes me happy. Okay, so I'm not crazy about that one intersection I have to get  through during rush hour, and for some reason, I despise emptying the dishwasher, but just about every other mundane task brings pleasure.

What do I do with the long stretches of time each day when I am not paying attention to making this list? My tricky brain slips very quickly into fixiating on what I am trying to attain. Things beyond my grasp tempt me with the vague promise of happiness. Perhaps (the whispers tell me), the house of my own, the higher salary, the man who will take care of me, that other thing out there will make me happy. I have somehow come to believe the sense of un-ease and failure I carry around is a direct cost of not possessing something, or of not having managed to acquire a whole bunch of different somethings than the ones I have.

Isn't it fascinating, then, that I have not lincluded things I do not have on my list? If a nice townhouse, a robust college fund for Bug, and a reliable car are supposed to bring me happiness, why do they not show up on the list of things that make me happy? Because, in fact, the coveting of those things plainly makes me unhappy. The sense of joy and peace I seek exists right in the world as I inhabit it.

Certainly, I need to aim for better circumstances for my son and me. However, my momentum in that direction might be more sustainable if I conceive of the source as brimming rather than lacking. Success is not only in the attainment. Could it also be in the (ahem) attunement?

Perhaps it is not a contradiction to strive for improvement while also feeling quite satisfied with the richness of the here and now. I'll even venture to guess that the best way to fashion a full and happy life is to take notice of how the project is already well underway.