“That’s getting her dressed?”
“I’ve got to get to the office.”
I gave Jamie the meanest possible look of disdain and fury. “Then go,” I snarled.
He went.
For the rest of the day, that snarl bothered me. My neck hurt, I felt justified in my anger toward Jamie, and yet—my reaction made everything worse. I wanted to apologize, but I thought Jamie should apologize to me. And he didn’t.
We had pleasant, normal interactions that night, but I felt terrible. It took a tremendous effort, but I said, “Hey, about this morning, about that mean face I made. I’m sorry. I was annoyed, but that wasn’t necessary.” Pleased with my nobility, I gave him a hug and a kiss.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Jamie said, as if he hadn’t given my mean face—or his own lapse—a second thought. Which made me angry all over again. He hadn’t even noticed my mean face? Or remembered why he so richly deserved it?
I brooded fruitlessly over the thought that even when I did behave myself, or managed to keep a difficult resolution, I rarely got the gold stars I craved. (Even saintly Thérèse drily admitted that she was bothered by people’s annoying tendency to ignore good behavior and pounce on bad behavior: “I noticed this: When one performs her duty, never excusing herself, no one knows it; on the contrary, imperfections appear immediately.”) But couldn’t I behave better—for myself?
And as much as I worked to be more mindful, I so often fell into my absentminded, distracted, not-here-now ways. For example, one of my oldest friends was coming to town from Switzerland, and for weeks, we’d planned that she’d come over for dinner with her two sons—and I completely forgot. I didn’t remember until a buzz came from the front door, and I heard Jamie ask, puzzled, “Nancy who?”
“Nancy! It’s Nancy and her sons!” I jumped up and frantically started tidying up. “They’re here for dinner!”
“Now?” Jamie said in disbelief.
“Yes, I forgot, they’re here for dinner! Buzz them in!”
Nancy and her sons came upstairs, we ordered pizza, and we had a lovely evening. Nancy was exceptionally nice about my lapse, and Jamie thought it was hilarious, but despite the fun of the evening, I remained agitated. How could I have forgotten something like this? One of my clearest memories of childhood was walking to the library with Nancy when we were ten years old! She was too important to forget. Could I remember nothing without checking my calendar every few hours?
Not only did I feel disheartened by my own limitations, but I also felt hunted by the very subject of happiness. No matter how unrelated a task seemed to be, it always ended up instructing me. I bought a new subway MetroCard, and when I idly glanced down at it, spotted a happiness quotation from Emerson: “Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its own focus.” Instead of feeling charmed by finding this apt happiness quotation on such a modest object, I felt badgered by constant reminders to behave myself and mindfully shape my experience.
I wasn’t tired of the subject of happiness, and I didn’t feel pressure to “be happy” all the time, but I was weary of my own voice, my own ways of thinking. Just the way that, left to my own devices, I’d buy the same pieces of clothing over and over (a gray V-neck sweater, a stretchy orange hoodie, a black cardigan), I felt my thinking falling into the same worn grooves.
I hauled out my usual bag of happiness cures. I went to sleep earlier. I reread The Railway Children. I answered some long-postponed emails. I took some cute pictures of Eliza and Eleanor. I gave everyone an especially warm greeting and farewell. One of my resolutions is to “Forget about results” and to take notes without a purpose, so I gave myself a work break to write a list of ways I violate standard happiness advice:
• Jamie and I have a TV in our bedroom. And it just got bigger.
• We allow Eliza to use the computer in her bedroom without supervision.
• I make the girls’ beds in the morning instead of insisting that they do it.
• I never ask my family questions like “Tell me three good things that happened during your day.”
• I never have date nights with Jamie.
• I don’t make the girls write thank-you notes.
• Whenever possible, I read while I eat.
• Jamie and I listen to all-news radio, all night long.
• I refuse to try meditation.
During this low time, at lunch with a bookish British friend, we started talking about what we read to cheer ourselves up. (I was looking for suggestions for some further biblio therapy.)
“I always reach for Samuel Johnson,” he said.
“Really? Me, too! Well, either Johnson or children’s literature,” I answered, delighted to discover a fellow devotee of Dr. Johnson. “I didn’t know you love Johnson.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve read all his works, many times. Also biographies, and biographies of John Boswell, too.”
“I love Johnson. I can’t get enough. And he’s one of my most important models as a writer.”
“You’re writing a dictionary?”
“Hardly! But his Rambler essays are the eighteenth-century equivalent of posting to a blog—Johnson wrote them twice a week, finished them fast, on whatever topic he wanted. And I write about the same kinds of things.”
“But Johnson wrote about such weighty subjects.”
“He wrote about human nature, and that’s what interests me,” I said. “And the practice of everyday life. Really, I’m a moral essayist, though I’d never admit that in public. It sounds so boring and preachy.”
“It does sound a bit old-fashioned,” he said, laughing. Then we started trading our favorite Johnson lines.
“I want to run home right now and reread Boswell’s Life of Johnson,” I declared as we stood up to leave.
“Me, too. But back to the office.”
He went to the office, but I did go home and immediately start to reread The Life of Samuel Johnson—which really did make me feel better. It was comforting to recall that great souls such as Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, Leo Tolstoy, and Saint Thérèse made and remade the same resolutions throughout their lives. As Johnson admitted to Boswell, “Sir, are you so grossly ignorant of human nature as not to know that a man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice?” My principles were sound; my practice would improve with practice.
And the ironic thing? That afternoon, after all our fuss about whether to push Eliza to take piano lessons, she walked into the kitchen and announced, “I’d like to learn to play the guitar.”
“Really? Well … sure!” I said.
February
BODY
Experience the Experience
Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place, not for another hour, but this hour.
—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, “A Song for Occupations”
- Embrace good smells
- Ask for a knock, give a knock
- Celebrate holiday breakfasts
- Jump
- Try acupuncture
Every time I step through the door to my apartment, I’m hit by the particular sense of home created by everything from the scents I encounter, to the way I’m greeted by my family, to the level of mess I confront. Home is a state of mind, but it’s also a physical experience. Because happiness can seem very abstract and transcendent, for the month of February, I wanted to anchor my thoughts about happiness in the reality of my body. “Experience the experience,” I frequently admonish myself.
The more I thought about happiness, the more convinced I became of the value of the concrete. Airy recommendations such as “Find ways to bounce back,” “Love yourself,” or “Be optimistic” struck me as unhelpfully vague. Although such suggestions would certainly boost happiness, I found it easier to follow resolutions that could clearly be evaluated, such as “Sing in the morning,�
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“Keep a one-sentence journal,” or “Make the positive argument.” Focusing on my body was a way to keep my resolutions specific and tangible; also, things that I experienced physically held a special power.
After dinner one evening, as I helped Eleanor decorate a school Valentine’s box with heart stickers, silver glitter, and fancy lettering, it struck me that my children make me happy, in part, because they encourage me to engage more deeply with the physical world. Left to my own instincts, I’d drift absentmindedly through the apartment, reading, writing, and eating cereal for dinner every night. Eliza’s enjoyment of our soft fleece blanket; Eleanor’s delight in the vanishing sweetness of cotton candy; the textures and colors of the Play-Doh, scented markers, and velvety pipe cleaners left scattered around the kitchen—with my daughters, I become much more alive to these pleasures and experiences of daily life.
In my last happiness project, I’d made body-related resolutions such as “Go to sleep earlier,” “Exercise better,” and “Act more energetic,” and I’d felt a dramatic spike in my happiness and energy. Similarly, this month I’d focus on physical influences on happiness. I planned to tap into the powers of my senses of smell and hearing by resolving to “Embrace good smells” and “Ask for a knock, give a knock.” With the resolution to “Celebrate holiday breakfasts,” I hoped to turn these occasional mealtimes into an engine of happiness. To enhance my general sense of physical energy and well-being, I resolved to “Jump”—quite literally, jump up and down—and to “Try acupuncture.”
These body-centric resolutions had solid studies to back them up, and I read this evidence with great interest; nevertheless, despite my inexhaustible appetite for happiness-related science, I’ve become less trusting of its conclusions. First, in the time I’ve been following the research, I’ve witnessed big swings in scientific conclusions, as well as conflicting results. Did exercise actually make people happier, or were happier people merely more likely to exercise? Second, I’ve seen arguments that struck me as highly questionable. According to some happiness researchers, children don’t make parents happier; however, in my experience, and I think most parents would agree, children are indeed a significant source of happiness.
Nowadays, I read the science in much the same way that I read novels, philosophy, and biographies: to expose myself to new ideas and new perspectives on happiness. Science can be tremendously illuminating, especially when it disproves conventional wisdom or suggests new factors to consider, but I’ve grown careful to test those ideas against my own experience (which admittedly imposes a different limitation on my thinking).
Boswell reports that when he remarked to Johnson that it was impossible to refute Bishop Berkeley’s argument against the existence of matter, Johnson indignantly kicked a large stone and answered, “I refute it thus.” In my experience, did exercise contribute to happiness? Absolutely. In my view, did my children contribute to my happiness? Yes, indeed. I refute it thus.
As I considered the aims for February, the month of “Body,” I wanted to pay special attention to the experiences that I was actually experiencing; not unthinkingly to accept other people’s theories or arguments, but instead, to stay mindful of what I actually found to be true for me.
EMBRACE GOOD SMELLS
Mindfulness is an indispensable virtue for happiness—which is unfortunate, because I’m not a mindful person. As I tried to be more mindful of the little flashes of happiness or unhappiness I experienced during my day, I noticed that many subtle things influenced me, some of which I barely consciously registered.
One surprising influence? My sense of smell.
It was Eleanor who led me to concentrate on this area. She has a real nose, and often reacts with delight or disgust to a smell that I’ve hardly noticed. I remember years ago, when I was pushing her stroller up Lexington Avenue, she turned her tiny face to me and asked in wonderment, “Mommy, what’s that good smell?” She looked rapturous—at the familiar smell of that staple of New York City streets, a Nuts4Nuts cart selling honey-roasted nuts. I never gave those carts a second thought, but she was right, the nuts smelled marvelous. On the other hand, for years, she cried every time we put her in a car, because she hated the smell so much, and she flatly refused to go into the stinky Penguin House at the Central Park Zoo.
Reflecting on Eleanor’s reactions made me curious about the power of scents, and my reading turned up many interesting facts. I was surprised to learn that unlike taste, the human response to smells is learned, not innate—that is, nothing smells good (roses) or bad (rotten meat) until we learn that it’s a good smell or a bad smell. The average person can recognize and remember about ten thousand odors. After exposure to a particular smell, we adapt to it, and must take several minutes away from it to detect it again. Although we often discount the importance of the sense of smell, people who suffer from anosmia (loss of the sense of smell) often become depressed; they lose interest in food and sex, have difficulty sleeping, and feel disconnected from others. Most interesting to me: My happiness affects my sense of smell, and vice versa. A person in a good mood perceives a neutral odor such as rubbing alcohol as more pleasant than does a person in a bad mood, and doesn’t become as annoyed by bad smells; at the same time, smelling an enjoyable odor can help alleviate anxiety and increase tolerance for pain.
A particular scent can bring back memories with tremendous intensity. In the most famous example, Marcel Proust recalled long-forgotten memories when he smelled and tasted a madeleine soaked in linden tea; in fact, these kinds of involuntary and vivid rushes of memory evoked by the senses are called “Proustian memories.” “Wherever I am in the world,” wrote Jorge Luis Borges, “all I need is the smell of eucalyptus to recover that lost world of Adrogué, which today no doubt exists only in my memory.” I love the smell of popcorn, which makes me think of my mother, and the smell of crayons, which make me think of childhood. A friend mentioned her recent experience with a Proustian memory. “On my way to work, I walked by a guy wearing Drakkar Noir, the cologne my ex-boyfriend used to wear. It ruined my whole morning.”
Once I appreciated the power of smell to influence my emotions, and its importance to my sense of vitality and enjoyment, I resolved to “Embrace good smells.”
To start, I was intrigued by a reference I’d seen in Rachel Herz’s fascinating book The Scent of Desire, where Herz mentioned the naturalistic, unusual scents created by Demeter Fragrance. I looked up Demeter Fragrance online and was staggered by its offerings. Bamboo. Clean Windows. Dust. Bourbon. Snow. Grass. Laundromat. Lilac. Frozen Pond. Gardenia. New Zealand. Steam Room.
At first I thought wistfully, “I wish I could smell some of these myself.” Then I realized—I could! As an under-buyer, I have to remind myself that, yes, I can buy things. I knew the girls would love the smells, too.
I started putting scents in my online shopping cart: Bonfire, Pure Soap, Salt Air. Bulgarian Rose, because I love the smell of roses, and roses are an auspicious motif of my happiness project. And I had to order Paperback. But Earthworm? My curiosity wasn’t strong enough to entice me to buy that one. As with Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, it was important to make my choices carefully.
One Saturday, the box arrived from Demeter. “Come here!” I called to Eliza and Eleanor. “Check out all these smells!”
We made a guessing game out of testing the different sprays. Before we made it through all the scents, however, we had to stop, because Eleanor had developed a bad headache. She never complained about headaches, so I was a little worried until I realized: Eleanor has a hypersensitive sense of smell! She’d just been hit with several powerful odors in an hour. No wonder she had a headache.
I’d always disdained “air fresheners,” but these scents made me an enthusiast. My office smelled like Christmas Tree! And while I couldn’t light a bonfire in the hallway, now I could enjoy that exciting autumn smell wherever I wanted it.
I loved my bottles from Demeter, but what should I do with the
m? It seemed a shame to put them away in a back closet, and it felt like clutter. Then I decided—I’d make a Shrine to Scent. I cleared off a shelf on a convenient bookcase and set out the bottles. I stood back to judge the effect, and wasn’t impressed. Then I remembered a Secret of Adulthood: Everything looks better arranged on a tray. I pulled a silver tray from a cabinet, set it on the shelf, and arranged the bottles nicely. Now, that looked like a Shrine to Scent. (Plus I got an added jolt of satisfaction from figuring out a way to deploy a lovely, little-used tray.)
“But these are fake smells,” a friend protested when I proudly showed off my display. “It’s just a bunch of chemicals.”
This alleged fakeness didn’t bother me, but I did want to pay more attention to the pleasant smells that naturally filled my day. Research shows that paying attention to smells actually enhances our ability to perceive them; if we don’t attend to them, they drift off unnoticed.
I prompted myself to pay attention when I covered Eleanor with baby lotion, which is one of my very favorite smells; the “Hawaiian coconut and orchid” smell of Eliza’s latest shampoo; the starchy, masculine smell of Jamie’s shirts; the particular scent of our building’s lobby. (A friend had once pointed out, “The lobby of your building has a very noticeable smell. It’s not a bad smell, but it’s distinctive.”) In the middle of winter, I couldn’t stop to smell the roses, but I could take a moment to bury my face in a pile of towels, to enjoy that hot, clean fragrance as they came from the dryer. I was mystified by the fact that every hardware store, large or small, has that same hardware store smell, and I breathed it in deeply every time I visited.
How else to add good smells to my life? Keeping flowers in the apartment would be a wonderful source of natural scents, but as an under-buyer, I would never buy them. I did pick up some lavender sachets for my drawers, a very un-under-buyer, un-simplifying thing to do.
I’d always enjoyed perfume, but I’d stopped wearing it much (I knew that perfume bothered some people). When I pulled out my perfume bottles, I loved the powerful scent of L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Tea Rose, the perfume I wore my senior year in college, but I discovered that my Penhaligon Lily of the Valley had lost its smell; I’d saved it too long. Lovely stationery, new white T-shirts, those wonderful Japanese paper plates my mother gave me—why was I “saving” them? I should spend out, use things up, enjoy them for their purpose. I should wear my perfume. After all, I didn’t work in an office with a lot of other people or ride in crowded elevators; no one would be bothered by it, and I would love it. I even started putting on perfume before I went to bed.
Happier at Home Page 16