The Denver Post titled this "You Can Choose to be Happy"

Sunday, April 9, 2000

How can we manage to stay happy in this complex, often confusing, sometimes frightening world?

Some years ago, I was at a party, and John, a grown-up attorney, was on the floor playing with a little boy. Carl, another friend, walked by and said, somewhat sarcastically, "Having fun, John?" John said dryly, "I work with what’s available."

I’ve thought of that incident many times since, and I believe that’s the secret to happiness---working with what’s available. Or Stephen Stills’ take: "If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with." Or, my own: happiness is having an alternative.

The moments go by so quickly and we spend so many of them awash in pessimism, wishing we were somewhere else, with someone else, or doing something else. Yet, when we look back, those were the moments of our lives, and each was sweet in its own way.

The writer Colette said, "I’ve had a wonderful life, I just wish I’d realized it sooner."

We are all having wonderful lives, if we would only realize it. If we look at it in the right way, it’s an exciting, eventful, wonderful thing to be alive on this planet at this time. There are so many interesting things to do - interact with people, try new things, go new places, meet challenges and find strengths in ourselves that we hadn’t known were there.

But so many of us spend our time worrying about something that might happen, letting the moment be filled with anxiety or anger or anticipation, letting the sweetness of the moment slide by without appreciation.

When a former roommate got her first job here in Denver, she put her son in a day care/kindergarten. A few months later they came home in the evening and she was frantic with worry: one of the kids had chickenpox and her son had been exposed. She spent the next ten days worrying, sure he would develop chickenpox and she would have to stay home to nurse him, thus losing this precious new job. No amount of counseling her to wait and see prevailed, and she spent ten miserable days. He did not get chickenpox.

Many years ago I left my marriage because I was terminally unhappy and was making everyone around me unhappy. The two years following were sheer hell, while I tried to figure out how to live and whether I even wanted to. When the pain receded to a manageable level, I realized one day that I was saying, "I’ll start being happy when I (fill in the blank---get a raise, get these bills paid, find someone special....)." I brought myself up short. I had not gone through the indescribable agony of that divorce to continue to be unhappy. I vowed then that I would not spend another moment being unhappy, and if I found I was, I would change whatever was making me feel that way.

That was a long time ago, and I have managed to keep that vow. That is not to say that every moment is joyous, or that I expect it to be. Sometimes I feel like Mother Teresa when she said, "I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that he didn’t trust me so much." When I find myself going through hard or painful times, I check to make sure I am doing what I want to do and, if so, then I remind myself that these challenges are part of being alive. I am always optimistic it will work out for the best, even though I can’t see what the best is. And it always does.

Of the ten troubles you see coming at you down the road, nine will fall into the ditch before they get to you, and the tenth will come in a form you never imagined. So there’s no point in worrying about what might happen. Enjoy the moment, deal with trouble if it comes. Most of the time, it won’t.

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