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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Happiness of Being Involved In Life

Was thinking how I'm just not as happy as I use to be, and began looking into myself to see what exactly it was that created the basic emotion we refer to as happiness. I'm not one of those bubbly people, but more serious,this isn't that, it's more an inner joy that is always present. I'm sure for each of us happiness is a different subject, but this is not some surface thing like games or laughter, they are momentary. I'm speaking of that feeling of inner joy which is present all the time even if we are in the moment not doing anything or for that matter in the moment angry or sad over an event. I think few of us ever really calculate what our base emotion is in this way. It's that emotional expression that may even lack to create depression in some regardless of whats going on around them. What I came up with as an answer "happiness is being involved in life". I mean really being involved to the point where we are excited to wake in the morning and get back at it...whatever IT is. However "Being Involved" is pretty vague and doesn't give us much direction to go in and I was again at a loss as to what creates it.

Then the other day a magazine the grandsons gifted me with from their school fund raiser arrived, Ladies' Home Journal. Normally just scan and save to deliver them to a waiting room some where. It had an article "Want To Be Happier?" it continued "Try Making Your Life a Little Harder." To my surprise it's says get involved in your life. The basic idea is that in our modern society we hurry through life just trying to live it, and we don't live it. The read took me back to the days when I was completely happy in spite of life having more unpleasant situations. Oddly this better life today is also much more stressful than when there was less because people were involved doing life instead of finding ways to get out of doing it thinking this made it easier. For me it's being more 1960 and less 2011. The article says Kelly Lambert Ph.D of Randolph-Macon College has researched the phenomenon of 'effort driven rewards', which is doing meaningful work with our hands which releases neurochemicals in the brain which are our natural antidepressants and survival chemistry (serotonin and dopamine). We're naturally programed to reward ourselves when we work with our hands to feel happy participating in our survival from our caveman days.

Today people are busy seeking better jobs more money for more stuff and more entertainment and still experiencing more and more stress and depression. Here is that answer ~~ they aren't using their hands to make their body work the way it was designed through hands-on participation in life. These days we get limited hands-on as we use computers instead of handwriting, and video instead of reading, dishwashers instead of the sink, washers/dryers instead of the scrub boards and hanging laundry. We buy prepared foods instead of making from scratch and buy our produce instead of growing it. We have throw-away instead of repairing or mending, and few of us own sewing machines or cook anything from scratch. The art of handcraft has become popular cause it makes us feel good but we are still searching for the happiness that goes with feeling we are actually creating sustainability for our survival. In other words we disconnected from our own lives and this is why depression is on the rise and true inner happiness less know.

As I post this I'm headed to get more hand-on knowing it takes me out of my head and gets me involved in my life by getting nails dirty in the garden and wiggle toes in the mud to ground my energy, and saving the vinegar for salads by hand pulling weeds from the brick walk. Then will clean up by hand washing and drying dishes. Get back to the sewing machine to finish pillow covers I've been making rather buy. There are hundreds of things people commonly did for themselves which were productively more than hobbies and gave them a true sense of hands-on participating in their life for the sake of sustainability and survival. Doing things harder maybe? but harder keeps us more attuned and involved to the energy of the All That Is as the experience we are inwardly expressing as our outer life and it's just what is needed to create the new higher frequency of this cycle of Unity Consciousness we are moving into.

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