Happy Thoughts

When I was fifteen, I bought a journal and a set of brightly-colored markers with money I’d earned babysitting the kids down the street.

On the first page, I wrote the heading: “Rebecca’s Happy Thoughts”, then I began making a list of everything and everyone that made me happy. It went something like this: #1. Sunsets #2. Mom #3. Blowing bubbles #4. Chocolate #5. The beach…

I carried that journal and the journals that would follow it around for the better part of four years, eventually recording over 6,000 line items of happy thoughts in Crayola-rainbow script.

I don’t know where I got the Happy Thoughts Journal idea, but I do know why I kept the list going: the sheer act of keeping the list made me happier —which is important in high school when there is so much acne and braces and Mean Girls to be unhappy about.

Though I dropped the Happy Thoughts Journal in college, I cherish those years I spent making happiness a habit. In retrospect, I was training my brain to “Look for Happiness” the same way law enforcers train dogs to sniff or drugs –only with a less illegal and more positive outcome.

I was reminded of my Happy Thoughts Journal twice in the past week: first, when I was watching this lovely video by Glennon Doyle Melton of Momastery.com, where she talks about forgetting to Carpe Diem (seize the day) and instead Carpe Kairos (seize the moments).

Even though her context is about moms dealing with small children, which I don’t have, I do have writing. And very often writing is exactly like dealing with a badly-behaved toddler having a meltdown in the grocery check-out line, except the toddler is you, and the meltdown lasts approximately four years. Or a lifetime.

I learned about halfway into writing my memoir that if I didn’t grab and savor the few beautiful moments—like when it seems an angel has whispered a line in your ear– the process just isn’t worth doing.

So I learned to pay close attention to those moments–those Happy Thoughts moments–and celebrate them in the midst of my mess.

The second Happy Thoughts Journal reminder came via an email from my beloved Patheos editor, Queen Deborah (that’s just what I call her because it makes us both laugh) alerting our bloggers to a new partnership with Happify.com, a website that is all about “making happiness winnable”.

Intrigued, I sniffed about Happify.com (come to think of it, not unlike a police dog) looking for that elusive Something that made my Happy Thoughts Journal worthwhile all those years ago. And there it was, everywhere on the site: proof that the act of paying attention to happiness can make you happier.

Happify.com has the statistics to back up what I knew anecdotally: seeking happiness is the first step to finding it.

Since I have been doubly reminded this Monday to PAY ATTENTION to the beautiful moments in life, I hope you’ll join me in looking for happiness this week. Carpe Kairos, my friends.

And now, I’m off to buy a new set of Crayola markers that would have made fifteen year-old Reba very, very Happy.