Image by Alexandru
Petre from Pixabay
114 If you are not happy, why? [29 Jan 2021]
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.
Children’ s song, as in Wikipedia
or
YouTube
What would happen in this children’s song
if we rowed the boat upstream?
The song ends with a happy picture of
cheer and well-being. Gently moving with the flow sets up
pleasure and contentment. Along with others, I am charmed by the
serenity of the scene. However, I don’t believe in it. A story
explains why.
Exercise
Article 31 used resistance training as an example of doing
work in order to build muscle. In the gym there is no practical
value to having the weight raised and lowered a given number of
times. Weightlifting or rubber band stretching is not like
pedaling a stationary bicycle to generate electricity for
practical consumption. Exercise done purely for muscle growth is
different from exercise spent in productive work that happens to
result in muscle growth along with some other output.
Many years ago, I visited a retired
couple in their home. The husband had formally retired from
physically active railroad work, after which he sat down and
rested. The wife had experienced no formal retirement from any
position and was continuing what she had spent her lifetime
doing. There was a striking difference between the two of them in
their old age. The wife was healthy and strong while the husband
was nearly paralyzed, able to move only his head and right arm.
He had to be lifted into bed from his rocking chair. Inactivity
had killed something in him.
We have frequently discussed the need to
be needed. That is the power that had continued to sustain the
wife into old age. The husband had felt that after so many years
“supporting” his family, he could rest—that is, only rest
without working at anything. His weights had been lifted. That
is, his paychecks had been earned. He had come to an end of what
he was needed for. He did not realize that the lifting of life’s
weights had been keeping him alive. When he no longer lifted
them, his body was no longer needed, and it atrophied.
In this real-life experience of the
retiree, drifting downstream proved to be anything but
serenity.
Health
Today’s article is not about work or
exercise goals in the conventional physical sense. I am building
a case for the mental counterpart instead. The above story is a
sad metaphor teaching a spiritual reality: if you are healthy,
you are happy, and vice versa--moreover, you decide your
state.
This is more poignantly illustrated in
another true story, the happy metaphor. About the time I visited
the couple in the above story, I also visited a shut-in who had a
reputation for being the most charming person in the
congregation. Friends welcomed every opportunity to be in her
home. She was crippled physically, but not mentally.
As a young girl this charming woman had
taken a trip to a foreign country where she contracted a disease
that decimated her mobility. With great effort, she was able to
move cautiously about her apartment, but she had no significant
movement in her fingers and limited movement otherwise. Yet she
supported herself by hand-painting watercolor greeting cards that
were in high demand. Using slow arm movement, she was able to
control the brush in ways that would have been easy for somebody
with supple hands. The guiding force was her remarkable awareness
of and talent for beauty. With the brush rigidly pressed under
her thumb, she could realize on paper the images that her mind
produced copiously. Her beautiful soul found expression on
paper.
This kindly artist shared an uplifting
view of life. She appreciated what she had learned of the world
and realized genuine satisfaction from making her joy visible to
others. Of course, she missed the physical aspects of life that
had been denied her: activity, sports, motherhood, community
service. But failing these, she devotedly set about applying the
talents that remained to her. The greatest was that
indomitable mental health that was her happiness.
Lesson
The remarkable artist taught me a special
relationship among the words health, happiness, and exercise. The
exercise of her happiness was her health.
In the introduction above, I purposely
made a distinction between exercise that produces only muscle
growth and exercise that also produces an external benefit. I
think of music listening as my weightlifting exercise that grows
the happiness muscle. Music brings me to the highest levels of
ecstasy. It aligns my mind and keeps me in shape for facing
anything in life. However, until I produce an output, the
listening serves only me without generating an effect on others.
The artist above approached happiness from the service viewpoint.
She was growing her happiness muscle through giving a gift to
others. This was somewhat like the example of growing body
muscles as a byproduct of generating electricity. The benefit she
provided for others grew her happiness.
It is easy to say that if you are not
happy, you are not making others happy. Insight is learning the
direction of causality. At first glance, not being happy is a
cause that results in not making others happy. May I completely
reverse that thinking? Indeed, making others happy is the
cause, not the result of your happiness. The
homework for this lesson is to examine your surroundings and
identify the lack of happiness that you can address and change.
Do not become entangled in or overcome by that unhappiness.
Counter it with the strength of your happiness muscle and keep
growing until you see a result. Succeeding in this assignment
enables your happiness while you bring others with you (article 38).
My role model as a writer is the dear,
kind artist who gave other people precious happiness.
Being For Others Blog copyright © 2021 Kent Busse
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