Happiness

On Monday I went for a run (just through the neighborhood, hence no "name that memorial" post) and to the gym in my building afterwards to stretch and lift some weights. As I was stretching, an old bottle-redhead European woman decided she wanted to stand where I was standing. I was absorbed in listening to "Break Your Heart" by Taio Cruz (feat. Ludacris--"ain't nobody as bomb as me"), so I didn't hear her screaming at me to move. From that moment on, she wanted to be wherever I was in the gym. I went to the weight rack; she came and started swinging a 35 pound dumbbell over her head and too close to my face for comfort. I went to do sit-ups on a mat; she followed and almost gave herself a concussion with her vigorous, though short ab workout. I returned to the weight rack; she bypassed an entire row of ten pound weights to reach in front of me and then throw the weights in front of my feet. That was enough. Considering this woman literally pulled the plug on the treadmill when my roommate was running, I left the gym valuing life more than exercise.

Fast forward to today. I came home, stopped to chat with Harry, Tom, and the other lobby regulars, then rode the elevator up with a woman who had overheard my conversation about my last week of classes. She asked me (her very first question) if I would be practicing family law. I said no, patent litigation. In a voice full of pity and edge she informed me that patent litigation is suffering these days but family law is booming: "Divorces are very lucrative, especially when you have ex-husbands like the one downstairs..." (She works for a graphic design firm...) We reached her floor. As the doors closed she half-heartedly apologized for her sarcasm. This was sarcasm in the strict wikipedia sense ("A characterization of something or someone in order to express contempt"), not the mere irony we typically call sarcasm. In all fairness, one of her young twin daughters was crying loudly while she was waiting for her ex-husband to come get the girls, and then one of the twins spilled dirt from a plant on her. Not her favorite mothering moment, I'm sure. But I got the impression she would have been equally open about her divorce with a perfect stranger absent the stresses of motherhood.

Abraham Lincoln supposedly said, "Most people are about as happy as they make their minds up to be." Being upset takes so much energy. I do my fair share of horn-honking and hitting my head again the steering wheel. The New Yorker inside this LA-native/DC transplant comes out whenever tourists stand on the left side of the metro escalators. But I can't imagine spending so much energy hating the people I interact with day to day. I purport that happiness, patience, and love are really easier than the alternative anger, intemperance, and hate. But even if the short term costs of these noble goals exceeds the short term benefits (that instantaneous gratification we human beings get from insisting on fairness, efficiency, and strict adherence to the rules), the long term costs of developing a happy and patient, merciful and kind character are far surpassed by the long term benefits. Whoever said the quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, got it right. We can be happy if we decide to be. Every time we decide to be happy, our nature becomes more prone to choose happiness more easily.