Project Happiness Articles — ThoughtfulThursday

Now that we live in the era of unlimited connectedness, we seem to have lost the single thread of our own stories that makes us so wonderfully human – our humility.

There is a happiness conspiracy afoot and I’m starting to get concerned. Messages of happiness have been pummelling me from all directions. It’s barely noon and I’ve already seen happy-faced emojis sprinkled throughout my incoming text messages

One of my very favourite cartoons is this one from Michael Leunig. It's been on my page a number of times - and to me encapsulates sometimes how life is - and how - when things are very tough - it is the small things that get you through.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.

But what does a great friend do that sets them apart? What can we do to make sure we are being the best friend we can be to those we love?

Feelings solved another one’s void by taking its place. One after the other. Until they were lost into an abyss of nothing. Change had to take place.

How the heck are we supposed to handle the big stuff if we don’t know how to handle the little stuff?

You are not a preprogrammed robot designed to respond in an automatic way to stimuli from others, where you live without options. 

All this begs the question: How can we give of ourselves in a way that not only makes the world a better place, but makes also makes us feel good?

I once heard Dieter F. Uchtdorf speak about a group of men in Germany who wanted to move a full concert-sized grand piano from a chapel into an adjacent concert hall. There were many willing and able men, but with everyone trying to direct the piano in different ways, it kept going off balance and they were unable to lift it. Finally, one of the men said, “...Stand closer together, and lift where you stand.”