I stood on the slanted, uneven floor in the doorway of my stepfather's mom's house. Grandma Gaye is in her nineties now and still lives alone, in a tiny yellow cottage in what was once a hard part of town. She cherishes her independence, but willingly gave away her truck keys when she knew it was time to stop driving. She raised seven children (including surprise twins as the last two) and now she cares for the many cats of East Lawrence.
She doesn't hear that well anymore, and we hadn't come for a long visit anyhow. We were just stopping by after a day at the municipal pool and public library of my youth. My kids were hot and tired and wanted to touch her many knick-knacks. Vicki kept finding "treasures" and trying to convince Gaye to let her take them home (this girl has taught me the meaning of "don't ask, don't get"). I was starting to get anxious to get back onto 40 Highway - the long way to Topeka for the evening, but the way without turnpike tolls. I just didn't feel like spending $1.40 to take the interstate. I had stopped working for the year and knew that every penny counted. That $1.40 could buy a bomb-pop at our corner store back in East Nashville.
My tolerance for chatting was low, and I made ready to make our exit. In the doorway, Gaye grabbed me gently by the upper arm and looked me right in the eyes. She is quite short, so this meant she was gazing up at me.
"Are you happy?"
The question came out just like Gaye: straightforward and simple and unveiled.
I was a bit caught off guard by it. I knitted my eyebrows for a moment, then said, "Sure. I'm not having the very happiest time of my life, but it's not like I'm miserable. I sleep like a baby, in any case."
"Okay," she answered, "just as long as you're happy. That's the most important thing."
No follow-up questions. No deeper thrust to the conversation. That was all she had wanted to know. She wasn't trying to make any kind of other point about my life or her opinion of it.
We piled into the car and the kids were asleep before we got to the highway. I continued to ponder her question until we pulled up to the curb in front of Charlie and Leslie's house. In fact, I continued to ponder it throughout the rest of our trip, and even after we came home.
At each stop along our road trip (and there were seven more homes that welcomed us after Gaye), I told the story of her question and made the same simple query. Over late-night beers after the kids went to sleep, or Mexican food, or as we sat together on patios and porches, the things I heard amazed me. It was a question that really cut through the fog and got to the heart of things.
"I'm happy, I guess. But I'm stressed. I'm trying to provide for my family, and that means I'm always thinking about the next thing that we want or need. I don't really have time to think about whether I'm happy."
"I'm not sure that happiness is even the point. Mom always used to say that the point of life wasn't to be happy. It was to be useful and survive."
"I don't know when we will feel happy again."
"I'm really happy in my work. But in the rest of my life . . . I'm not sure."
"I can't even tell you the last time someone asked me that question. I have no idea."
"I am happy, because I have figured out how to take life on life's terms."
Most people I asked were like me - they hadn't considered the question in so long that they had to really turn it over in their minds for awhile.
I started my 200-hour yoga teacher training a few weeks ago, and on our first night of class, my teacher Liz made a statement that has ricocheted around my mind since then. She said, "Mental health isn't just being happy all the time. It's about having the complete depth and experience of all the feelings." So many of us seem to be searching for happiness, but is it really something else that we're looking for, and we don't know what other name to call it? Depth, contentment, acceptance, purpose, an end to suffering?
As for me? I'm really happy right now. This is a sweet season in my life. Taking the hallway time has been a really good decision, I think. The days seem to float by lightly, strung together with a golden strand of friends over for dinner and walking Vicki to school and picking flowers in the alleyway. But I'm realizing that the goal isn't to make this last forever. The goal is to learn what needs to be learned from this time, to take what lessons it has for me, and to keep moving forward. I won't always be this happy, and that's okay.
