HEALTH PLUS:Despite the doom and the gloom, happiness in 21st-century Ireland is still within our grasp
AT THE launch last week of a new book, Sonas: Celtic Thoughts on Happiness, the question of what constitutes happiness in 21st-century Ireland was addressed by numerous writers in concrete, abstract, philosophical, universal or deeply personal ways.
Yet, despite the range of definitions, descriptions and expressions of happiness, it was found that these multiple perspectives could be subsumed under nine seminal categories: gratitude, mindfulness, light-heartedness, kindness, understanding, compassion, self-love, freedom of mind and peace.
Nor did any writer have difficulty in recognising instances of happiness in their lives. Whether past, present, aspirational or anticipated, happiness is but a reflection away, if we ask ourselves what truly makes us happy and what would make us most unhappy if it was taken away.
If ever there was a time when we needed to reflect on happiness, this is it. If ever we needed to extract ourselves from problem-saturated thinking, from energy-draining, anger-generating, distressing discussions and discourses of doom, this is it. And as the book Sonasdemonstrates, recouping our sense of happiness and joy is no problem for us as a people. It is a capacity we have not lost.
Notably the contributors in Sonasdid not seek nor find happiness in power, privilege wealth, fame, celebrity or success unless, interestingly, achievement was on behalf of others. Instead, many described places of beauty: "on the edge of the Atlantic", "the area around Ballinskelligs", "sunsets over Valentia Island", "on the way to Skinnskatteberg" among the Masai in Kenya, in Roundstone, in the sureness, certainty and "perspective" of the ocean.
Some found it in their own gardens “growing, compositing and helping to make new life out of old” or when the “first snowdrop has pushed through in the front garden”.
For many, happiness lay in silence, in solitude, in stillness, in memories, in learning how to be alone, with oneself, “being” and learning how “simply to be”, going “placidly amid the noise and haste”, and in clarity seen from a “contemplative place”. Happiness was in nature, with animals, or in a quiet room, beside an open fire. It was in the smell of a book, the cadences of a poem, in listening: listening to sounds, to one’s own voice, in “listening with the ear of the heart”.
For others it was in activity: preparing food, washing the car, climbing mountains, within the bustle of family, the exuberance of children, “out of the comfort zone” in the workplace, “teaching and research”, “writing abstracts for scientific papers”, meeting the dreaded deadline and in a job well done.
Of course, there was an appreciation of light- heartedness, not taking oneself too seriously, revelling in the ridiculous, in the absurdity of life, “accentuating the positive” and looking on the “bright side of life”. And, of course, happiness lay in art, music, poetry, in their resonances, in their descriptions that go beyond words or vision, the visible or rationale, or expression, but in the ineffable that say what we cannot say but recognise with a seventh sense from another dimension and spiritual space.
From a psychological perspective, what is remarkable about the contributions of almost a hundred contributors to this book is the paradoxical diversity and commonality they contained: that regardless of how differently they were written, regardless of how specific the descriptions of events, reflections or decisions about happiness, they converged in the universality of different kinds of love.
Sonasitself represents an act of love, by compiler Catherine Conlon, on behalf of others with all royalties by every writer to the Christina Noble Children's Foundation, demonstrating the ultimate message of this book: that happiness lies in what we give rather than what we get, in the paradox that what we get from giving is more than we give and is a special kind of happiness itself.
Whatever we have lost in Ireland in the 21st century, we have not lost our capacity for happiness: happiness remembered or imagined, past, present or in the future, in the ordinary, in the everyday, in family relationships and friendships, and in loving and being loved by those about whom we care. We have not lost our capacity to engage with happiness as real, obtainable, imaginable and definable, inspirational, beyond reach, a mere thought away.
mmurray@irishtimes.com
- Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is director of the UCD Student Counselling Services. Her new radio slot, Mindtime on Drivetimeis on Wednesdays on RTÉ Radio One. Sonas: Celtic Thoughts on Happinessis published by Hachette Books Ireland