Happiness

A few weeks ago I gave up my Saturday morning to administer the SAT.  It's a fairly simple job, hand out the materials, read the instructions, make sure they don't cheat, then collect the materials.  That leaves a lot of time sitting in the back of the class room.  So as I was doing this I picked up a book that I felt like I should have been forced to read at some point in my high school career but some how I must have slipped through the cracks.  It was Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. I didn't finish the whole book that morning but since then I've been picking it up now and then and reading a chapter or two.  It's broken up nicely where the chapters don't necessarily depend on one another so it is very easy to read it over a long period of time.  Anyway the other night I ran across this passage about happiness.  I believe it's actually a quote from Tolstoy's Family Happiness but I'm not certain of this and too lazy to check.  Anyway the passage really spoke to me because it put into words a definition of happiness that I feel like I've been wrestling with for a long time so I wanted to share this will all (4) of my readers out there.

     I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness.  A quiet        secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness.  And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?


None of that is new or revolutionary to me but I guess I just never heard it all put together in such a way before.  If I could, by the grace of God, manage to have a life like the one Tolstoy describes, I can't imagine it being anything but bliss.

The thing that I find most important at this stage in my life is the part about work, "which one hopes may be of some use;" I believe I have found very meaningful work here at St. Benedict's and I'm lucky because as a volunteer here the work I do is rarely unnoticed and it is hardly a thankless job.  But sadly that isn't true for all teachers out there.  But going further, this passage doesn't say anything about having money to support a family or being able to know exactly where your next meal is coming from and precisely when your check will be deposited into your checking account.  I just want to be able to find more meaningful work after all this.  That's the first part of Tolstoy's little checklist I'm going to work on.

Why not try for a little dialog?  How do you define Happiness?