Apr 7th, 2024 Sunday Rainy
Are you living a happy life at this moment?
This is not a philosophical question. It is simply asking, when you think about your situation right now, whether you honestly feel happy and content.
Some people might think of happiness in life as significant milestones – the day you receive an an important offer or accomplish a degree/certificate/course/project, the day you marry your prince/princess charming, the day your first child was born, the time you take a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, etc. While all of those are joyful events, their occurrences are relatively rare. If the happiness in life is purely defined by these highlights, I suspect that for most people, on most days, life is dull and mundane.
Yet research has shown that it is not the intensity, but the frequency, of experiencing happiness, that largely contributes to our life satisfaction. People with high life satisfaction tend to feel happy more often. Though probably not ecstatic each time, they glean meaning from “little bliss” on a day-to-day basis. Makes sense – if one person could sense a little jolly on ninety percent of the days, and the other is super cheerful only on five percent of the days but is bored and down on all the rest, which one would we think is living a happier life?
The concept of “little bliss” is better captured in a Chinese phrase, “Xiao Que Xing”, where the first character means “small”, the second one “reassuring, certain”, and the third one “happiness”. I think of it as a quick check, a snapshot of time, and a reflection in one’s situation and a realization that “actually, I AM happy”.
It does not require much change in our routine, if at all. All it takes is some mindfulness, or awareness, of our surroundings and perspectives. The surroundings are external, and the perspectives internal. If at any instant we could appreciate what is around us, and be grateful, then we can feel (re)assured that we are indeed happy.
My husband just celebrated his birthday. Being overwhelmed with work and not at all excited about the prospect of getting older, he downplayed the day. Nevertheless, I would not want to miss the excuse to make it special, so I took the opportunity to bake this apricot almond torte. I came across the recipe a year ago. It looked gorgeous and I imagine it would taste awesome as well (I love apricot and my husband is a fan of anything almond). Of course, it seemed troublesome, so I need justification for devoting time to it 😛
Finally, after preparing and dividing the batter, finishing both cakes in the oven, letting them cool enough before removing from pans, slicing each in half (not done well, half of the cake layers had holes), assembling the four layers with frosting and apricot jam, smoothing over the sides, and piping some “fancy” (according to my husband) decorations on top and sprinkling with toasted almonds, the feat was achieved!
Despite the many challenges and bumps that life has thrown at us lately, we still have a comfortable home, a supportive family and nice friends to spend time with, two lovely kitties, some work to occupy our day, lots of activities to occupy our evenings (e.g. crafting), and we are in decent health. We have many fun events scheduled or planned throughout the year, including attending a dance with lessons tonight. And now we ALSO have this scrumptious cake to savor for the rest of the week (the calorie is definitely not low, so we will take a tiny piece each time).
Isn’t it a valid reason to be happy? 🙂