It’s easy to think you have to make big changes to boost happiness, but “22 Small Things That People Say Made Them Drastically Happier” shows that sometimes the little things can be just as effective.  

More tiny habits to help you feel happier. 

In “5 Lessons from a Conversation with a World-Renowned Happiness Expert,” Sahil Bloom shares what he learned from a recent conversation with Dr. Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest-running study on adult life, health, and happiness in the world. Spoiler alert: These five lessons all have to do with the importance of relationships for good health and happiness. (See below for link to Dr. Waldinger’s TED Talk about what makes a good life.)

Since relationships are so important, how can we strengthen ours? Check out “50 Ways to Show You Care Without Spending a Dime” for tips! Number 50 just might be my favorite.

I absolutely love this young man’s passion for libraries and books as well as his openness about mental health issues. His Instagram posts are a delight. 

While writing “For Your Listening Pleasure,” I stumbled on this website, where you can listen to the sounds of forests from around the world. 

In “On really, truly enjoying things” the Frugal Girl reflects on the fact that, “If you go through life only halfway observing what you experience, it stands to reason that you would not extract 100% of the joy that life has to offer. So, then you’d need twice as many joyful experiences in order to reach the joy level of someone who is more observant.” 

If you’d like to become more observant, click here to join writer and teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn on May 8 (via Zoom) to learn how to “befriend your mind” and live your life with more mindful awareness. Dr. Kabat-Zinn is the father of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a modern, secular form of meditation, and the author of several books, including Wherever You Go, There You Are. This free event is hosted by Action for Happiness.

And finally, here is Dr. Waldinger’s TED Talk about what makes a good life:

I feel you, Luna

Since it’s been full week, with the anniversary of my mom’s death, a solar eclipse, and multiple errands and appointments, today I’ll share with you this poem I love from Cleo Wade’s Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life: 

tired

I was tired of worrying

so I gave myself my peace back

I was tired of feeling intimidated by what I should do

so I pulled up my sleeves

and

got to work on what I could do

I was tired of not knowing

so I found out—about myself, my family, my

ancestors, my government, and the struggles of others

I was tired of seeing evil everywhere

so I found the heavenly spots and showed my

neighbors where they were

I was tired

of looking at the world as one big mess

so I decided to

start cleaning it up

and when people ask me if I am exhausted

I tell them no

because

more than anything

what I got the most tired of

was being tired

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

When things go awry, as they did for me last year, it’s easy to let go of certain practices that bring you joy. I never stopped reading last year—in fact, I read more than usual during plane rides and hours spent alone at my mom’s house. But I did get away from reading poetry on a regular basis.

I always enjoy reading poetry when I do it, and it doesn’t have to be time consuming. One of the beauties of poetry is that you can read just one poem and have something to think about. I mean, why don’t I have a book of poetry sitting where I can pick it up instead of picking up my phone to scroll mindlessly? How many funny cat videos does one woman need to watch?! Reading a poem does take a little more effort than scrolling on my phone, but arguably it’s a better use of my time.

One of the things I like best about reading poetry is that it forces me to slow down. Sure, I could skim over the words on the page, but if I want to get at the meaning of the poem, I have to slow my reading and think about the words. Slowing down has become a theme for 2024 for me, and I’m making an effort to live at a slower pace. Reading poetry on a regular basis sounds like a good way to practice slowing down. 

National Poetry Month to the rescue

Conveniently for me, April is National Poetry Month. There are plenty of resources for me, and anyone else, who wants to add a little poetry to their lives. I’m easing back into regularly reading poetry by starting with Knopf’s Poem-a-Day email. I’ve also recently enjoyed two short collections of poems, Maggie Smith’s Good Bones and Kate Baer’s I Hope This Finds You Well.  

If you’d like to join me in returning to the simple pleasure of poetry, here are a few ways to do so.

Celebrate National Poetry Month

30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

To find virtual and in-person poetry events and resources near you, enter your state or an event title in the search field here. 

Another poem-a-day option, featuring new work by today’s poets.

Want to try your hand at writing poetry? See napowrimo.net for daily prompts in the month of April. 

American Life in Poetry discontinued its practice of sharing poems weekly with newspapers and subscribers at the end of 2022, but the poetry archive remains. Explore it here. 

Some of my previous posts about National Poetry Month can be found here, here, and here.

To get you started, here is poem from the American Life in Poetry archives (introduction by Kwame Dawes):

It seems clear enough that Quincy Troupe wants his poem, ​“Picking a Dandelion”, to achieve the coveted status of ​“timelessness” while being rooted in a historical moment. Here are Joe and Jill, two people with commonly available American names, enacting an ordinary gesture of affection. Yet this instructive love is heightened by the context: love, in other words, in a time of hate (borrowing from Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is the theme and the optimism lacing this poem.

Picking a Dandelion

walking along together

in the nation’s capital

Joe stopped, stooped, picked a flower—

a dandelion to be exact—

then he handed it to Jill—

who smiled in her white summer,

dress full of pretty flowers,

and someone snapped a picture

of this sweet, simple gesture,

it revealed something deeper,

profound, beautiful about

their love for each other here,

that taught all of us watching,

how to reach across time, space,

with a tender touch, a kiss

for one another here, now

in this moment of hatred

before time on earth runs out

Let me know in the comments below if you have any favorite poets or ways of enjoying poetry. 

Recently we had some small dead trees cut down, leaving open space we’ve never had before in our naturally-landscaped backyard. The fall of those trees crushed the ferns growing beneath them, and that whole area of the yard wears a shocked look, like it doesn’t know what happened to it. Nearby, a tall pine, uprooted and left leaning by Hurricane Irma, continues its slow decay, occasionally dropping branches onto the ground. Even though we have mild winters in Florida, there’s a lot of dead stuff. While it’s never pristine, our yard currently looks, shall we say, disheveled.

Yet at the same time, new growth is everywhere. Pale green oak leaves burst out beneath their canopies of Spanish moss and some of my favorite flowers are blooming. Simultaneously beautiful and a mess.

That’s kind of how I feel.

As time does its healing work, the internal walls I put in place to keep going when I had to, even though it was unbearably hard, are collapsing and the emotions and questions I have about that surreal period when both my mother-in-law and mom were dying (it’s a blur) are bubbling to the surface.

I find myself with questions and regrets about how my adult relationship with my mom played out. In particular, how far away we lived from each other. I missed out on frequent, “ordinary” things, like going shopping together, and I worry that I neglected her in ways I didn’t understand because I wasn’t there to see her struggles. My mom was my bedrock person, the one who loved me best. Though we had differences of opinion and viewpoint, I never doubted her love, and I did not have to do anything to earn it. I’m coming to terms with what it means to lose that.

At the same time, I’m deeply enjoying creative projects; delighting in beautiful spring weather; feeling love for my family, friends, and animals; savoring simple pleasures and everyday adventures whenever I experience them.

Even while I was going through my mom’s decline and death, sitting by her bedside daily, watching her slip away, even as I felt such great sorrow and grief, I noticed that I could still find comfort and even joy in certain things…many of them small. It was like the dial of my emotional sensitivity was turned up high—even though I was excruciatingly sad, I could take deep pleasure in a walk in nature, eating a favorite meal, or using an app to identify bird songs. I could be both sad and happy—broken and blooming. 

As I wrote in the October 2023 edition of the Happy Little Thoughts newsletter, “This year has brought home to me the truth that even though we often perceive the world in extremes of either/or, life is really more a case of both/and. 

“We can feel multiple emotions at the same time: sorrow over losing a loved one and relief that they’re no longer suffering.

“I’m working on making my thinking more flexible. Allowing myself to feel joy and grief, without judging either one. Allowing life to unfold as both wonderful and challenging...because, frankly, that's what it is, and what it's always been.”

Even though I’ve outwardly held it together and “been strong” for what feels like forever, inside I have broken and tender places. But there are also blooms pushing their way upward, little tendrils of joy reaching for the light.

There is no question that this world holds unfathomable heartache. We see it on our screens, and in the eyes of those we love, and sometimes in our own faces in the mirror. But don’t forget that this world also holds joy, love, pleasure, and beauty, too.

I came across these perfect quotes from @motherwortandrose on Instagram this week:

“You get to experience enchantment even if you are deeply heartbroken by the world.”

“You are allowed to experience beauty and pleasure even when you are heartbroken.”

My mission on Catching Happiness has always been to focus on the simple pleasures and adventures of a happy life, rather than the heartbreak. Over the past year, I’ve found that increasingly more difficult, but I’m still committed to that goal. I hope today holds more enchantment, beauty, and pleasure than heartbreak for all of us. If you’d like to share something that lifted your spirits recently, we’d love to hear about it! Please share in the comments below.