About a year ago I began to notice how often I was angry. I would read the newspaper and it would make me angry. Television made me angry. I would open my e-mail and I would get even angrier. Work made me angry. I would talk to my friends and I would get angry because they were all angry about one thing or another. It felt, when I really thought about it, that my heart was becoming this small hard thing, black, like a lump of coal. But there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it; it was always there, in the background, the anger, lurking, just waiting to flare up.
Then one day something happened. I'm a writer, I work alone, in the basement. I start every day by looking at Garrison Keiler's Writer's Almanac, which features a few paragraphs about various writers and a poem. On December 24th the poem was by Gary Johnson, structured as a small prayer of the Christian variety, the sort of thing you might say when sitting down at the table before eating. Now, I don't do prayer. I really dislike most forms of established religion. This is a topic I will get into in another entry, but suffice it to say, I am not inclined toward the concept that folks refer to as God. But there was a line in the poem that caught my eye. “Grant to us a cheerful heart.” I'd like to say at that at this moment the scales fell from my eyes, and I became a changed man, but that didn't happen. But this simple phrase did seem to lodge itself somewhere in my consciousness. Kind of like a song that gets stuck in your head. I could hear it echoing around at odd times, surfacing when I didn't expect it; I'd push the words around the way writers do, admiring the simple strength of the phrase. And I know this is going to sound stupid, but somehow, someway, just saying it in my mind made me feel better. Not a lot better, but just a tiny bit better. Kind of like repeating a mantra is helpful to some people. When I came face to face with something I knew was going to make me angry, I did not engage it, I simply said to myself, "Nope, not going to participate. I have a cheerful heart." Kind of goofy, huh? But like I said, I felt better.
So I decided to explore that small feeling, to see if I could make it grow. I wasn't fishing for happiness exactly, I just didn't want to be angry anymore.
I wanted to have a cheerful heart.
I started working on that goal. Nothing big; I didn't get up early to see the sun rise, walk around whistling, buy a puppy or gaze enraptured at scenes from nature. I didn't pray. I didn't quit my job and run off anywhere. What I did was, every day, I tried to simply remove those things that I thought were fueling my anger. For example, if one of my whacky in-laws sent me an e-mail that I could tell from the subject line was going to be an attempt to convert me to their angry conservative mind-set (Obama is a Traitor!) I just deleted it without reading. Boink. When I read the newspaper, I skipped the stories that were the type that would make me angry, that were designed to make angry: Man Shouts Down President! Looters Roam and Kill! Creationists Win Court Battle! Nope. Sorry. I refuse to participate. When some moron talking head on television started yammering away in high dudgeon, I changed the channel. Ditto with the radio. When my conversations with friends and family began to veer in the direction of indignation, I changed the subject. There were other things, lots of them, small things that I began to avoid. After I got pretty good at that, I started adding in a little awareness of the small things that I actually liked. And you know what? I started to feel better. At first, just a little bit, but the feeling grew. And it's growing still. I find, and again I know it sounds simplistic, maybe just a little bit dopey, I can have a cheerful heart. Or at least a heart that's more cheerful than it was a month ago, certainly more than a year ago. Nothing else happened, I didn't win the lottery or get what I wished for. There is no Secret. But I feel better. I didn't start this project because I wanted to be happy, but that's what has happened.
Does anyone else feel the way I did? Like you're just bone tired of having to fight, that you're tired of being angry, that much of the country seems allied against you, that people, at least certain groups of people, hate you, want to change you, want to defeat you? That you're surrounded by haters and shouters?
Would anyone else out there like to have a more cheerful heart?
That's what I want to discuss here. That's what I will discuss here.
I have some ideas that might help.
Stay tuned. Come back soon.
