Independently Happy

It's hard not to be envious of people who are independently wealthy; people whose wealth is independent of anything that goes on in their lives. This episode explores the possibility of being independently happy.  Happiness that is independent of the circumstances of our daily life.

Transcript

Independently Happy

Welcome to the Verbal Motivation Podcast. Where we talk about the things that motivate our lives, our religion and our relationships. My Name is Nathan Vail. 

This is episode number six called Independently Happy.

It's hard not to be envious of people who have a lot of money.  No matter what else happens in their world, they are still wealthy. It must be a comforting feeling knowing that they can’t be fired, the price of gas and groceries don’t matter, and they could tour the world if they want, spending money or doing things just because they can. 

By definition their wealth is independent of their life circumstances and has no limits; thus the phrase, independently wealthy.

The question we will consider today is whether or not we are happier as a result of our individual wealth.

I used to listen to the Huge Hewitt show. He would often have two people on from different viewpoints and then debate an issue, usually in a respectful way. One day he had an atheist and a minister on to debate whether or not there is a God. At one point in the show the atheist said, If there was a God there wouldn't be places like exist in parts of Africa. I felt a little bit of shock when he said that because I didn’t know how the minister would respond. Without missing a beat the minister said, “you’ve obviously never been to Africa.  I have been many times and I can tell you the people there live with or near their families their entire lives. Life there is simple in many respects with a lot less stress. In many cases they appear to live happier and more fulfilling lives than we do here.” 

A profound silence followed the minister's answer because the atheist had no retort for that.

I don’t know anything about the lives of people in Africa, but it is worth considering that here in America, we often base our level of happiness on our material possessions.

 Just to bolster the minister’s point, Peter C. Whybrow, in his book American Mania: When more is not enough, makes the case that in the world's most affluent nation, the need for more is the cause of the epidemic rates of stress, anxiety, depression, obesity, and time urgency, which are accepted as part of everyday existence.

I think it would be hard to dispute that, but I would pose the question, are we helpless victims of society and circumstance? Or do we have some say in whether or not to participate in what goes on around us.

In my professional life, I work with seniors some of whom have Alzheimer's disease. People suffering from this very challenging disease often say or do things that would normally be considered very inappropriate and even offensive. But as trained professionals, we respond with patients or we don’t respond at all. 

The fascinating thing is that when my co-workers and I are not at work and a driver on the road cuts us off or someone at a community event says something that runs counter to what we think, we naturally become frustrated or even get angry the same as anyone else. 

Eventually, living in these two worlds at the same time where we are offended by one group and not by the other, you start to feel like maybe it's a choice. Maybe we decide whether or not to react or how to react to the actions of other people. 

I traveled out of state last weekend and I heard a story I don’t know if it’s true but it bears repeating. He said that in the old days with flying, if your flight was canceled you had to collect your luggage from the plane and go stand in line to re-book your flight and re-check your luggage. He said that happened to him one day and a gentleman in line ahead of him was really laying into the woman re-booking the flights. To the point that he said a couple of other men asked him to calm down. The airline employee was professional the entire time, despite the fact that the man was so angry. When he got to the front himself he complimented her for her professionalism with the man. She replied that she was just her job. He said, how do you remain so calm under those circumstances? She smiled and said, what he doesn’t know is that he is going to Chicago and his luggage is going to Cincinnati. Then she said, where would you like to go and where would you like your luggage to go?

I think if we were honest with ourselves we would agree that most of the time we allow our attitude and our enjoyment of life to blow whichever direction the winds of daily circumstance take it; rather than determining for ourselves what we allow to change our emotional direction.

Is it possible that we could just decide to be happy? Happiness that is independent, let's say, of our day to day circumstances and knows no end because its source is not our external environment. Something we might call: Independently happy.

CNN creator Ted Turner once said, “Being a billionaire or being a millionaire or being broke – and I’ve been all three at one time or another - it doesn’t make that much difference.”

Well that can’t be true…unless our happiness is not actually based on external circumstances like money or fame. 

And if that is true, then we should be asking ourselves, is it possible that if we are unhappy, it is because we decided to be?

Mr. Turner said that on the day he became a billionaire, “I was so excited. I wanted to tell someone…that evening I told my wife as the kids were running around. She said, ‘That’s great, but I have to deal with the kids right now.’”

I wondered when I read this, which of the two of them is actually independently wealthy.

President Nelson has taught that, “The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.”

I don’t think he is belittling the challenges in our lives or saying that we shouldn’t go to work and provide for our families. I think he is saying that we have a choice how we respond to the circumstances of our lives.

Have you ever noticed how the things we pray for the hardest are often things we already had and lost? 

Ask the parents of a sick child if they have ever prayed harder than to have their child's health back.  Would we ever pray that hard for a boat or a trip to the bahamas? 

Speaking from experience, a lot of the time when we want something back so badly, we realize that we didn't truly appreciate it when we did have it.

And why does it take a crisis for us to recognize what great things we already have?

Many years ago my wife and I went on Trek with our youth. We were given a bag of rice and told that it was to represent our family's baby and someone in our family group had to be holding the rice baby from morning until evening all three days we pushed our handcarts. On the first day it was just a bag of rice that we passed around, but eventually we gave it a name and began to hold it with care. As a group we also started to feel like a family because of the struggles we had to work together to overcome each day. On the last evening of the trek, the leadership came to us quietly and told us we had to leave our family early in the morning and meet them a few miles down the road. The next morning, as the company of hand cart families came pushing down the road towards us, my wife and I were kneeling on the side of the road next to the shallow grave of our little rice baby. Every hand cart group passed us in silence. It was so powerful that real tears began streaming down my face. We all felt more powerfully than ever before the very real sacrifice that some families have to make in this life, even when doing the right thing. 

 The New Testament records numerous events of Jesus healing the sick and even raising the dead. Ask yourself this question, as I did. If Jesus raised our son or daughter from the dead, would the overwhelming joy we feel be because a miracle happened or because we had our loved one back?  If it's the latter, shouldn't we feel that overwhelming joy today? Because we would be getting back exactly what we have right now!?

Somehow it feels like we need a reason to be that happy about the things we have in our lives.

But we don’t need a reason! We just need to focus on what we have and what we love the most.

Independent happiness could be all around us.  We just miss it sometimes while we focus on the distractions of everyday living and societal norms that feel so important.

 I was talking to a lady in-line at the grocery store a few weeks ago and winning the lottery came up. She said that if she won she would be done working. The first thing I would do," she said, “is call in rich.”

I laughed out loud when she said that…but then I thought, would it really be that exciting after the first day, month or year? Or, after the excitement wore off, would we end up focusing on the same people and things that provide joy right now, that we didn’t need the money for.

Consider the true story of Jack Witaker. He won 314 million dollars playing the lottery. At the time of the winning, he was a modest, Christian, business owner. He and his wife were raising a granddaughter, who was the joy in their life. One account I read said from the moment their granddaughter got off the bus she was on the phone with her beloved “paw paw”. It felt like a truly blissful existence. The granddaughter was given so much allowance money that her friends said that after a period of time she only used $100 bills. The change from which was discarded onto the back seat of her car and flew out the windows as she drove. She eventually became a drug addict and less than two years from the time Jack won the lottery, she was found dead behind a barn from a drug overdose. His wife also died some time later of natural causes, but her grief was overwhelming and some say the death of their beloved granddaughter and the stress of winning the lottery was the real cause. She said before passing that winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Jack himself, who was honest and adored by all before he won, eventually became a belligerent drunk and stumbled into strip clubs on a regular basis carrying as much $50K-$200K “just because I can.” He became such a bane to the existence of the local population that the church he re-built when he first won his money, was left empty because no one would “put their back side on a bench he built.” His story is hardly unique. 

There are so many examples of people whose happiest day was when they won the lottery. A day that they curse later in life.

Maybe they should put a product warning label on lotto tickets the way they do with cigarettes and fatty foods.

Just to be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with having money. I could give just as many examples of wealthy people who are humble and the salt of the earth.

My point is simply that money and possessions are not in themselves a source of happiness. We all know that, yet, it feels like we spend more time with our co-workers than our families. 

It is also worth considering that you can’t take a vacation from taking a vacation. In other words, there is no fulfillment in doing nothing.  There is a reason why retired people are busier than they were when they worked. It’s usually because they want to be. 

I heard a beautiful song the other day called Tiny Hearts by Kimberly Henderson. In that song she says, “I know who I am.”

Nothing will lead us to more happiness than knowing who we are. Knowing why we are here and where we are going. That knowledge changes our perspective. It doesn’t make life or even loss easy, but when we understand that we are children of God and there is a purpose in what happens here, we know to “whom we can look” for lasting happiness and what things we should be focusing on.

As part of the Alzheimer's training I mentioned earlier, we have our employees write down 5 of the most important things to them, without telling them in advance why they're doing it. Then we randomly take one of the five from them and tell them that they just lost that thing and ask them to express how they feel in their life now that it is gone. It’s a sobering conversation every time. In all the years I have done that exercise, no one has ever written down a car, or a house or a boat. 

I met a gentleman at a work convention this year who had a thick accent. He came to America he said when he was young with nothing but the shirt on his back. He told us that he had decided before he came that he would be rich, and I am, he said. It was exciting to listen to his story about how he started from nothing and worked tirelessly until he found his way to riches. He started to tell us exactly how rich he was, but then thought better of it. We were all leaning in with intense interest and admiration when suddenly he got very solemn and said, but I wish I wasn’t rich. I have children. But I never went to their plays or their games. He mentioned a daughter specifically and said she doesn’t even know who he is and he doesn’t have a relationship with her because he was never around.

There was a strange silence in the room, after his boasting of wealth pricked his memory of the cost of becoming so wealthy. Suddenly his rags to riches story was a cautionary tale.

It brought to mind the words of John Greenleaf Whittier who said, "For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, '"it might have been.'"  

If we just simply can’t find happiness in our lives, it may be possible that we are chasing tofu happiness.  The kind of short term unfulfilling happiness that the world offers in abundance?

Elder D. Todd Christofferson reminded us in the last general conference that the highest privilege we have as members of The Church of Jesus Christ, is being sealed to our families for time and all eternity.

I was in a restaurant with my family one day and a jolly older man with a Spanish accent was helping us. During the exchange I said to him that we only live once. He smiled and said, no we only die once, we live everyday.

May we all be as wise as that older gentleman and focus our lives on the true sources of happiness; our faith, our family and our friends that we too may be surrounded by the warm blanket that is independent happiness.

My name is Nathan Vail and this is the Verbal Motivation Podcast.