How-to-Be-Happy-in-Hard-Times

How to Be Happy in Hard Times

We are being asked to spend now, to help the economy. What we really need is to sever the specious mental connection between buying things and feeling good. If the American economy is the great dynamic engine it prides itself on being, it will survive without the ill-advised spending that gets people into trouble.

Take a peanut butter sandwich to the banks of your local pond, gaze at the water and quietly celebrate the overdue end of mindless consumerism. Fill up your day with things that don’t require you to part with money.

Realize that feverish acquisition of excess stuff is actually a fairly new practice. A teenaged Boomer’s bedroom was not the multi-colored junk heap of today. He had maybe a sports pennant on the wall, a baseball on the bureau, a record player. So we can all live well without addictive shopping and clutter.

Summon some historical perspective. Losing your job is more serious than giving up non-essential shopping. But compared to Americans who lived before the New Deal, we are sitting pretty, with unemployment checks or, if you’re old enough, Social Security. Job loss was once life threatening. Not now. Unpleasant, yes, even scary, but we manage to get around the problem. Moreover, job loss represents a cherished American possibility -- to reinvent oneself.

So reinvent yourself. Start a dog-walking service. Prepare for a new career by taking courses or just with free material on the Web. Wean yourself of future need for employers who won’t hire you now. Talk about happiness!

Do things. Keeping actively busy is the number-one way to be happy with very little spending money. Instead of buying unaffordable stadium tickets this summer, form your own team and play ball yourself. It burns calories, makes you stronger, gets you with friends for an afternoon and is deeply satisfying. After the game buy beer with some of the money saved on that expensive ticket.

Beware the treacherous attraction of passive entertainment, like television and aimless web surfing. Obesity happens when we replace action with a combination of eating and passive entertainment. In Caroline Moorehead’s wonderful biography of foreign correspondent Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway was said to have banned the radio -- TV hadn’t been invented -- at their famous home in Cuba because it was distracting him from his writing task. What was it? “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

Recapture pleasures of happier times. Everybody has something they haven’t done or played since they were twelve – badminton, Monopoly, bike riding, ice skating, cookie baking, scrapbook assembling, croquet.

Sing. Dance. It is very telling -- and now convenient -- that some of life’s most joyous activities require absolutely no money. If you’re embarrassed to hear your long dormant singing voice, put on music with words and sing along. Go caroling at holiday time. Roll up the rug and throw a dance party. See your friends exhilarated by movement to music instead of drinking and whining about the cost of health care -- which we would need less if we danced more.

Be tight, not cheap. An occasional Dutch-treat lunch with a valued friend is never too expensive.

Get healthy and beautiful. “Spin” 100 times before you’re even out of bed. Continue exercising while the coffee is brewing. Drink a lot of water. Take deep breaths and long walks. Join the Y and swim laps. Try new salad recipes and make soup.

Be nice to your family instead of crabby. The latter is obviously more likely when you’re jobless, broke or both. Civility, patience and love in adversity are hallmarks of a classy person – and you want to survive this economy with aplomb. Read together, hike together, refinish an old table together -- but stay close and stay nice. When the Help Wanted ads start appearing again, you’ll already be a lot richer.