I came across an interesting article, Happy Places Are Real: 5 Tips To Help You Find Yours (mindbodygreen.com) which discusses finding the "happy space", whether it is a physical place, or a space within ourselves.
"For some people, it may be a busy shopping mall. For others, it’s the serenity of a beach. Think of it as that place you go to be fully present with yourself, and you can savor the experience."
"...Having an emotional connection with nature can help reduce mental ailments such as anxiety, anger, and aggressiveness — not to mention the physical benefits of being in nature, like increased activity and exposure to vitamin D."
"...Late professor of psychology Christopher Peterson wrote a book explaining that when we are acutely aware of the moments in our life that give us pleasure, we can extend these experiences to maximize the amount of pleasure we get from them. He describes happy places as easily accessible, neutral, and without penalty, always contributing to the meaning of our lives. These places outside of work and home are described by Ray Oldenburg as “third places.”
The author gives several examples of people finding a happy place, and shares suggestions toward finding yours:
- "Recall places you’ve been where you appreciated the sounds."
- "Summon the places where you’ve enjoyed the imagery."
- "Choose a place where you can experience the elements that contribute to your happiness."
- "Remember where you were when you experienced deep contentment and meaning."
- "Stay open-minded."
Most of the time most of the places that I have lived have been happy places. That is probably because I have either lived by myself or with only one or two other people.
ReplyDeleteThe home where I grew up was happy because it was just my parents and myself. We rarely had visitors, and I had a room to myself (which expanded to two rooms upstairs) once I became an adult.
My apartments and homes have been places where I am happy to be alone. As an only child I learned very early to be happy alone. The two homes that I have owned were also places with gardens and landscaping which made them pleasant.
The Cabin which my parents and I shared was also a happy place both when I was there alone and when they came. My homes were also happy places when my parents came. I was always happy to see them come, but I was also happy when they left me to be alone again.
My aunt Anne’s home was also a happy place. I would go back and stay with her for a week several times a year. It was mostly just her and I. When I went out to her enclosed porch which had a great view of the valley to pray the Office she would go to her bedroom to say the Rosary.
Which comes to the point that all my homes and apartments have essentially felt like great peaceful but warm churches. When I was searching for my house some thirty years ago, I was very conscious that I was choosing a place of worship with its cathedral ceilings, openness, and natural lighting.
During the past three years as I have become friends with Betty, a key element in cementing our relationship has been her love of liturgical music and the Divine Office. For her first Christmas present I gave her several of Merton books so she would realize that she was entering a relationship with a contemplative solitary. Although she is very much the extravert she has a great appreciation for the solitude and stability of my life. She has a love for scholarship and enjoys browsing through my books especially reading the one’s that I have underlined. She has a great love of gardening, too. She still has her own apartment (after downsizing from a big house) but after staying with me for a few months for several health related issues, we decided it was safer to have her stay here during the pandemic.
Although I have compared my homes to churches, I don’t see churches as happy places. I have no desire to go to one of them to pray alone.
However I do like the outdoors for prayer. I liked the river where I grew up, and the lake where our cabin was, and I feel very fortunate that Headlands Beach State Park is just ten miles away.
Those are all places where I can walk. I would say that walking is a happy place for me. Even downstairs where I walk on the Treadmill is a happy place. I like to listen to music there; the concrete walls of the basement give music a cathedral resonance. I have an extensive collection of my own nature photographs that I can view while walking.
And of course music is always a happy place. It is really why I go to church. I never liked the low masses of my childhood nor the hymn before and after thirty minute weekday masses of my local parish
And books are happy places, and also computers now that I no longer work.
Thanks for sharing, Jack. It sounds like you have had a lot of happy places. Walking is a happy place for me, too.
DeleteI loved exploring in my childhood days in the pastures and woods of our home place. Still like to walk there, but I'm no longer nimble enough to navigate some of the rocks and ravines that I used to.
I do find a happy place in churches, especially when I'm there alone and it's quiet. I've had the same perpetual adoration hour since 1998. It was a place of refuge especially if I had a hectic or difficult day at work.
An interesting question, Katherine.
ReplyDeleteIn thinking about it, I have realized that secluded beaches are among my best happy places – not Miami – no high rise hotels or condos. No crowds of people, no boardwalks or souvenir shops or bars or snack stands Just beach, ocean and natural beauty. My husband and I realized some years ago that most of our beach vacations over the years have been on islands - islands that are not crowded. They are usually harder and more expensive (ferries or tolls) to reach than most beaches. Development is often minimal or deliberately designed to meld into the natural landscape.
At home, I sometimes go to the banks of the Potomac river, near my home. I get away from the walking/hiking path that most use, head down to the river on a barely used path, and sit on a log. I feel God there. I don’t in churches. Never during liturgies or other formal group prayer. But alone on the river bank? Yes. God is in there. I can breathe there, and I take in God’s creation. A favorite spot looks out at an island, with soaring granite cliffs. God’s cathedral – so much more magnificent that man-made cathedrals.
I don’t go to churches for serenity, but I do sometimes go to a couple of very small chapels. Generally they are deserted, nobody there but me. But, nature is better so the chapels are for bad weather days!
My favorite happy place might be my own house. It backs to a woods with a stream. It is beautiful in all seasons. In the winter, if the sun is out, it pours into the house all day because of the southern exposure, the leaves off the trees, and the lower arc of the sun’s course. I need light and warmth and sun – I pull my favorite chair in front of the double sliding doors to sit in the sun and read and look at the beautiful view, and sometimes fall asleep, as contented as a cat lying in a sunny window sill.
Anne, your house location sounds lovely. Are you back there now?
DeleteFor most of my adult life, my happy places have been urban, because I am happiest when I am able to partake of the pleasures and joys of the city: concerts, theater, dining, sporting events. I am a "people person" and am happiest when I am with other people. I know many/most people think of "getting away" to a secluded natural spot where there are fewer people, but that hasn't been the case for me.
ReplyDeleteAnother really "happy place" for me is making music with others. I can sit down at a piano bench and make music by myself whenever I wish, but that's not nearly as pleasurable as collaborating with others.
As I get older, I think I am appreciating nature and natural beauty more. I've thought, at least idly, many times about moving out of suburbia to a more open and less population-dense area with water, woods, hills. I am pretty sure that would make my wife happy, because she is more of a nature happy-place person. She gets away for hikes through the woods. And if my job situation remains stable, I can work from anywhere on the planet which has Internet and cell phone service.
When I was a kid, my father moved us out of my hometown to a rural area outside of town - I lived on a dirt road for most of my grade school years, with farm fields backing up onto our property. He did this because I had six brothers and sisters, and housing was less expensive in the country. But my parents kept us in Catholic school, which was in the town. Consequently, I had an hour+ bus ride to and from school every day - the bus basically drove all over the county, and we were at the end of the route, so we were first on in the morning and last off in the afternoons. Most of my friends at school lived in the town, so every afternoon, they would all walk off together to the neighborhoods where they lived. I felt like I was different than everyone else. I'm sharing this not-very-interesting anecdote to try to illustrate that I've lived in the country, and not all my associations with it are pleasant. It could be quite pretty, for sure.
Jim, I share the happy place (or maybe it is a happy state?) of doing music. I love singing with a choir. I believe part of heaven will be praising God in music, in perfect harmony with others. I am also an organist/ keyboardist. That is a love/ hate relationship. Love, because I love practicing or playing when no one is around. Hate, because I have a bad case of stage fright which I have never gotten over after doing organ accompaniments for about 45 years. I have to pray every time I do it that I don't make some horrible mistake that has already happened in my mind. I guess I am a little stubborn that I don't give up, and also that I refuse to listen to my group try to play something like "Jesus Christ Has Risen Today" or "Holy God We Praise Thy Name" on guitar, it just doesn't work. About happy places, I was in hog heaven in college days when there was a sound proof practice room with a lovely pipe organ where I could play Bach badly to my heart's content with nobody listening.
DeleteSomething a little bit funny; I won't let them put a microphone by the organ when I am playing, for one thing I can't sing and play at the same time. For another, there are incidents like the other day after Mass. The organ has a lid like a roll top desk. I caught my finger in it when I closed it and said a bad word (I know, "Bless me father for I have sinned"). I can just imagine doing something like that on an open mic.
DeleteKatherine, I think you're right that for me, a "happy place" is a state of mind more than a geographical location. I guess I have an inner life, or something.
DeleteWhen I was in high school, a couple of friends told me that, whenever they asked me to describe what someone looks like, I ended up describing their personality.
I once went to a management seminar in which we were supposed to figure out if we are visual or auditory. Most people are visual but I'm auditory.
We have all had to be a little more auditory now since we can't have missalettes in the pews. I am visual and like to follow the readings in print. It's a real discipline to make myself listen to what's being said by the reader.
DeleteAlthough I generally find that listening to classical music as well as church music is inspiring, I don’t always find singing in the church choir to be inspiring. It is nice to go to choir practice because I encounter new music, but it is difficult for me to learn new music. I really learn music by listening rather than by sight reading, even though I have taken courses that have helped me understand notation better.
DeleteI could easily learn to sing if the choir director just taught it to everyone else then gave me a CD to learn it by listening. One Orthodox website has this neat thing where they put separate files for SATB but when you hear the Tenor you hear it loud with the other three parts in the background. That would be my ideal system. Sometimes once the choir and I have all learned the song well, I can really enjoy singing it.
So I really prefer singing in the congregation to singing in the choir and not being bothered by what other people in the choir are singing.
My friend Betty really enjoys being a cantor and choir member; she can hear and keep track of many more things that are going on than I can. She misses singing in church very much. In fact at dinner last night she remembered that this Sunday last year was her last Sunday as cantor. After Mass she gave her choir director a copy of that post about the virus that Margaret had given us and told the choir director that we were going into isolation. So this is the anniversary of the beginning of our isolation from Church, shopping in person and from most people. We both enjoy all the music on the internet, but she misses singing in Church, I don’t miss it.
Happy places are also a function of personality. I am an introvert and need silence and peaceful, beautiful places. But not all rural places are beautiful, even though isolated. Having driven through some of the midwestern states a few times, I can say that living on a dirt road, backing to flat farmland, without mountains or river or some other beautiful natural landscape would not be a happy place for me.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was young I sang in choirs and a madrigal group. Singing was my main happy place in high school. So about 20 years ago, with the ability to go to choir practices in the evenings finally, I joined the church choir- and discovered that my range was about five notes, my voice was weak, and I simply had to quit ( much to the relief of the choir director)
Katherine, we are still in California. Not a bit sad about missing the big storm in DC!
Coming down over an inch per hour in the Poconos. My gassed up 4WD truck and snowblower are in the garage. I'm just fine and cozy.
DeleteStanley, I hope that you have a cheerful fireplace to sit by while you watch the snow come down. It can be beautiful. But I’m happy if it melts quickly too!
DeleteStanley, that storm which is socking you now, socked us Saturday and yesterday. We got 10" accumulation by EOD yesterday, landing on top of the 6" we got on Tuesday night. My wife and I told each other that this is the year we would get a snowblower, but we haven't pulled the trigger yet. So I got a "total body workout" yesterday trying to dig out the end of the driveway, where the snowplows come through, so I could drive to church. Margaret, if you're reading this, I think you're in the bullseye as well for this storm. Jack, not sure if it hit you or not.
DeleteI don't know if it's the same system that socked us last week with about 10-11 inches. Our snow removal guy got us dug out, and then the city crew plowed the street and threw snow up in our driveway again. We sort of dug that out ourselves but got stuck anyway and had to call a tow truck. I'm worried about the snow removal guy now because he was on "prayers for the sick" at Mass this weekend. I hope he didn't get hurt or have a heart attack. He was using big snow blowers rather shoveling it all.
DeleteJim, yes, same storm. I think we got 20 inches so far. Pulling moisture off the Atlantic. Still snowing. My doctor neighbor came over and blew my driveway out even though I have a blower. Said it was therapy for him and his dog. This after his wife gave me roast beef and potatoes. I have to live a good life if only to be worthy of my neighbors.
DeleteStanley - holy smokes! You have some great neighbors!
Delete20 inches is really a hardship - I think that would be a record around here, or close to it. In the late '70s (1978, I think) there was a legendary snowstorm in Chicago - don't remember exactly how many inches, but it would have been close to what you're seeing. Roofs collapsed all over the city because of the weight of the snow.
That storm initiated a political revolution: the city didn't do a good job plowing the streets, and that opened the door to an upstart mayoral candidate, Jane Byrne, who challenged the vaunted Machine to became Chicago's first woman mayor. Her subsequent struggles as mayor in turn opened the door to Harold Washington's insurgent candidacy as Chicago's first Black mayor. Even though another Daley then came along and served as mayor for over a decade, the old Chicago political calculations were scrambled for good.
Yes, Jim. I remember that. I never visited Second City except to make an airport connection. Someday I'll have to check it out. Always had a soft spot for Chicago.
DeleteSomehow the snow just skipped over us, a mere couple of inches out there. We get that often with Lake effect snows. I had no trouble getting out this morning to do my curbside grocery store pickup. My neighbor takes care of my lawn in the summer and my driveway in the winter, for a fee.
DeleteI guess dancing does it for me now. Otherwise, as an actual place, I guess it was the optics lab I had to myself for four decades. It was my 2500 square foot playground, my toy bin. I knew every piece in that place (some labeled property of War Department)and could determine in a minute of thought whether I had what I needed to do a job or if I had to buy something. I was my own technician which was ok since manual labor and skill was therapy. I was able to position components to within a wavelength with only my hands or focus a laser through a five micron pinhole in a minute. Satisfying fun.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, in a canoe on any river, following the flow of the water, looking for the inverted vees to see the path forward. I miss the canoe expeditions that sometimes took us 30 miles from civilization, and that with only maps and a compass, pre-GPS. Now everybody is either too old or too deceased. Nice while it lasted.
Stanley, I love your description of your job. How fortunate to be able to find so much personal satisfaction in your work!
DeleteAn online symposium that may be of interest, especially to Jack
ReplyDeletehttp://www.benedictfriend.org/2021-bonnie-thurston.html