Happiness is a Choice

One night when I was no more than ten, after a very grumpy day, my mother told me a story as she was tucking me in that went something like this: There were two boys in prison where they were forced to perform all kinds of difficult chores. One day they were brought to the stables and shown one stall that was filled with manure all the way to the ceiling and told to empty it. One boy gleefully grabbed his shovel, jumped right in and began shoveling with all the energy he had. The other boy scowled and began making fun of the shoveling boy, "Whatsa matter with you? Do you like horse crap, you gonna eat it, or what?" The other boy stopped shoveling long enough to exclaim, "Look at all this manure! There's gotta be one heck of a horse in their somewhere, and I am gonna find him!" My mom went on to say, "you need to be like that first little boy and find the good in everything." I remember lying there in bed that night, amused by the absurdity of the boy's optimism but resolving to be just like him. And as Robert Frost said, "that has made all the difference."

From time to time in life we can get off track in one way or another, slowly drifting from things we know to be true, without realizing how off course we are getting. We need a good friend, a piece of scripture, or the Spirit's nudging to get us moving in the right direction again. Over the last two years, I have slowly but steadily gotten more and more depressed about the current state of the world. I had forgotten to choose joy, and it was debilitating. But then a friendly voice on the radio, pointed me back to truth with his Happiness Hour. Dennis Prager with his insistence that happiness is a moral obligation we owe to those around us, and his constant reminders that happiness in no way is reliant on our circumstances has helped me get back on course. So thank you mom for setting me down the path of happiness and thank you Dennis for reminding me the way back to that path.