My 8-month-old daughter, Quincy, was sleeping through the night. Now she is not. This is not a calamity. Earthquakes have broken countries in half, and our planet is getting hotter by the day. But having sleep and losing it is like being offered a taste of lemonade in the desert. Once you’ve had it, you want it all the time.
So on a recent night, when Quincy’s monitor crackled at 3 a.m. telling me that my darling second child was awake again, I was grouchy. I made sure my husband, Andy, knew of my state. If I couldn’t get any sleep, I might as well try for sympathy. I clicked the monitor off noisily and stomped across the room. It was all in vain. I stole a glance at Andy before heading downstairs to rescue Q; he was sound asleep.
I opened Quincy’s room and crossed quickly to her crib, fearing that something was very wrong. Her cries seemed louder than they had on previous nights. But as soon as Quincy saw me, she burst into a smile and did her happy dance, something akin to the “white man shuffle” Billy Crystal used to do.
And in spite of my fatigue, I, too, found myself smiling. I’d been reading Gretchen Rubin’s book “The Happiness Project,” and it was making me question my grouchiness.
Rubin had spent a year examining her life, trying to see how she could enjoy it more. She was an unlikely candidate for the job. She was a full-time writer living in Upper East Side Manhattan — life was already pretty good. But she found herself snapping and complaining more than she wanted to and decided that something had to change.
Every month, she picked a topic to focus on, things like marriage, children, money, energy and spirituality. In a month on energy, her goals might include getting to bed earlier and cutting out junk food. They were little steps, but they made a difference. Indeed, Rubin soon found herself happier.
“The Happiness Project” doesn’t suggest that we change our lives by spending the rest of our days in an ashram. Instead, Rubin reminds us of all the small steps we can take to make our lives great right now. Although she does keep a nerdy sticker chart to reward herself for achieving goals, she generally strikes the right balance and doesn’t preach. Rubin also uncovers 12 guiding commandments for life, many of which resonated with me:
“1. Be Gretchen. 2. Let it go. 3. Act the way I want to feel. 4. Do it now. 5. Be polite and be fair. 6. Enjoy the process. 7. Spend out. 8. Identify the problem 9. Lighten up. 10. Do what ought to be done. 11. No calculation. 12. There’s only love.”
As I lifted Quincy out of her crib, Rubin’s words flew through my mind: Enjoy the process. Lighten up. All at once, Quincy looked, in her pink-footed PJs, like a superhero flying through the air. I actually found myself wondering, “What if she is a superhero? What if she just needs nourishment to uncover her superpowers?”
These were strange thoughts for me. I don’t believe in magic. I don’t even read comic strips. But for better or for worse, “The Happiness Project” was having an effect on me. I realized I had a choice: I could either get bent out of shape or roll with my life. Act the way I want to feel.
I returned to my bedroom and placed my arm around Andy. “Is she OK?” he asked.
“Quite,” I said. No calculation.
Nothing would ever come out perfectly, but I could do a much better job finding happiness in every aspect of my life. After all, as Rubin reminds us, “There’s only love.”
And I would add, there’s only one life — we’d better live it well.
Emily Brendler Shoff (ebshoff@gmail.com) teaches and writes in Telluride.
