There is an update on the four pillars of happiness by Arthur Miller.
The old pillars were:
Faith
Meaningful work
Family
Friendship
Keeping my cups full on these four has helped give me direction when I feel like there should be more to life.
But I just read a revised list of the four pillars. They are now:
Faith
Meaningful work
Family and Friendship (he combined 3 & 4)
Appreciation for beauty and acceptance of suffering.
This new 4th one I find fascinating.
To me, appreciation for beauty translates to awe. Walking in the woods, fully drinking in the beauty of nature. Appreciating the beauty of everything around us that we take for granted. It implies slowing down and soaking in the moment.
And to me, the acceptance of suffering is really the acceptance of pain. (I believe that suffering is optional. But I think we are talking semantics in this case.)
So much of our pain is created by avoiding feeling pain. Instead, when you accept pain, you feel it fully and then it is free to go.
Both of those concepts really resonate with me, but it is the combination that elevates this to a pillar of happiness.
When you have both appreciation for beauty and acceptance of pain, it creates contrast. The best and the worst of life.
To carry both of those in your mind at the same time awakens the right hemisphere of your brain and makes you feel fully alive.
Think about those “best and worst” times.
– The death of someone you love.
– Changing jobs from one with beloved coworkers who made you who you are to one with new exciting challenges.
Feeling fully alive.
That is next level stuff.
That is evolving.
My son and his girlfriend are in town visiting for the weekend. When the doorbell rang on Sunday morning Bryton asked if I was expecting anyone. I said maybe a package. His girlfriend placed her bet on Jehovah’s Witnesses.
They called themselves Bible Class members (not Jehovah’s Witnesses) here to help me with my suffering.
“But I’m not suffering,” I said.
“But you probably know someone who is suffering… someone who has lost a loved one.”
“Well, actually, I buried my mother yesterday. And I’m not suffering.”
The two sweet gentlemen looked aghast.
At which point I dropped a life coaching bomb. “Pain is part of life. Suffering is optional.”
Boom.
I think my philosophy was lost on them because they went on to talk about Satan.
I don’t believe in Satan.
I think our thoughts about how things should be cause our suffering. Not Satan.
When we believe it is Satan, we give up control.
When we realize that we are the cause of our own suffering, then we can get on with the business of not suffering.
If I thought Mom should still be alive, I would be suffering.
Instead, when I feel the pain of having lost my beloved mother it feels like the residue of love. It feels like clean pain… pain I choose to feel.
Because I don’t want to be someone who feels no pain when their mother dies.
You have to feel the lows to feel the highs.
Sometimes becoming happier seems like semantics: pain vs. suffering.
But that is only because the English language hasn’t always evolved to help us emotionally evolve.
So for our purposes,
pain is to be felt,
suffering is always optional.
I choose to not suffer whenever possible.
I see no up side.
Satan be damned. (Oh, I’m going to hell for that. If I believed in hell.)
PS – I was suffering last week when I was thinking that I have lost my biggest cheerleaders. Because I was thinking that it was bad that they weren’t alive anymore.
I was choosing to suffer.
I could have avoided suffering by not thinking that, but I chose to think that for a while because it was a revelation to me.
First I spotted a contradiction in feelings. I asked myself why I was so sad when I also felt that it was Mom’s time to go.
It was a lightbulb moment when I realized it wasn’t losing my mother that was so painful, but the absence of people who believe in me even when evidence points to the opposite.
I chose to explore the pain and feel it all the way through so I could be done with it. And I want to thank those of you who offered me new thoughts. I feel the love.
My new thought is that there are going to be new people who think I have hung the moon, I just don’t know who they are yet.
That feels good.
And I believe it is true.
NOW I am ready to let go of the suffering.
Mom was 96 when she died. She had Alzheimer’s the last seven or eight years.
As you can guess, or you may know first-hand, that means I have been losing her… the woman I know so well… slowly for years.
I have lost the woman who cooked while belting out America’s top 10 along with the radio… always with the wrong lyrics.
I have lost the scamp who would eat half a bag of Doritos and hide the rest from herself only to find them a year later and finish them off.
She thought she was getting away with something but there was always the tell-tale orange dust on her cleavage.
I have lost the mother who would pretend to be a different person who just looked like my mom. This saccharine sweet version could always coax us into bed at night like an American Mary Poppins.
I have lost the mom that took us to the beach every summer so that the family stayed connected throughout all the iterations of our lives.
I no longer have the mom that sends me piles of newspaper clippings ranging from parenting advice and books to read, to how to get three meals out of one chicken.
Gone is the Olympic level caregiver, taking care of Dad and her own mom for the same eight years of their Alzheimer’s journey.
She also called her sister-in-law every day for her eight years with Alzheimer’s with the goal of getting Aunt Audrey to laugh every day. And she did.
I have lost the woman who believed the best virtue was to be clever. And she was just that… very clever. And smart. And sensitive. And hilarious.
Mom would do a lot for a laugh.
One year at Christmas when we were making molded mints she used her belly button as the mold. Just to crack us up.
I have been losing this woman for years.
And I am ok with that.
It’s like pulling the band-aid off slowly.
That is the journey.
But what I grieve most now… at her death… is about me.
I mourn losing the people who deeply believed in me.
It was such a gift to have people who think I can do anything. Especially as an adult.
She was the last of my big three cheerleaders.
Sure, my husband loves me in a whole different, wonderful way and would take a bullet for me.
I really believe he would.
But he has a more realistic idea of my limitations.
He knows my head would explode if I had to be an engineer.
The daily math would curdle my soul.
When I mentioned that to Mom as irrefutable proof of my limitations, she gave me the side eye and skeptically said, “Eeeeyeaaaa, I think you could be an engineer.”
So, I have choices as to what to believe.
I can believe that I have lost the last of my major cheerleaders.
I can be realistic and logical.
Or I can be my own believer.
I can believe that I can do anything.
Even when it’s not logical.
I don’t know which one I will choose yet.
But I know what I will choose to be for my children.
I am in awe of them.
Will I send them endless links to videos that will improve their lives?
Certainly.
I have learned from the best.
Rest well, Mom. I’ve got it from here.