This week I found out that the word happy was linked to the old English word hap, meaning chance or fortune. A happy person is someone who enjoys good hap.
You can take this further: I would say that happiness comes from responding positively to the hap in life.
No matter how well we plan, things happen to us and around us over which we have no control. How we react to these happenings determines our level of contentment. Do we fight them, railing against life, or accept them, letting them be?
My conviction is that positive acceptance of whatever happens around us keeps us sane. We are better agents for change if we have first accepted the reality of where we are.
Yesterday when I was cycling to work when I was forced to take a different route because a road was blocked by a van, the driver of which had got into a slanging match with a cyclist who’d accused him of cutting him up. Rather than engage with this incident, I turned off my route to avoid the negative energy (and blockage) they’d created. On this road I don’t ordinarily cycle down I was amazed to pass Lauren, a friend I’d lost touch with and hadn’t seen for months, as she walked to work. By adapting to circumstances I had a fortuitous encounter.
I know that the hardships that many people face are much more costly than simply changing route. And yet the testimony of those who embrace whatever situation they’re in, rather than fighting it, is that acceptance is the path to peace. Paulo Coelho, a political prisoner in his native Brazil in the 1960s and ‘70s, writes of the power he had over his torturers through his acceptance of the pain they inflicted on him. By accepting it, the power shifted, so that he had power over his torturers rather than they over him.
And there are those who meet the news of their diagnosis with terminal disease with serenity, and say that their disease was the best thing that ever happened to them. It helps you to live in the moment and to enjoy the pleasures that every day brings, if only you’re open to them.
I am lucky never to have faced the hardships I’ve just described. But I hope that the daily practice of accepting where I am and what is happening will give me that inner strength I so admire in others.
Whatever happenstance brings our way, may we all act with grace, and find the happiness that comes from embracing our hap.
Tips for happening happily
1. Become aware
When you find yourself reacting negatively to a situation, become aware of what you’re doing. Notice how your face becomes flushed and your breathing shallower. By stepping outside yourself and observing your reaction, you loosen its power over you.
2. Take a deep breath
A metaphorical, as well as physical, deep breath gives you the space to realise that you have a choice as to what to do next. Just because someone’s pushed your buttons, taking just a split second just to be can give you the space you need to choose your reaction.
3. Recognise you have choices
Perhaps you’re locked into a pattern of relating with somebody, or a habitual way of thinking. Remind yourself that you have a choice about how you react.
4. Be kind to yourself
Don’t beat yourself up if you react in a way that you later come to regret. Learn from it. Perhaps you would have reacted differently if you’d been less hungry or stressed? Or if you’d had less to drink? What can you do next time to make it more likely that you’ll react constructively.
5. Practise being still
The more you learn to create space in your life and in your thoughts, the more present you become. From time to time switch off the physical noise around you, be it your Facebook feed, the radio, your phone. As you create silence in the world, you leave space for silence in your head.
If you would like help learning new ways of thinking to help you to make the most of who you are, visit my website.
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