What makes you happy?  During the year, there are certain days that are ordained “happy” ones.  Holidays, your birthday, days that aren’t holidays but designated happy like Valentines’s or Mother’s or Father’s Days.  Days many people aren’t sure what they’re about, but they’re supposed to be happy nevertheless.  It can be a real strain to be happy on so many pre-selected occasions.

Which raises the question:  what really does make you happy?  In my neighborhood, Halloween is rivaling Christmas as a day to be decorated and focused on family.  The fanciful baubles of color have a cheering effect as the light fades and the weather becomes unpleasant.  But do the festivities add up to happiness?

This year Thanksgiving landed on my birthday and despite my advancing age, I didn’t appreciate it.  Being mindful on such a day revealed the pouting child inside me, my efforts to make myself “happy” and the relative failure of that endeavor.  Fortunately, along with the mindfulness that saw through the illusion of these “happy” days there was a fairly well-established equanimity. 

The next day I was happy.  For the first time in a month I was over a chest cold and able to go for a walk without smoke from a distant wildfire requiring a heavy-duty mask.  It was like being set free, once again celebrating the simple beauty of nature. 

When we put too much emphasis on impermanent, external circumstances, or allow expectations to be imposed on our mood, happiness gets very complicated.  At these times we may catch a glimpse of how it all comes and goes without our having much control.  What we can manage is the sense of ease that comes from keeping a larger perspective about this ever-changing, unreliable, yet amazing world that we’re part of.

When happy days do come our way, then, we’re free to embrace them without holding on to unnecessary baggage.  And when the hard days come, even when they’re on double “happy” days, we can carry that baggage as far as we must without losing our sense of balance.