The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

she was planning their wedding, and she was dealing with her recent diagnosis of diabetes. I really wished that I could do something for Elizabeth—then I thought of something I could do.
    I called her up. “Hey, guess what?”
    “What?” she said, sounding harried.
    “I’ve been feeling bad about all the stress you have right now, so I’ve decided”—I paused for effect—“to do your holiday shopping for you!”
    “Gretch, would you really?” she said. “That would be so great. ” Elizabeth’s stress must have been as bad as I’d thought; she didn’t even pretend to resist the offer.
    “I’m happy to do it!” I told her. And I was. Hearing the relief and happiness in her voice made me very happy. Would I have offered to do her shopping, as well as mine, if I’d been feeling unhappy? No. Would it have even occurred to me to try to help her out? Probably not.
    The Third Splendid Truth was a different kind of truth. “The days are long, but the years are short” reminded me to stay in the moment, to appreciate the seasons, and to revel in this time of life—December’s yuletide atmosphere, the girls’ little matching cherry nightgowns, the elaborate bath-time routine.
    Most nights, I spent the time before bed racing around, trying to get organized for the morning, or crashed in bed with a book. But Jamie has a lovely habit. We call it “gazing lovingly.” Every few weeks, he’ll say to me, “Come on, let’s gaze lovingly,” and we go look at Eliza and Eleanor as they sleep.
    The other night he pulled me away from the computer. “No, I’ve got too much to do,” I told him. “I need to finish a few things before tomorrow. You go ahead.”
    But he wouldn’t listen, so finally I went with him to stand in Eleanor’s doorway. We “gazed lovingly” at her small figure flung across the huge pile of books that she insisted on keeping in her crib.
    I said to him, “Someday we’ll look back and it will be hard to remember that we ever had such little kids. We’ll say, ‘Remember when Eleanor still used her purple sippy cup or when Eliza wore ruby slippers all the time?’”
    He squeezed my hand. “We’ll say, ‘That was such a happy time.’”
    The days are long, but the years are short .
     
    During the year, when people had asked me, “So what’s the secret to happiness?,” at different times I’d answer “Exercise” or “Sleep” or “Do good, feel good” or “Strengthen your connections to other people.” But by the end of December, I’d realized that the most helpful aspect of my happiness project hadn’t been these resolutions, or the Four Splendid Truths I’d identified, or the science I’d learned, or all the high-minded books I’d read. The single most effective step for me had been to keep my Resolutions Chart.
    When I’d started, I’d viewed my chart as just another fun thing to experiment with, like the gratitude notebook. But it had turned out to be tremendously important. Making the resolutions wasn’t the hardest part of the happiness project (though it was harder than I expected, in some cases, to identify the appropriate resolution); following through was the hardest part. The desire to change was meaningless if I couldn’t find a way to make the change happen.
    By providing an opportunity for constant review and accountability, the Resolutions Chart kept me plugging away. The phrases “Lighten up,” “Give proofs of love,” and “Cut people slack” flashed through my consciousness constantly, and I often changed my actions in consequence. When I was annoyed when the woman working next to me at the library kept sighing noisily, I tried to “Imitate a spiritual master” Saint Thérèse tells the story of how she once broke into a sweat at the effort to conquer her annoyance when a fellow nun made maddening clicking noises during evening prayers. Even if I didn’t do a perfect job with my resolutions, I did do better, and the more I kept my resolutions, the happier I was.
    I’d noticed idly that a lot of people use the term “goal” instead of “resolution,” and one day in December, it struck me that this difference was in fact significant. You hit a goal, you keep a resolution. “Run a marathon” makes a good goal. It’s specific, it’s easy to measure success, and once you’ve done it, you’ve done it. “Sing in the morning” and “Exercise better” are better cast as resolutions. You won’t wake up one day and find