Happiness and the Good Life

Happiness and the Good Life

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

January 17, 2016; 2 Epiphany, Year C

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 2:1-11)  On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now." Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

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There's a group of friends I meet with regularly in something like a mutual self-help format. One of the guys is just about the hardest working person I know. Last week he told us about his December trip to Hawaii. He never takes a vacation, at least not an extended one that is just about being on vacation. He visits family; does recreational things. But this year he took a three-week family vacation to Hawaii. I think he said it was his first real vacation since his honeymoon, and he has grown children. He looked so delighted. He grinned at us and said, "I'm gonna buy a condo in Hawaii." He loves the place.

But then someone in the group started to tell him about how much trouble and expense it will be.  No problem. He's going to hire a management group to handle all of that. After all, he's successful; he's got plenty of money. He's not looking at this as an investment. Just pure fun.

Then someone started telling him about the human brain. How the human brain adapts and gets used to nearly anything that can make us happy until it becomes just ordinary. The newness wears off. We get accustomed to it. After the initial exhilaration, the brain wants something novel and different. It's called the hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaption. Hawaii will get old, they told him. "No, I don't think so, he said."

But the stuff about the brain is true. Some of you were in our series of classes that I lead on Sunday mornings back in 2011 when we studied the happiness research coming out of the positive psychology movement. There has been a lot of study, especially at the University of Pennsylvania and at Yale, focusing on what's right with people who seem to flourish. Why are some people happy and satisfied?

One of their findings is that if you work harder and become more successful, you won't necessarily become happier. The brain doesn't work that way. Once you achieve and enjoy a success – you earn the title Dr. in front of your name; you buy that sports car you’ve wanted since you were a kid; you create a successful new business or buy that dream house – once you reach those cherished goals, the goal posts move. The shiny, new success just becomes the new normal, and you need something better to make you feel special. Hedonic adaptation is one of the terms the researchers use. And it works both ways, for good and for bad.

I didn't win the Powerball jackpot last week; neither did you. I didn't have much of a chance since I didn't buy a ticket. But I'll bet you've heard about the research. Winning the lottery won't make you happy. The initial study that I heard about was in 1978, when Northwestern University and the University of Massachusetts asked the same questions from two very different groups: recent winners of the Illinois State Lottery and recent victims of catastrophic accidents, people who were now paraplegic or quadriplegic. They asked individuals from both groups to rate the amount of pleasure they got from everyday activities, small but enjoyable things like chatting with a friend, watching TV, eating breakfast. When the researchers analyzed the results, they found that the recent accident victims reported gaining slightly more happiness from these everyday pleasures than the lottery winners. They found the baseline measure of happiness for survivors of catastrophic accidents was higher than the baseline happiness for lottery winners.[i]

So, if Hawaii or winning the lottery doesn't make us happy, what does? The positive psychology research has uncovered some encouraging things, and what they've discovered is consistent with our own Christian teaching and experience as well.

The basic discovery is that when we live in the present moment with a positive attitude, we perform better. The brain at positive performs better than when it is negative, neutral, or stressed. Every measure improves; intelligence and creativity; energy rises.

And there are practices that can help rewire the brain to move us toward the positive. Five practices in particular have shown remarkable results in various double-blind studies.

The first practice is called the Three Gratitudes. It's deceptively simple. Before you go to bed, spend two minutes listing three new things that you are grateful for. In the studies, subjects who practice the Three Gratitudes for twenty-one days find that their brain rewires in such a way that it automatically scans for the positive and notices more things to be grateful for. Pretty simple. List three gratitudes each evening, and your brain rewires.

The second practice is Journaling. Remember one positive experience in each 24 hour period and write it down. The journaling allows the brain to re-live it and grounds the happy memory in a deep way.

The third practice is Exercise. And the significance of exercise in happiness research is that exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. That's interesting.

Meditation is the fourth practice. The scientists say that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we have been creating with our muti-tasking environment. Meditation allows us to unplug from that chaos; it strengthens our focus.

And the fifth practice is creating a discipline of making Random Acts of Kindness or Conscious Acts of Kindness. The researchers told people to write an email each day to thank someone in your social network. Write one positive email, and it changes your orientation.[ii]

Three Daily Gratitudes, Journaling each day about a positive experience, Exercise, Meditation, and Conscious Acts of Kindness. It's certainly all consistent with the Christian life. Fundamentally we declare that we are a Eucharistic people—Eucharist is the Greek word meaning Thanksgiving/Gratitude. In a minute you will hear the priest say, "Lift up your hearts." And you will answer, "We lift them to the Lord." "Let us give thanks to the Lord our God." "It is right to give our thanks and praise." "It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks…" Always and everywhere. We are a Eucharistic people—a people of thanksgiving. We are a compassionate and kind people, following the model of Jesus. Whenever we orient our attention toward God's abundant grace and God's love for us, we naturally become grateful and thankful, kinder and compassionate. And it's a little like turning water into wine.

I recently watched a romantic comedy called "About Time." It's about a young man, Tim. When he turns 21, Tim's father tells him that the men in his family have a gift: they can travel through time. Tim has that gift, his father tells him. He can't change history, but he can change what happens in his own life. It's a fun movie, and I won't spoil any of it by telling how Tim uses his powers going back in time over and over to try to fix things.

But late in the film, Tim says that his dad told him his secret formula for happiness. "Part one of the two part plan was that I should just get on with ordinary life, living it day by day, like anyone else. But then came part two of Dad's plan. He told me to live every day again almost exactly the same. The first time with all the tensions and worries that stop us noticing how sweet the world can be, but the second time noticing."

So Tim did that. He relived each day, noticing the second time through how sweet the world can be. Then he found that with practice, he could notice the sweetness the first time through. And he pretty much quit time traveling.

"The steward called the bridegroom and said to him, 'Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become [hedonically adapted]. (My translation.) But you have kept the good wine until now.'"

The good wine. The good life. It's not about success or wealth or even luck. It seems it mostly comes down to being in the present moment with a positive, grateful attention. We can influence that: Practices like the Three Gratitudes, Journaling, Exercise, Meditation, and Kindness. It is the stuff that puts the sparkle and taste and depth back into life. It's pretty inexpensive wine too. But how delicious!

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[i] http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/01/classic-study-on-happiness-and-the-lottery.html

[ii] See the popular TED talk by Shawn Achor, The happy secret to better work. https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work?language=en. Similar findings are in Martin Seligman's books like Authentic Happiness, Atria Books, 2004. Website: authentichappinness.sas.upenn.edu

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