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    Seriously: What Makes Us Happy
    Seriously: What Makes Us Happy
    Seriously: What Makes Us Happy
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    Seriously: What Makes Us Happy

    By Phyllis Porter Dolislager

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    About this ebook

    “You don’t have to be a millionaire to leave a legacy,” someone has said. We attempted to capture family history on paper as part of our legacy. Another concept, “Every time someone passes away, a library is lost.”

    With these two thoughts in mind, these men and women are sharing some of their stories in this book. We did numerous assignments, but first, we’ll share what we wrote for the last assignment in March 2012: The Secret of Happiness.

    This was preceded by writing our obituaries. We were all a bit hesitant to do this project. But once again, it turned out to be worthwhile in numerous ways.

    Then you’ll read some of the life stories that everyone wrote. They are the result of the larger part of the assignments that we worked on. In class, we’d read aloud what we’d written. Not only did we get to know one another, but we also got ideas to help us in our own writing.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPhyllis Porter Dolislager
    Release dateMay 21, 2012
    ISBN9781476125398
    Seriously: What Makes Us Happy
    Author

    Phyllis Porter Dolislager

    Phyllis Porter Dolislager is the author of ten books. She is a writing consultant and gives writing workshops encouraging others to write about significant birthdays, anniversaries, and family memories. Lessons Learned on the Farm, a family memoir, is her best-selling book. She and her husband split their time between Tennessee and Florida.

    Read more from Phyllis Porter Dolislager

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      Book preview

      Seriously - Phyllis Porter Dolislager

      Part One

      The Secret of Happiness

      This assignment was given with a lot of options.

      Each person chose what they wanted to focus on in his/her writing.

      Is there a secret to happiness? Have you found it? How?

      What makes you smile and keeps you sane?

      Some topics: Age and happiness

      Top ten happy times

      The art of happiness

      When were you the happiest?

      Write your thoughts about happiness.

      Share your Secret of Happiness!

      On the next pages you will read the various responses to this assignment.

      HAPPINESS

      Rita Jackson

      You can’t really talk about happiness without at least acknowledging it’s opposite, depression.

      The few times in the past twenty some years since I divorced my first husband, I have suffered with depression five times—the five times that I’ve had Lyme disease. It is during those times that I think most about what happiness is.

      I’ve always told my daughters that happiness comes from within. People who look elsewhere for it are those who get involved in frantic living, drugs, etc. In truth, that cliché is only the beginning of happiness. It creates a place for happiness to enter your life. If you fill your time and thoughts with negative things, happiness will look elsewhere. It won’t hang around bad company.

      Speaking of company, one of the first things in creating a happy life, for me, has been to eliminate or at least limit my time spent with negative, stressful people. Those are often the ones we call high maintenance. Often, these people are our bosses. I used to tell my fellow disgruntled employees that they need A job, not This job. Take initiative and look for a different job. Ironically, most of these people did not have high paying jobs anyway. It wouldn’t have taken much to work elsewhere. For me, it certainly didn’t take much.

      When I thought about it, I realized that I was spending more time with my boss than with anyone else in my life. That being the case, I needed to find a job that I liked doing with people I liked spending time with.

      Once I eliminated bad people from my life, I needed to fill the void with good people. I am always striving to be a better friend. If I enjoy someone’s company, I need to nurture the relationship. Invite them over for dinner, or coffee, or a game of cards. Go shopping with them, or to a movie. Do whatever I need to do to spend time with them and bring their goodness into my life.

      If you need more good people in your life, where do you find them? That brings us to the next step. I need to do things that make me happy. I need to schedule them into my life. Since I enjoy reading, I set aside an hour or two half hour timeslots to read. I would like to find a book club to join where I can meet others who share my interest. I like to knit, so I took a class and if I could find one, I would join a knitting club that gets together just to knit. I need to get out and get active and I know that I will meet people I might want to know more about.

      So, create a space for happiness and fill it up with happy people and happy activities. But there is one more thing: fulfillment, or purpose in life. I need to do something good for my community or some group within it. This is not just writing a check to charity, I need to give of myself. This is the place where, in my obituary, I realized that I had not done much. I began to volunteer at least a small part of my time. I realized that it did not need to involve my physically being there. I could write letters to the editor, advocating rights for those who are in some way oppressed. I’m good at writing letters, and I love yelling at someone who cannot yell back!

      In a nutshell, the things that make me happy are: family, friends, reading, doing something creative which can be writing, knitting or crafting, gardening, junking, and learning new things. I also love observing young children to learn from them. They are the most happy. They are uninhibited and innocent and you can hardly keep from smiling when you are around them. When they start to whine and cry, you can leave, or give them back to their parents! Which brings me to the thing that brings me the most happiness…being a grandmother!

      Happiness

      Charles Erway

      1. Perhaps, when I was very young, the biggest thing that happened to me to cause happiness was Christmas. This was the time of the depression, and my parents had little money to give presents. What we could expect from them was something very utilitarian. However, I had an aunt in New York who had no children and who must have made a reasonable amount of money, because she almost always sent us a box at Christmastime. This included presents that were fun.

      The Arcadia Movie Theater in Wellsboro always had a free movie at Christmas. Since we had very little money I rarely went to the movies. In those many years the only movie I can remember is All Quiet on the Western Front. As I remember it, this was one of the first movies with sound and was very memorable. Together with a great meal and probably sledding, Christmas time was one of the happiest moments for me for many years.

      2. I think some of the most memorable things we have that we call happiness are when we do things that are new and different. When I was about ten, I accompanied my mother on the train to New York. It was not a particularly pleasant occasion for my elders, since it was because my mother’s brother had died of cancer. But being on the train, staying with an aunt in Brooklyn, seeing the synchronized lights turning red down the street for the first time, and the many other things I experienced in New York made that time memorable.

      3. When I was 12 I became a Boy Scout, and a lot of new things happened because of that. We camped down in Pine Creek Run, where there was a deep hole in the creek for swimming, and spent time learning to fish. We explored the mountains on each side of the creek. It was a new situation, and new system of living. It made me happy.

      4. After I went to New York and lived in the Bronx a

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