The joy of being a Pollyanna

I feel like we’re all so stressed.

I get worked up over things that are usually unimportant. Sometimes they’re worth worrying about, such as family issues and money.

Most of the time they’re not.

Nevertheless, I’ve found that I’m usually much happier and more satisfied with my life than many of the people I meet.

I suppose that I’m complaining about complaining, but it seems that’s all any of us do anymore — myself included.

No matter how many good things happen to us each day, we’re always looking for something that wasn’t quite right.

We latch onto these little dramas, and we can’t seem to get past them.

Part of it stems from a natural desire to succeed. Most of us define happiness as one part success and one part getting what we want.

Success is often measured in how well we’re doing, and doing well is often measured based upon comparison to others.

Nonetheless, other than the desire to succeed, the ever-present dissatisfaction of our generation stems from something else entirely, something I struggle to put my finger on.

You may not want to read about my happiness. I’m not trying to gloat in any way, or present myself as superior. This is simply an observation.

I fully believe that I’m a happy person because I appreciate the world around me.

It sounds new-agey and a little strange, but it’s the amalgamation of the little, beautiful things that surround us that make me feel content.

I find myself noticing how the ice looks on a tree branch when the light shines through it or how green the grass is even on the coldest day.

I can hear the bells ringing from miles off campus, and there’s an enthusiastic sparrow that lives
somewhere near my house, singing its spring song already.

Something as terrible as a thread of oil on the road, iridescent and sliding slowly toward a drain, has its own inherent beauty.

It’s the beauty of these things that gets me. There’s so much of it.

I’m not a religious person. At all. I have nothing to say about the source of any of this, or whether it has some deeper, divine meaning.

I just mean to say, even in the dead of winter, on the most terrible days, even when I’m overwhelmed trying to figure out where I’m going to find rent or when some personal drama threatens to break me down, there will always be something to make me happy, because there will always be beauty.

It can be natural or man-made, human, animal, plant, mineral or something else entirely.
It’s there, and it’s wonderful.

This is my mea culpa for writing so much criticism, and for the critical writing that’s to come.

I cross-examine and complain like it’s my job. I could blame it on my generation or on how the world seems to fall apart a little more each day.

Yet, even if it’s for only one column a year, I want to discard all that, and focus on beauty and all of the things that make the world wonderful. I invite you to do the same.

I may be a naïve Pollyanna. But, by my logic, Pollyanna was a pretty happy girl.

By default, a world full of Pollyannas would be a pretty happy place. And in the end, isn’t happiness really what any of us want?

­— kelfritz@indiana.edu