Getting Real and Personal in the Pursuit of Happiness

Expect nothing; live frugally on surprise.

-Alice Walker

We’ve just come back from watching a wonderful, old-fashioned parade. There’s been an Independence Day parade in our
town for one hundred and six years; it’s the oldest consecutive parade on the East Coast. We take the pursuit of
happiness very seriously around here. This year, I hope you do, too.

In 1890, philosopher-psychologist and spiritual pioneer William James, the brother of the famous American novelist Henry
James, set off his own fireworks with the publication of a landmark exploration on human happiness, The Principles of
Psychology. Twelve years in the writing, two volumes and fourteen hundred pages long, it boldly went where no book had
ever gone before, investigating the mind-body connection, the impact of our emotions on behavior, and the importance of
nurturing an inner life instead of concentrating on the outer trappings to achieve personal harmony. With this book, Dr. James
became the father of the American self-help movement.

William James was also an eloquent and persuasive champion of a philosophical school of thought known as Pragmatism. He
argued that the world already exists when we are born, and we have to accept it as it is. But our ability to create our own
inner reality can determine if we view the Universe as friendly or hostile. “Be willing to have it so,” he urged, because
“…Acceptance of what has happened is the first step in overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”

Being a pragmatist, Dr. James believed that personal happiness hinges on a practicality: if your reality lives up to your
expectations, you’re happy. If it doesn’t, you’re depressed. This is as real, personal, and simple as philosophy and
psychology get, and it makes perfect sense.

Of course, this means we have a creative choice to make if we want to be happy. Do we consciously and continually strive
for more accomplishments and accumulations? Or do we lower our expectations, live with what we have, and learn to be
content?

Many of us mistakenly think that lowering our expectations means we must surrender our dreams. As one friend put it,
“Sorry, Sarah, but this sounds like giving up to me.”

Absolutely not. Dreams and expectations are two very different things. Dreams call for a leap of faith, trusting that Spirit is
holding the net, so that you can continue in the re-creation of the world with your energy, soul gifts, and vision.
Expectations are the emotional investment the ego makes in a particular outcome: what needs to happen to make that
dream come true. The ego’s expectations are never vague: Oscars, magazine covers, the New York Times best-seller list.
Your dreams must manifest exactly as the ego imagines or someone isn’t going to be very happy. And guess who that is?
The ego! Since none of us can always predict either the future or the best outcome for our authentic path, this kind of
thinking is self-destructive. Because if we don’t live up to the ego’s expectations, we’ve failed again. And at some point we
really do give up.

The passionate pursuit of dreams sets your soul soaring; expectations that measure the dream’s success tie stones around
your soul. I don’t think we should just lower our expectations; I believe if we truly want to live a joyous and adventurous
life, we should relinquish them.

Living your life as a dreamer and not as an “expector” is a personal declaration of independence. You’re able to pursue
happiness more directly when you don’t get caught up in the delivery details. Dreaming, not expecting, allows Spirit to step
in and surprise you with connection, completion, consummation, celebration. You dream. Show up for work. Then let Spirit
deliver your dream to the world.

After a lifetime of setting myself up for heartache, the way I now approach the delicate balance of dreams versus
expectations is very Jamesian: dream, do, and detach. “When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the
day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome,” Dr. James tells me. I approach my work with a
passionate intensity, acting as if its success depends entirely on me. But one I’ve done my best, I try to let go as much as
possible and have no expectations about how my work will be received by the world. I have consciously chosen to be
surprised by joy. It’s a choice you can make as well.

Today, try to get real and personal about the pursuit of happiness. Oprah Winfrey once said that God’s dreams for her were
much more than she could ever have dreamed for herself. I don’t think any of our dreams begin to come close to the
dreams Spirit has waiting with our names on them. I also believe we’ll only find out once we start investing our emotions in
authentic expression, and not in specific outcomes.

Cooking Companions

No one who cooks cooks alone. Even a her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past,
the advice and menu of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.

-Laurie Colwn

My mother taught me some of her recipes, but Mary Cantwell taught me how to cook. In the early 1970s, when I started
out on my own, Mary wrote a cooking column for Mademoiselle and I learned about the glories of macaroni and cheese and
the personal triumphs of Christmas puddings. I also learned about her various homes and two daughters, her delights, and
her disappointments, all of which were somehow seamlessly connected to good food and good eating.

We became close, Mary Cantwell and I, even though we never met, through that intimate, mystical bond that grows
stronger over the years between writer and reader. This occurs when the reader’s grateful heart realizes to her
astonishment that the writer knows her in a way that even her family and close friends do not.

Then, in the 1980s, I became best friends—again through the printed word—with Laurie Colwin, who captured the ups and
downs of domestic bliss with a pen and a fork. Laurie taught me that gingerbread revisited can hold rapture, and that
sweet butter, really good olive oil, and organic chickens are affordable luxuries. Our lives were very similar: we were close
in age, each had one child, and each wrote for a living. But most of all, we were both dedicated homebodies who did not
have to wander farther than our own four walls for adventure and fulfillment. Both our days were structured around pages,
after-school pickups, pot roasts, and the shared belief that cooking is a high art.

And while I loved Laurie’s novels and short stories, I adored her cooking essays. (Now they are gathered in two delectable
collections, Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen and More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen.) The day was
always richer when I had Laurie to read and a new recipe to try. It was as if a close pal had dropped in for a cup of coffee,
a chat, and, of course, a big piece of cake.

Another thing Laurie and I shared was an infatuation with cookbooks. Regular cookbook adventures are a perennial
pleasure, and I can’t recommend them enough. I read cookbooks the way many women read fiction—in bed at night or
while watching the potatoes boil. This probably explains why my favorite fiction is always stronger on the domestic details
than the sex. I can imagine how two people make love, but I want to know what they ate before and afterwards!

Of course, I haven’t actually cooked from al my cookbooks. Yet. I simply love to flip through them and stick little yellow
Post-it notes scribbled with “sounds good” on their pages for “tomorrow.” Cookbooks aren’t so much about what’s for
dinner as they are about a world of abundant and creative choices. With cookbooks our options are always open; we may
not be able to ride the Concorde, but we can open a book and rustle up a Gratin de Poulet au Fromage if we’re so inclined.

One terrible October morning several years ago, I came downstairs to make breakfast and get Katie off to school. In
between packing lunch and urging her to get a move on. I glanced at the newspaper and was stunned to learn that Laurie
had died in her slumber of a heart attack at the age of 48. How could the buddy who urged me not just to make the most
of each meal, but each day, be gone? I didn’t start crying until everyone left, and have never really stopped. I spent that
morning making—and eating—an entire pan of gingerbread, in between blowing my nose, rereading her reminiscences,
praying, and mourning the loss of an extraordinary woman and writer who celebrated the Sacred in the ordinary. “I know
that young children will wander away from the table, and that family life is never smooth, and that life itself is full,” Laurie
tells us, “not only of charm and warmth and comfort but of sorrow and tears. But whether we are happy or sad, we must
be fed.”

This is why I love cookbooks, especially hers.

The Good Life

The one fact that i would cry from every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us—here and now.

B.F. Skinner

In 1932, during the darkest days of the Great Depression, Scott and Helen Nearing abandoned life in New York City to
become twentieth-century pioneers in the Green Mountains of Vermont. They were socialists, pacifists, and vegetarians;
they were also inventive visionaries determined to create a completely self-sufficient lifestyle that was solely dependent on
their wits, hard work, and perseverance.

The Nearings went in search of the good life: “simplicity, freedom from anxiety…an opportunity to be useful and live
harmoniously.” Two decades later they had succeeded and wrote a homesteading handbook, Living the Good Life: How to
Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World. This book barely caused a ripple when it was published in 1954; those were
the affluent postwar years when a television in every living room, a barbecue grill in every backyard, and a station wagon
in every suburban driveway was considered the good life. But in 1970, when the book was published as a paperback, it
became a best-seller and the bible of alienated barefoot baby boomers in search of flower power, love, peace, and
communal nirvana.

When I began the Simple Abundance journey, I was eager to discover all the advice, encouragement, and wisdom I could
find to point me toward the good life. However, the Nearings’ grueling saga, which included wresting Utopia from the earth
twice (they moved from Vermont to Maine when the area surrounding their farm was being developed as a ski resort), is
mythological in scope. Their daunting exploits don’t just inspire, they exhaust. I certainly can’t identify with a woman who
could build a stone house by hand when she was in her seventies and her husband was in his nineties.

And as for the life they led after the house was built, “good” doesn’t begin to do it justice. Try saintly. Living the Good Life
is often described as this century’s Walden, but the Nearings’ asceticism makes Thoreau, who loved his salt pork, look like a
sybarite. They drank only water, juices, and herbal brews and consumed little more than raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and
seeds “that have finished their life circle,” and copious quantities of popcorn. There was no salt, sugar, tea, coffee, dairy
products, or eggs in their pantry, and naturally they did not smoke or drink alcohol. Honey was used only sparingly because
it “exploited the bees,” and maple syrup—which they tapped and sold for cash or bartered—was swallowed with a smidgen
of guilt because it sucked “the life blood of noble maple trees.” Of course, this explains why Scott lived to be 100 and why
Helen, who is now 91, is still going strong. Perhaps the secret to the “good life” is revealed in the Nearings’ simply abundant
suggestions for living less stressfully, which Helen shared in her moving memoir, Loving and Leaving the Good Life:
• Do the best you can, whatever arises.
• Be at peace with yourself.
• Find a job you enjoy.
• Live in simple conditions; housing, food, clothing; get rid of clutter.
• Contact nature every day; feel the earth under you feet.
• Take physical exercise through hard work; through gardening or walking.
• Don’t worry; live one day at a time.
• Share something every day with someone else; if you live alone, write someone; give something away; help someone somehow.
• Take time to wonder at life and the world; see some humor in life where you can.
• Observe the one life in all things.
• Be kind to the creatures.

I’ve no doubt that if we lived these suggestions every day, not just thought about them, we would realize as the Nearings
did, that the good life is truly here and now.