Reb was in the hospital and Mitch came to visit him. As both sat in the room, a commercial for an antidepressant drug flashed the TV screen. After it ended The Reb asked,
“Do you think those pill work?”
Not like that, Mitch said
“No”, he agreed, “Not like that.”
Happiness in a tablet. This is our world. Prozac, Paxil, Xanax. Billions are spent to advertise such drugs. And billions more are spent purchasing them. You don’t even need a specific trauma; just “general depression” or “anxiety”, as if sadness were as treatable as the common cold.
I knew depression was real and in many cases required medical attention. I also knew we overused the word. Much of what we called “depression” was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures that we weren’t willing to work for. I knew people whose unbearable source of misery was their weight, their baldness, their lack of advancement on a workplace, or their inability to find the perfect mate, even if they themselves did not behave like one. To those people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help pills were taken.
But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can’t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren’t satisfied – before working some more.
I knew. I had done all that. There was stretch where I could not have worked more hours in the day without elimination sleep together. I piled on accomplishments. I made money, I earned accolades. And the longer I went at it, the emptier I began to feel, like pumping air faster and faster into a torn tire.
The time I spent with Morrie, my old professor, had tapped my brakes on much that. After watching him die, and seeing what mattered to him at the end, I cut back, I limited my schedule.
But I still kept my hands on my own wheel. I didn’t turn thing over to face or faith. I recoiled from people who put their daily affairs in divine hands, saying, “if God wants it, it will happen”. I kept silent when people said all that mattered was their personal relationship with Jesus. Such surrender seemed silly to me. I felt like I knew better. But privately, I couldn’t say I felt any happier than they did.
So I noted how, for all the milligrams of medication he required, the Reb never popped a pill for his peace of mind. He loved to smile. He avoided anger. He was never haunted by “Why am I here?” He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honor the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with “Thanks you, Lord, for returning my soul to me.”
When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus.
Can I ask you something?
“Yes,” he said.
What makes a man happy?
“well…” He rolled his eyes around the hospital room.
“This may not the best setting for that question.”
Yeah, you’re right.
“On the other hand…” He took a deep breath. “On the other hand, here in this building, we must face the real issues. Some people will get better. Some will not. So it may be a good place to define what that word means.”
Happiness?
“That’s right. The things society tells us we must have to be happy – a new this or that, a bigger house, a better job. I know the falsity of it. I have counseled many people who have all these things, and I tell you they are not happy because of them.
“The number of marriages that have disintegrated when the had all the stuff in the world. The families who fought and argued all the time, when they had money and health. Having some does not keep you from wanting more. And if you always want more – to be richer, more beautiful, more well known – you are missing the bigger picture, and I can tell you form experience, happiness will never come.”
You’re not going to tell me to stop and smell the roses, are you?
He chuckled, “Roses would smell better than this pace.”
Suddenly, out in the hall, I heard an infant scream, followed by a quick “shhh!” presumably from its mother. The Reb head it too.
“Now, that child,” he said, “reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, its hand are clenched, right? Like this?”
He made a fist,
“Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say, “The whole world is mine.”
“But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson.”
What lesson? I asked.
He stretched open his empty fingers
“We can take nothing with us.”
For a moment we both stared at his hand. It was trembling.
“Ach, you see this?” he said
Yeah.
“I can’t make it stop.”
He dropped the hand to his chest. I heard a cart being wheeled down the hall. He spoke so wisely, with such passion, that for a moment I would forgotten trailing off.
“Anyhow,” he said, his voice trailing off.
I hated seeing him in that bed. I wanted him home, with the messy desk and the mismatched clothes. I forced a smile.
So, have we solved the secret of happiness?
“I believed so,” he said.
Are you going to tell me?
“Yes. Ready?”
Ready.
“Be satisfied.”
That’s it?
“Be grateful.”
That’s it?
“For what you have. For the love you receive. And for what God has given you.”
That’s it?
He looked me in the eye. Then he sighed deeply.
“That’s it.”
“Have a Little Faith” by Mitch Albom
Make the most of T.O.D.A.Y
