Work makes you happy

Work makes you happy; I read it in a magazine so it must be true!
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My appointment was for one o’clock. As I walked over to Marcia’s for a haircut I knew I would be a few minutes early. But I also knew if I stayed home I would dig into another phase of my current project, forget the time, and be late. It suited me to while away a few moments in somebody else’s space. I let myself in Marcia’s shop door and wandered to the window to admire the new patio her husband had recently built. I sat down and picked up the top magazine from the stack on her table. I had idly flicked through several pages when this title, “Work Makes You Happy”, or something to that effect, caught my eye.

Though I snorted with derision, a quick scan of key phrases plunged me into agreement with the article’s main premise. Marcia walked through the door so I put the magazine down. But the idea of work equating with happiness had become glued to my brain.

My Dad would have loved this. Dad was a worker. If you grew up in my family, you worked. My Dad once told me that work was the only thing that gave him satisfaction. He did not know how to relax, how to find enjoyment in idle pleasures. He worked and he gardened, which is work in disguise, and I think he found equal enjoyment in both. He taught me to do whatever I did with all my heart; to do my best. I thank him for that.

I certainly never knew a moment of boredom. Nor, once they were older, were my children ever bored. One look at the gleam in my eye and they quickly found multitudes of fascinating things to do.

I grew up with too much work. Today many of us don’t have enough work. With such a plethora of labor saving devices, with whatever one desires (for a price) at one’s fingertips, with jobs structured into meaningless fragments, one might find oneself longing for the days one left the cabin in the quiet rays of dawn and returned at dusk dragging a moose, walked through the door to the pot of stew bubbling on the hearth and sour dough biscuits steaming in the dutch oven and the candle flickering on the table. I have lived too close to that and it is romantic hogwash.

My premise is that if one is going to open the door to happiness, balance is the key. I learned work from a master. Other pleasures I had to learn on my own. It took many a year for me to realize rest and relaxation are just as important as work. But they don’t negate it nor should they replace it.

The past several weeks have been filled with more work than usual. While I long for a short trip to Lincoln or Kalispell or north to Saskatchewan to visit friends, right now I must content myself with mini-vacations during each work day. So I take time out to make a batch of dill pickles. Or bake bread. Or read another few pages in my much-neglected book. These things give me great satisfaction. A knock on my door is not an unwanted interruption but an opportunity to visit with a neighbor. A trip to the post office, four blocks from home, often consumes an hour. Filling my short list at the grocery store can take even longer, with folks to chat up in every aisle.

As I work I am entertaining the thought of a real vacation at one of my favorite get-away spots, Quinn’s Hot Springs north of St. Regis. It will be a multi-purpose vacation, melding work with play. The work agenda will include planning a job with my son and his wife; play will be splashing with my granddaughter Lexi, plus hours of soaking in hot water. I envision Lexi squealing with joy as I point out the lofty mountain goats clinging to precarious perches. When she splashes water on me, I’ll pretend to be properly annoyed. Then we will giggle together.

Meanwhile, I am content with a vacation on my back steps, sitting in the sun, with cats curling their tails around my legs, blissfully aware of leaves jiggling in the slight breeze, admiring my apples hanging on the trees, redder and juicier and sweeter each day, wondering if I should harvest the potatoes today, watching the bees gathering the last sweetness from my patch of mint and the gold finches cavorting among the remnants of sunflowers. Just a few minutes more, and then back to work.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door
September 22, 2011
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Eudaemonia and me

Eudaemonia to you too!
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Eudaemonia and me


Eudaemonia: the state of happily following our daemons. A friend sent me this word, knowing it would intrigue me. I like words. I like this word. I like the way it sounds. I like the way it feels on my tongue. For several months I have had this word thumb-tacked above my computer. I studied it from time to time. I mused about my own state of eudaemonia. I wondered just what specific daemons I was following.

With our spate of beautiful weather, such a long time in arriving, I finally identified one of my daemons. No matter how diligently and with what determination I begin a task in my house, I frequently find myself standing in my yard, not knowing how I got there, watering hose in hand, or uprooting yet another insidious patch of toadflax, or just aimlessly wandering, admiring my petunias, lilies, and hollyhocks, glorious in purples, pinks, reds, yellows, salmons and whites. I stand bemused. I started in the bedroom by stripping my bed and ended in the garden watering flowers. I examine my fingernails embedded with gumbo. I reflect on my still unmade bed. I smile. I’ve been following my garden daemon.

On a day when guilt wins out over pleasure, I shake my head at the lilac that is begging me to move her from the front to the back yard, stand my shovel against the door and go back into the house, a return to duty. On another day I will obey my daemon, flee my shop, move the lilac, weed the strawberry patch, harvest mint and lounge in the shade of the Canadian poplar reading a novel.

This morning I found myself wandering outdoors, with a dust rag in my hand. I chortled to myself, “Umm, humm. Eudaemonia strikes again.”

Curiosity led me to my Oxford English Dictionary to look up a formal definition of eudaemonia. There I affirmed that, indeed, I had contracted a chronic case, no doubt fatal, of “happiness or well-being consisting in the full realization of human potential, in rational activity exhibiting excellence”. This is a definition of me in my garden. In fact, I am an artist, “pursuing life with happiness as the ultimate goal”. Guilt, be thou gone.

Through further research I learned that eudaemonia is the basis of an entire philosophy constructed on the theory that the highest ethical goal is happiness and personal well being. Having a happy spirit (daemon is defined as spirit) is the result of “right living”. I like this.

So it turns out that my personal daemon spirits me outdoors, overriding my industrious intentions. Eventually, beds do get made. Bookshelves get dusted. Projects in my shop get finished. And I do these things with a happy spirit, having first indulged in “right living”.

Last night, like the good shoemaker who cut the leather for a pair of shoes in the evening and went to bed, I rolled out material for two couches. I cut fabrics for six cushions, six inside backs, four inside and outside arms, strips for cording, and the boxing and zippers for the cushions. I often make my preparations at night, hoping the elves will have my project finished by morning. When I jumped out of bed, I made coffee and peeked into my shop. No, the elves had not come and finished the couches. My fabric piles lay exactly as I had left them.

But I drank my coffee and bounded out to the yard, watered flowers, dead-headed petunias, pulled a few weeds, harvested chives to chop and dry, picked a gallon of currants for jelly and a bowl of raspberries to eat with cream. I assured the rhubarb, which wanted to be picked today, that I would get to it soon.

The day is young. Already I have stitched the zipper strips, sewed up miles of welt cord, and assembled the cushions. I could do another hour of work in the shop, but I hear my daemon call me. The sun is warm and inviting. We’re already on the short end of July. Basil is ripe to be snipped. Fledgling robins flit from limb to limb. I will gather a bouquet of baby’s breath. There will be plenty of time for long work days in my shop when winter returns.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door
July 22, 2010
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