The Happiest People on Earth (Part One)

Who are they? According to the UN they are the people of Denmark. A study looking at things like health and access to healthcare, family relations and job security, political freedom and government corruption concludes the Danes are ecstatic. Well, good for them! Absolutely! Who wouldn’t want these? They’re all good and we should want our politicians and leaders to deliver them.

But I want to use a different, equally valid measure of happiness. One of the therapies I’m using is “mindfulness”. This helps me focus on what’s going on now so I don’t worry about the future, ruminate about the past, but appreciate the world I’m in and my present experience of it. Though not coming from the Christian tradition, these are all acceptable within the Christian faith. One exercise I tried entailed walking around as if I were the happiest person on Earth, my every footstep spreading peace and joy, occasionally pausing to appreciate something. I felt like I was in a Gene Kelly movie, when he dances around with a big smile on his face! But something deeper occurred to me – I really AM the happiest person on Earth! No need to pretend! How does someone who’s spent most of his life with a face like a wet fish, feeling numb inside and wishing things were different conclude he’s the happiest person on Earth? This: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3).” Blessedness is one synonym for happiness. Christians have EVERY spiritual blessing/happiness in Christ! It’s kept in heaven where it can’t be got at by enemies. How much more happiness can you get? 

“If God is for us, who can be against us! He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things? (Romans 8:31b-32)” Wow! What a generous God! Read the rest of that chapter to see how much God loves us! How happy we are! We see ourselves as unworthy worms (and that is, in a sense, rightly so), but God sees us in Christ as a spotless bride! While not losing that sense of unworthiness, we need to grasp what God thinks. Walking by faith, not by sight. Some of us find that easier than others. If you’re like me you’ll have known it in your head for decades… then beat yourself up because you don’t understand why you don’t feel it. We don’t HAVE to feel it, but how great if we can! My confession: I’m only now feeling it because of antidepressants, CBT and mindfulness. But it’s not making me feel things that aren’t there. It’s enabling me to feel things by boosting serotonin in my brain, showing me how to be positive and motivated, living in the present rather than dwelling on the past or the future. I’ve had decades of anguish and misery, so now I’ve the chance to change and I’m grabbing it! I don’t find it devalues the experience, it enables it. 

Here’s a more down to earth way to give and get help. “Let us encourage one another.” Christians are on the same side and we need to act like it. I’ve spent too much time criticizing other Christians - backbiting, being suspicious. Way before the meds and therapies I’ve been working on that, replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, looking for the good instead of nit-picking. I’m now actively encouraging others and receiving it from them. I’ve failed in this for too long and don’t want others to learn the hard way. 

I’m not the happiest person on Earth in isolation – I am the joint-happiness with all my Christian brothers and sisters. We are one in Him, dear friends, and that’s how He wants us to live.

A Tightrope or an Open Field?

How’s life for you? What do you think of it? How do you approach it? What’s your worldview? Do you feel like you’re walking on a tightrope? Concentrating hard, not wanting to make mistakes, scared you’ll fall off? Do you feel like you are walking in an open field? A wide open space, things to enjoy, places to explore, a garden of opportunity? 

I’ve lived inside both metaphors. Of course they are deliberately chosen opposites (or are they?). I know which one makes me happier! You know, what makes the difference is attitude and belief. Before I was a Christian I was very superstitious (some will say I swapped one superstition for another) and I think that sense of being on a tightrope stemmed from that. Don’t spill salt, don’t step on cracks in the pavement, don’t walk under ladders, don’t put your shoes on the table, make sure you say “rabbits” backwards when you wake up on the first of the month. All ways of avoiding “bad luck”.  I mean, what nonsense! As if any of these (with the possible exception of walking under a ladder on top of which someone is cleaning windows) will make the slightest difference to anything! This fear transferred into my early Christianity. Note: fear, not superstition. Don’t want to upset God, must follow the laws, not only exactly as they are written but in every possible way you can apply them to every area of life. Not only me, everyone else – otherwise their salvation was dubious. (I was Pharisee and Puritan combined.) 

It took an awfully long time to grasp that grace triumphs over law. In my head I knew, but making that long 12 inch journey to my heart was another matter. For this reason I’m learning to apply the same grace to others as I should’ve applied to myself. God’s not a stingy, mingy, misery guts in heaven waiting to zap us for every teensy weensy mistake. He is a loving father who, along with Christ, has given us all things. There’s a wide range of experience which isn’t sinful that He wants us to enjoy. Far from being a God who can’t wait to punish us, His heart breaks when sinners won’t repent because He prefers to be merciful than angry.

Let’s drag Adam and Eve into this. God gave them everything and said they could eat from any tree in the garden but one. Does that sound meany-stingy-whingy to you? What an amazing thing that He opened up so much! But instead of being satisfied with everything, they let themselves be duped into disobedience by eating from that one tree they shouldn’t have.

The tightrope and open field are the same state viewed from a different perspective. The tightrope focusses on “thou shalt not” – mustn’t do this, that or the other – don’t want to upset God. The open field focusses on all the trees in the garden you can eat from – look at all God has given me to enjoy!

Does this mean we can do what we want and stuff the consequences? No! The things God does and doesn’t want us to do are still there. It’s a matter of where you focus. The Ten Commandments contain many “do nots” but they, along with all God’s rules, are summed up into this: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’^” (Matthew 22:37-39). If we love, we aren’t breaking God’s laws. That doesn’t mean we ignore the commandments. They define loving behaviour. The Spirit of love is in the heart of the Christian, as is the mind of Christ, and these, allowed to work in us, lead us to do the right thing. It’s absolutely not “anything goes”; it’s a trained, regenerate heart and mind that allows us to live a happy Christian life. 

The Lord is our Shepherd, He leads us in green pastures. Wide open spaces where we enjoy His presence and His benefits. We’re not alone when we venture into the world.

Mr Glass Half Full

Mr Who?
Well, that is obviously not my real name! Here's the story of why I chose it...

Most of my life I have tended towards being negative, miserable, and unhappy. Don't go away!!!! Bear with... My name, dear readers, is Paul and I am a recovering pessimist! I've always loved messing around with words and when I was a teenager I had CB Radio. Miserable me chose the handle The Optimist as a joke. Because I was anything but!

When I got onto Twitter in 2011 after a while I chose MrGlassHalfFull as my Twitter name. However, this time it was not a joke. No, I was still largely negative and miserable, but this time I used the name as a statement of intent! At various points in my life I have been able to overcome a little bit of something from the negative spectrum of thoughts. Now I was going for it! I didn't want to be like that any more. This is a key stage in changing - you gotta WANT to! Sometimes we don't. We prefer the "comfort in being sad" (RIP Kurt Cobain). But that is a cold comfort.

What I want to do with this blog is share some things from my life and hopefully encourage anyone who wants to journey to happiness. Some of us find it harder than others to break through into bliss. I am no health professional or psychotherapist - just a guy who has slowly been breaking free and has now the motivation to share with others.

Paulie B, aka MGHF