“MAKING PEOPLE HAPPY ACCIDENTALLY”
Here is a brief excerpt from a 12-step reading I did this morning?
“How wonderful to be living in a world where we can accidentally make people happy! This knowledge is a miraculous gift, and can give us reason to do every task well and with love, because it may be remembered for a lifetime by someone near to us.
What happy memory do I have of childhood?”
From Today’s Gift: Daily Meditations for Families ©1985, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation.
One of the things that was mentioned earlier in this same reading was a lady who remembered her mom hanging out clothes on the clothesline. When the lady was a little person, she thought that her mom was hanging them out, so that she (the little person, not the mom) could play among them. It was one of her most pleasant memories from childhood.
I also am old enough to remember my own mom hanging out the laundry. There is a special smell to clothes that are dried in the sunlight. Bounce sheets try to replicate it, but have never quite succeeded. I also remember my mom hanging out the clothes to dry as a happy memory.
And there are a lot more of these happy childhood memories. I remember playing for a long time in a mud puddle, filling an old empty ketchup bottle with water, swishing it around using a bedraggled tooth brush, and pouring the water out again.
I remember fishing in our farm pond. There were lots of blue gills, and (most of the time) they were biting.
I remember “exploring,” which consisted of me using one of my mom’s old, beat-up purses as my satchel, packing grape Kool-Aid in a Mason jar, taking some mayonnaise sandwiches, and tramping around the hills and fields. (Yes, mayonnaise sandwiches are delicious! You should try them!)
I remember playing under my mom and dad’s bed, and discovering a box of wooden blocks. They were supposed to be a surprise birthday gift (for my third birthday, maybe?), but I was having such a good time playing with them that my mom let me just go ahead and play with them. Even dad couldn’t be too aggravated when he saw how much I enjoyed them.
But it’s not just about my own happy childhood memories. I was especially struck in the reading by the sentence, “How wonderful to be living in a world where we can accidentally make people happy!” Perhaps I could make someone accidentally happy today.
And it doesn’t have to be just little children that can accidentally be made happy. The capacity to be happy exists in all of us. Sometimes, we simply don’t access or develop it. But it is there.
Maybe I need to be more intentional about creating opportunities for accidental happiness. Accidents happen without intention. Happy accidents, however, do not. Even when I hurt, even when I hurt a lot (as I do these days), I can intend happiness for others. I can’t make them happy, but I can create the conditions for accidental happiness.
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