“Happy people are grateful for what they HAVE. Unhappy people aren’t.”

So said my husband recently during lunch with a new friend. She was curious. “That’s it?” she asked, her law degree kicking in. “Yep,” said Chuck, “That’s about it as far as I can observe.”

It’s simplistic, I admit, but aren’t most of the true things in life?

If you work hard at something, you get better.
If you try to be a better person, -- kinder, more patient, respectful, -- people want to be around you. They may even want to help you.
If you play fair, people come to trust you.

It just seems to work that way.

Happy people are grateful for what they have.

Case in point: A young boy ran up to me the other day. We were visiting his fourth grade classroom in a school where almost 80% of the kids live below the poverty line. He was bubbling with excitement as he reached out to show me something. I didn’t know what it was until I looked closely at the writing. It was a cheap, plastic bracelet we had given out at his school fair the year before. Just one of the inexpensive trinkets we had made up to advertise our nonprofit: Pencils and bracelets.

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But this young boy loved that bracelet. He had worn it for almost 12 months. He had no idea we would be showing up the day we did, so I have to assume he just always wore it. Wow . . .

He was a living example of being happy for what you have.

I told my lawyer friend from lunch that I had read an article years ago that had a fascinating statistic in it. (I have no idea where I got this, but it has stayed with me all these years.)

The article said that the highest rates of suicide were among single men in their twenties with very high incomes. The lowest rates of suicide were among single moms with more than three children and very low incomes.

It confirmed something I had begun to realize: that consumerism and self-centeredness can’t make you happy, -- being needed and caring for others can.

I would counter that having the basics is a necessity for happiness, but I could be wrong. A book I have recently re-discovered is by a man who was a Holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl. In it he talks about starving and being horribly mistreated, yet being grateful for the other prisoners, for the stars he saw now and then, for time to think.

Extreme, yes. Thought provoking, surely.

The picture of the seesaw I am including has a little story of its own.

We had been staying at a luxury hotel on one of our trips where we plan our nonprofit's philanthropic travel to various places. Someone else had chosen the hotel. I was uncomfortable the whole time. Not physically, but morally. It was just too much.

A few weeks later, back home, we took a friend to a hotel that was as simple as they come, Moody’s Cabins (in the photo). I walked into my room, looked around and let out a hoot. This was what I wanted. Warm, clean, and so simple. It was such a contrast to our luxury hotel, and it showed me how happiness isn’t what Hollywood wants us to believe it is. The rusty seesaw out front was the final touch. I could only imagine all the happy kids on that seesaw over the years.

It’s nice to have beautiful, luxurious things but, all too often, we find we just want the next beautiful thing, and the next . . . it's just not worth our energy, creativity, or attention.

No surprise we keep looking for happiness.

My fourth-grader with the green bracelet knows this. And now I do, too.

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