A Happiness Barometer

As a young woman I believed we had only to be kinder to ourselves and each other to fix all the worlds problems. One day in conversation with a friend I was very earnestly exploring the ways in which kindness would lead to happiness and more kindness and happiness...the perfect circle amen. My friend very sincerely shared the opinion that my ideas were polly annish...utopian...in short not concrete enough to pull off the miracles I was inferring a kindness circle would conjure.

Years later the opportunity to return to the conversation with the same friend showed itself and I was much better prepared to finish the conjuring act. I had discovered that one of the reasons that people pooh pooh the power of happy people...there isn't a standard by which to measure or gauge happiness.

Happiness is a lot like the weather...changeable. It made sense to me to adopt the barometer as a way of measuring and gauging happiness.

Some few among us have lived childhoods that didn't infringe on our sense of perfectness. For the rest of us building a happiness barometer from scratch,we may need to spend some time in a playground. When we've lost our feel of and for that perfect state of grace we were born with, we reclaim that feeling, even fleetingly, by sharing the company of young, carefree, joy filled children.

On my happiness barometer I placed a moment I found in my early childhood, a moment in which I unconditionally loved and approved of myself. (It took a year and more of feeling around to find that moment.) That moment is the standard by which I measure how true to myself I'm being.

We are perfect beings who have agreed to fit ourselves into the limitations of a human vessel in order to experience the illusion and forget who we really are. May our awakening and remembering be filled with the strength, compassion and wisdom of peace that is at the core of our every perfect being. So be it