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I was traveling last week...and, when I returned, found that the muse had gone on vacation too. Rather than struggle to reflect afresh at the last minute, I am sharing a seasonal favorite from several years back.
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. That document affirmed "certain unalienable rights," including the right to pursue happiness. We grew up with that phrase, but how often do we ask what it means? How often do we exercise that right in our daily lives?
Happiness, like energy, is an elusive target. We want it (the more the better). We think we will know it when we see it. However, when asked to describe it, we falter. The answer is often framed as an absence of suffering. We understand suffering.
I have enjoyed reading several books this year that challenge us to understand happiness. One of those is Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Flow is a state of profound engagement: time stops, and we are captured by the richness and depth of the moment. Flow finds that sweet spot between boredom and anxiety in which the challenge we face balances perfectly with our capacity to respond. Flow takes action for its own sake, not as a means to a future goal.
Star athletes, champion chess players, accomplished musicians, and participants in extreme sports experience Flow. So can we. Attention to the moment and its intrinsic value gives us a good start. Activities that exercise our skills at their highest level take us further down the path. Improving those skills, so that their limits increase and our delight expands in turn, generates even more potential for Flow.
Skills come in many forms: athletic, artistic, culinary, intellectual, interpersonal, organizational, and more. We are programmed to seek and to find joy wherever we grow. Flow describes happiness as a state of being, not a goal. Flow can be described. It can even be pursued, but only in the present moment-not in the future.
What skills do you most enjoy using? Have you stretched them recently? In honor of July 4 this year, exercise the rights upon which our nation was founded: Go out and pursue some happiness!
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