Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Plan A, Plan B, Plan Z, and Plans for Good

It’s exam season in the UK at present. My daughter Zoe took exams last May and June, aged 16; this year, aged 17, and will do so again next year, aged 18. And then, in 2015-2018 it will be Irene’s turn.

British Universities state the minimum grades necessary to be considered for admission. So these examinations determine whether, for the next phase of their lives, they dwell in their personal Plans A, Plan B or perhaps, Plan Z.

* * *

Very few people live their lives in Plan A. At 17, my Plan A, oddly, was to become a nun, and work with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Well, I entered the novitiate, but left 14 months later, when I was 18.

Plan A was then academics. I read English at Somerville College, Oxford, and was accepted for a Ph.D at Oxford University, contingent on getting a First. I didn’t.

Plan B saw me go to graduate school in America to study Creative Writing rather than Literature. I grew close there to Roy, now my husband.

* * *

Plan A then involved becoming a writer. I published articles in various prestigious places, won prizes, including a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts award. I got a dream editor and agent.

But my manuscript was not the one they envisioned, and in the process of revising it, I got depressed, and abandoned it—and for 4 years abandoned writing, while I founded a successful micro-publishing company which now supports our family

And the publishing company has opened other doors, such as travel, which is a happy, refreshing, revitalising and educational experience for us. We tend to explore Europe, or further afield during every school holiday, sometimes on a shoestring!!, but the frequent shoestring travel might not have been possible or affordable without the freedom of a small business.

I will still write books, but I might self-publish them. They won’t be perfect, but they will be exactly the books I want to write.

* * *

For most of us, Plan B is where our real life happens.

It’s where I live. I don’t live in any of my plan As which would have involved me being a successful and very prolific writer by now.

It is an interesting life, a happy life. I like it.

But, in common with the lives of most people I know, it’s just not Plan A.

For Plan A has a fatal flaw we do not realize. It is too golden. It is a scheme which would please our parents, and dazzle our friends and contemporaries. Since we are not all-wise, our Plans A are not necessarily the very best thing for us. For one, they do not develop character.

And our happiness depends on our characters, not on the success, wealth and glory that our Plans A often involve.

Plan A is a Do-It-Yourself plan of strength and success and achievement. It has little room for God.

It is the failures, weakness and tears of Plan B which teaches us our need of Him.

And gives us the joy and peace which can only be found in Him.

* * *

And then, there is the dread Land of Plan Z, which Joseph called the Land of Suffering.

I know a young mum dying of cancer; people dying of debilitating illnesses; friends who have never married, but would have liked to; who have not been able to have children; who are struggling to adopt. The very worst thing they could imagine has happened to them.

And most of us have, or will, visit the Land of Plan Z, the land of suffering, for a season.

It is in the shadows of disappointment and heartbreak, of things not working out as they should, that we develop character: endurance, toughness, optimism, and compassion for those who are walking the same shadowy path. That we learn to trust God!

* * *

I have a Plan A for the second half of my life. It involves health, happiness, fruitfulness, happiness for my husband and children, the continued success of our family business, and God’s blessing on my writing. It involves some travel, much gardening, much reading and writing.

I believe I can ask God to bless it.

* * *

For after all, God does often grant the desires of our heart, our mid-life Plan A’s.

Moses catching sight of God bursts out with, “Show me your glory.” And the Lord replies, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you, and I know you by name.” (Exodus 33:17).

Hezekiah’s prayer in Kings adds 15 years to his life.

Prayer is the action which is most likely to bring Plan A into existence.

I like this Davidic prayer, May he give you the desire of your heart, and make all your plans succeed. “Psalm 20:4. I am praying this for myself and my family.

* * *

But ultimately, I hope I will be content to dwell in God’s Plan A for me for the rest of my days, “plans for good and not for evil, to give me a future and a hope.” (Jer 29:11).

May it be so!

Becoming 25% Happier, and Dabbling with Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project

By Anita Mathias

Research suggests that people who keep gratitude journals are 25% happier? And who wouldn’t want to be 25% happier?

But after decades of journal keeping, I no longer keep one. Between my blog, Facebook and Twitter, I record everything I want to remember, and work out my puzzlements, joys, epiphanies and griefs in public. Even if the triggering event or emotion is a bit submerged and transmuted in my blog’s version of “art!”

So how keep a gratitude journal? I no longer even know where my journal is.

* * *

So I bought Dr. Amen’s Change your Brain, Change your Body Journal,which has spaces to record your 5 reasons for gratitude; your exercise; diet; vitamins, prevailing positivity or negativity, and other brain healthy habits. I have long been told of the benefits of recording what you eat. Perhaps this journal will make it simpler.

Interestingly, just knowing that I am going to record 5 things at night, keeps me alert to recognize them during the day. Cultivates an attitude of gratitude. For instance, I recorded today that glory be!!–both the massive overgrown climbing pink roses and the climbing yellow roses we inherited with the house have burst into luxuriant blossom in our week away–and are almost singing!! That Irene got into the finals of her speech competition. That she has such a good circle of friends. That Roy arrived home safely from a drive to London, when he was exhausted. That I have easily found a good camper van to possibly buy.

I learnt about Dr. Amen, a psychiatrist, from Rick Warren’s Daniel Plan, which Amen co-wrote. I am reading his The Brain Healthy Way to get Thinner, Smarter and Happier, and trying some of his tips.

I am also reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, though, interestingly, I am happy. My happiness varies from day to day, but it surrounds me, like “the happiness fog,” Rubin talks about.

The project I would most like to successfully embark on and complete would be a discipline project, a productivity project, or a weight-loss project. But some of Rubin’s suggestions would work for these too.

Rubin’s book, incidentally, is fascinating. Happiness has been extensively studied for centuries, particularly recently, and, as she says, the laws of happiness are as fixed as the laws of chemistry.

Rubins explains that 50 percent of a person’s happiness is determined by genetics, by their “set-point of happiness.”(Fortunately, I have always had a sanguine, optimistic disposition, and a high happiness set-point.) Life circumstances, such as age, gender ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation and religion account for 10-20% of one’s happiness. The remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts.

Isn’t that amazing? That our life’s circumstances only affect 10-20 % of our happiness, and 30 % depends on our attitude. (And I can tell you, from my own experience of having had a very bad attitude that this is true!!).

* * *

And so Rubin starts her happiness project with the determination to sleep more and to exercise, having discovered that these directly affect happiness. She decides that outer order would bring inner peace, and starts a massive decluttering project.

Her research suggests that getting an extra hour of sleep each night might do more for the average person’s happiness than earning an extra $60,000. I don’t doubt it. What good would $60,000 do you if you were exhausted? How could it make you happier? However, the average adult, she states, is chronically sleep-deprived, which “impairs memory, weakens the immune system, slows metabolism, and might foster weight gain.”

So, her method of sleeping more is the radical one of switching off the light at 9.30 p.m., even if she was wide awake.

I have started doing this since I started the Daniel Plan–switching off my light at 10.40 p.m., which is an effort for me, since I am more creative at night. And so, I have been using the extra time for prayer, and have been waking significantly earlier.

Rubin’s other happiness projects were using a pedometer to walk 10,000 steps, and working out with weights. Sadly, I have never got to 10,000, and have neglected weights, since I started prayer walking. Must weave this back into my life.

* * *

The last of her happiness resolutions for the first month of her project was decluttering.

Mess has been a bug bear in our lives in the past, and we have set aside a few hours a week to declutter for the last 4 years. But there is still clutter to go, alas—and it is motivational and happy-making to get rid of it. Rubin cites studies which suggest that getting rid of clutter reduces housework time by 40%!! That’s an incentive, isn’t it?

Last month, my leveraged small step to revise my life was decluttering for 15 minutes a day.

Well, on the 15^th of July, Roy’s brother Jeph, his sister-in-law Kaaren, and 4 children, twin girls of Irene’s age, and a younger boy and a preschool girl are visiting. 6 additional people. Cooking meals for ten!!

Well, I can’t get my mind around that yet. But I do know that I will have to declutter a lot to have the house brighter, airy, more hospitable (and child-proofed!!).

So my plan is to gradually increase my decluttering time by 5 minutes a day, until I am doing 90 minutes a day of tossing, giving away or putting away. Until the 15^th of July. By when several rooms should be totally decluttered. And I will then add a new good habit to increase productivity, discipline or good health. And get my life into a continuing virtuous circle.

So help me, God!!

Dazzled by Lewis. Finding Peace beyond “The Anxiety of Influence.”

By Anita Mathias

Aslan Singing the World into Existence

We listened to C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew on our holiday in Ireland.

It’s brilliant. I love the way Lewis puts literary and mythic flesh on Biblical verses and ideas—Aslan singing Narnia into being; Aslan touching his nose to dumb beasts to give them the power of speech; Fledge telling Diggory, “Aslan knows what you want, but he likes to be asked;” Diggory told by Aslan that he could have stolen the apple for his mother, instead of waiting to be given it, but that it would not have been a blessing for either of them.

The Chronicles of Narnia are probably the best work of literature (among those still widely read, as Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy are not) that directly clothes Biblical truths with the garments of the imagination and poetry. That transmutes the Bible to literature.

* * *

I grew up in India, and did not grow up reading The Chronicles of Narnia.I think I first read them when I read them to Zoe, 11 years ago.

I was spellbound, and fascinated by Lewis’s pastiche of Greek and Nordic myth. And felt sad and wistful. I loved those myths too, and would have loved to write something so good, but felt that I had not been as soaked in myth, and literature and poetry as Lewis and Tolkien had, so could not.

And now, ten years later, I think: So what if I cannot write something as good as The Chronicles of Narnia?

Lewis and Tolkien loved mythology and ancient cultures and ancient languages and epics and literature and poetry. What they read shaped who they became. And what they wrote.

And for us who do not have their advantages of education, literary friendships, intellect, time, and discipline?

We will write different things that will be shaped by different influences. Lewis and Tolkien have sung their song. We will sing ours, to a different generation, and a different, if smaller, audience.

For instance, I read voraciously until I was married, and then have steadily been reading less, though this has picked up again now that both girls are teenagers (yay, on both counts). But have certainly read hugely less than Lewis or Tolkein.

But I have had other influences. Suffering. Depression. Disappointment. Failure. (And all these are splendid teachers!!) Having children. An initially difficult, now nourishing and happy marriage. Gardening. Intensive Travel. Wide friendships made, lost, some regained.

Intense involvement in church life. The lessons in running a smooth household. Immersion in art. Many non-literary intellectual interests. Living for over a decade each in three continents. Growing up as a member of a religious minority (Christian in India) in a non-Christian country, and then living as a member of an ethnic minority in America and England.

And these experiences and influences have been hand-picked for me for God to speak to and nourish the audience he has hand-picked for me.

* * *

Each of us writers and bloggers have our own audience predestined for us by God. We do not get to control its size, in our lifetime, or beyond. Milton, interestingly, fretted about how little he had written, and then surrendered that worry to God, writing

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.

* * *

We each of us have our own notes to add to the great literary symphony. We cannot control whether our output and readership will be “less or more, or soon or slow.”

But we can control, to a large extent, our use of time, our discipline, our spiritual lives!! For, as Milton said, “All is, if we have grace to use it so.”

Lord, give us the grace to use our talents well to be a blessing in the lives of as large an audience as you please to give us.

Brief Photo-Blog of Adventures in County Donegal, Ireland

By Anita Mathias

A view of the Blue Stack Mountains in Co. Donegal. Zoe and Irene took an hour to get to the top.

Mountain hikes are the most perfect form of relaxation. The Blue Stack Mountains were unbelievably deserted. Except for my excitable family’s voices, there was natural silence: the murmur of streams, the occasional bleat of sheep, the wind, the chirrup of insects (the species Darwin claimed God loves the best since they vastly outnumber any other life form), and the occasional sound of birds. As you can see, it is a treeless mountain, so the only birds were lapwings, grouse and other ground-dwellers–bird song was infrequent, but high and sweet.

The grass is full of these compressible foot high mounds

There are numerous decrepit stone houses, often with sheep sheltering inside them.

Lovely Lough Eske in the rain from the Blue Stack Mountains.

There is very very little left of Assaroe Abbey, a Cistercian Abbey founded in 1184. It was already in decay in Cromwellian times when its stone was used for building in the area.

Brook that turned the Abbey’s water mill

“Catsby Cave”, also known as “St. Patrick’s Oratory”

The Catsby Cave is unquestionably very ancient. During Penal times, Masses were celebrated here, and consecrated bread and wine were distributed.

Abbey Watermill

The Abbey was most sacred place of interment in the surrounding area, and many dead were brought down the river Shannon and buried on the hill above the Abbey. This ancient cemetery is no longer visible, here are some photos from a more modern extension.

Some modern and very personal graves at the top of the hill. Dates of birth are not generally recorded on the headstones. The Irish memorialize what their dear departed best loved in their graves

(the smudge is a raindrop)

There is a large area reserved for the nearby Sisters of Mercy, Ballyshannon

The individual memorials testify that these nuns all lived very long lives — mostly 60 or 70 years in religious life.

There is whole hillside of more traditional Celtic crosses

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

The Road of Excess Leads to the Palace of Wisdom

By Anita Mathias

“The Road of Excess Leads to the Palace of Wisdom,” is one of William Blake’s interesting paradoxes.

My husband (who, sadly, is not the most polite of creatures) sometimes says that I remind him of Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows.

Mr. Toad was overpowered by his latest enthusiasms. A boat—a caravan—a car! As he realized their charms, their indubitable advantages, he grew convinced that they were the best, the only possible way of doing things.

Ah, embarrassingly familiar!! I loved reading “the classics” as a teen, as much for the cracking good stories, as for, well, having read the classics, the satisfaction of scoring them off my reading list. My goal was to have read all “the classics” by the time I was thirty, and I was progressing steadily towards it until I was 27, and married Roy, and then, well, life happened!

I only read poetry for a few years. In graduate school, and for the first year and a half of our marriage, pretty much all I did was read and write poetry, until, well, I wrote out all my poem ideas, and poetry began to seem too constricted for everything I wanted to explore in words.

If an author speaks to me, enchants me, I buy several of their books, sometimes all of them. If I am interested in a subject—an artist, medieval mystics, or natural healing, or herbs, or using natural supplements to balance brain chemistry, I tend to buy 3-4 books on the subject, and devour them. I then rapidly learn a lot about the subject, though it can be expensive, if it turns out to be less enticing than anticipated, or the waves of the next enthusiasm hit before I’ve sort of mastered this one.

I instinctively believe that if some is good, then more is better. When we planted spring bulbs in Williamsburg, we’d plant 700 or 800 each autumn so that the next spring was magical, seeing all our old favourites come up as well as the last year’s plantings.

It was sad to leave our Virginia garden which we had had for nine years, and so, we have never really thrown ourselves into planting up our Oxford garden, though it’s now our seventh year in it. However, we are slowly planting bulbs and perennials, and have a massive vegetable garden.

* * *

My favourite way of travelling is in a camper van. We first rented one in Switzerland ten years ago, and were amazed at how much we could see of the country in a motor home, which meant we could drop into several lovely sights in a day, start the morning in one little town, and continue until late in a summer evening, resting in the motor home on the way to sights, or over a brief cuppa or a picnic lunch.

For a while, I was convinced that it was the only way to travel, until we enjoyed the pleasures of renting quirky homes in Granada, Istanbul and Rome. My family say they prefer that, though I prefer seeing a huge amount of the country in a motor home, sleeping each night in a different place, especially the free wild camping in parts of Norway, Ireland or Sweden.

We stayed in retreat houses last year, at Lee Abbey and Ffald-y-Brenin and I did love the restfulness of staying in one place, doing nothing, just resting and soaking in God’s presence. On our return, Roy noticed me surfing the internet, absorbed. “I bet you are researching retreat houses,” he said. And indeed, I was.

If Aristotle was right in defining wisdom as the mean between extremes, exploring an extreme means that you learn what’s good about it, as well as its limitations. Then, once you’ve learned its limitations, you might, on the rebound, swerve to the other extreme. For instance, in a scenario familiar to dieters, if you’ve cut out all fat, or meat, or carbs from your diet, for a while you can’t have enough of them. And then, perhaps you return to a balanced diet.

To the path of wisdom, which is the mean between two extremes.

In fact, my days of riding the wild horse of each enthusiasm to exhaustion are over. Yeah, I am middle-aged now, and am choosing the middle path. Striving for a life with a healthy balance of spiritual, intellectual, physical and social activities and interests. I try to make time to pray, read scripture, exercise, read, write, garden, and spend time with family or friends every day.

And oh, I believe, I hope, that all this sensible balance may mean that, paradoxically, in the long run, there may well be more energy to pursue any one interest.

A photo-essay blog of our trip to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

By Anita Mathias

On the road in Ireland

Well, we’re in Ireland for the week, celebrating the end of Zoe’s A-S exams (public exams taken by 17 year olds, for my non-British readers). And we choose Ireland, because it’s slow, magical, green, and fascinating.

We have taken a ferry from Wales to the Republic of Ireland in the past, but this time decided to take a ferry from Stranraer in Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland, to show the kids a bit of the six counties of Northern Ireland.

A few pictures along the way:

Gorse and hawthorn by the road to the Giant’s Causeway

Scotch-Irish pride

Celebrating the queen

Celebrating the queen in the center of Ballymoney

This “shop window” is actually painted

Another of the many painted windows

The Giant’s Causeway is Northern Ireland’s foremost tourist attraction and it is a natural wonder, with its massive hexagonal columns. I enjoyed the colourful beach with its pinks, owl’s clover and bright yellow gorse.

Some pictures of the basalt columns–not all are hexagons, as you can see.

Columns with barnacles

These columns are on the back of the columns in the previous pictures

Zoe on top of Finn Maccool’s Shoe

Zoe and Irene posing

Zoe, Irene and I

The Northern Irish are far blunter than the English. We took a National Trust bus out, and Diane, the cheery guide tells the passengers, “Now I know most of you won’t speak English, but hopefully, you’ll understand a little.” In England, they’d pretend that, of course, everyone understood English.

I love the Irish accent. “It’s like leprechauns,” Irene says, though how she knows what leprechauns sound like, beats me.

* * *

Lakes, for me, are sheer magic, second only to the ocean. So we spent a day on Lough Erne in County Fermanagh. Rented a Canadian canoe, and rowed out among the baby ducklings, the mallards, the coots, and magical swans. Perfect relaxation!! (The photos don’t capture it.)

A rather eccentric boat.

A disused concrete pier

A boat hosue

Crossing from Great Britain to the Republic of Ireland is the most unspectacular border crossing ever. You are driving down a modest, narrow road, and suddenly read, “Welcome to Donegal,” and the signs are in Irish, and you say, “Kids, we are in a foreign country,” and that’s it!!

We are in a camper van, and camped by the most magical lake, surrounded by pink rhododendron bushes which were reflected in the lake on our first night in Ireland.

Photo of the lake taken at 10:30 pm

In the morning, the rhododendrons are much clearer

Close up of a horsetail

Then walked on a beach, quite far out. The tide obviously came in behind us; Irene, who had decided to sit on the sea wall and read, suddenly hollered, “the tide’s rushing in,” and we looked around. And so it had. We landed up wading back through hip-deep freezing Atlantic waters. Third time in my life that I’ve been caught out—once in Virginia and once in Oregon. Must get the hang of tides!!

These plants would soon be submerged

* * *

Camped (well, in the motor home) wild out by Lough Eske last night. Today’s adventures: I want to visit the ruined Abbey Assaroe, founded by the Cistercians in 1184, to soak in the remnants of peace and holiness that still cleave to these holy places. Want to drive into and hike on the Blue Stack mountains, and walk on the sea cliffs at Slieve League.

And deeply breathe in the peace and serenity of County Donegal!!

Mind, Body, Soul, Spirit

By Anita Mathias

Mind, Body, Soul, Spirit

Prayer ministry training at St. Aldate’s, Oxford, used this vivid illustration. Four people stood in a circle up front, arms around each other’s waists. If you tugged at one, all four came along. They had an unbreakable connection. They represented, of course, the body, mind, spirit and soul or emotions.

The skit was meant to illustrate the complexity of human beings. The presenting symptom in prayer ministry is rarely the root cause of the problem. Persistent physical symptoms, like stomach aches, headaches, colds and coughs, can be the result of job or relational stress. Similarly, physical ill health can cause job or relational stress.

Intellectual malaise—not using your mind, especially for the intellectually gifted, can cause depression, and its attendant problems. Extreme loneliness, relational stress or depression can affect one’s health, the vibrancy of one’s spiritual life, and even one’s ability to think clearly. And when the spiritual life, the motor of one’s life, is out of kilter or non-existent, one’s social life, physical life and friendships are below par.

In prayer ministry, I myself am less interested in praying for the presenting symptom—“I am not productive;” “I need to lose weight;” “I am lonely/angry”—and more interested in praying over and into the underlying root cause. Our symptoms—a weight problem, writers’ blocks, depression, and chronic fatigue are often the presenting “fruit” or flower. The problem lies in the roots, and that’s where healing begins.

* * *

And so, when one prays for oneself or one’s family, it’s important to pray for vision to see the roots, as well the presenting problem, the fruit, and pray for healing of both.

The Catholic monastics evolved a schedule which gave proper weight to each of these dimensions of personality. A contemporary Benedictine schedule calls for 3.15 minutes of manual work, 3 hours of reading and study, including Scripture study, and 4.5 hours of prayer and religious activity (including the Divine Office, Eucharist and Choir Practice). The schedule included 3 meals in community and half an hour of community recreation, which I guess played a part in meeting social and emotional needs.

Excellence, in any one area, which involves concentration and focus on it—intellectually for a scholar or a blogger, spiritually for a mystic or spiritual writer, physically for an athlete, may involve some short-changing of other dimensions.

However, to neglect any of the four elements of our make up as human beings which Scripture recognizes in its statement—love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength– leaves us, to some extent, stunted, and walking with a limp.

I emphasize my spiritual life, and, to a lesser extent, my intellectual life. Socially, we have dinner together as a family almost every day, and Roy and I have a quick lunch together on weekdays. I also make sure I pencil in two coffees or lunches with friends each week. I have neglected physical fitness for years, and am in a slow recovery of strength and fitness project.

How about you? Which dimensions of human personality have you most developed? And which ones are you working on developing?

The Things which Make me Happiest

By Anita Mathias

My daughter Irene, and I. Note one source of I’s happiness in her paw

I am flicking through Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project, her quest for happiness through a life makeover with many small changes like going to sleep earlier, and diminishing clutter.

I used to regard things like Oxford’s Happiness research with some scepticism, perhaps dogmatically believing that happiness has spiritual roots, comes from harmony with God.

But that’s too dogmatic. Small steps like diminishing clutter, improving organization, avoiding negative thinking and exercising—open to both Christian and non-Christian—definitely do improve one’s happiness. Getting an extra hour of sleep it is claimed makes you 25% happier!!

So, flicking through Gretchen’s book got me wondering. What makes me happiest?

* * *

I was rattled yesterday and busy, packing for our holiday, and so just had a brief 20 minute quiet time after going to small group. Just lay, face down, in soaking prayer, which helps me enter the presence of God most rapidly. And soon felt happier and calmer.

I don’t want to sound goody-goody, but that is what restores my happiness most rapidly: Prayer. Sometimes I might feel snubbed, or treated unfairly or rudely. When I am wise, I let the fountain of God’s love wash away the hurt before it festers and turns cancerous. Sometimes, I am angry. Again, when I am wise, I seek, in prayer, to let the waterfall of God’s love pour onto the anger before it turns malignant.

Prayer, positioning myself in the force field, in the waterfall of God’s love, helps worries, fear, and insecurity dissolve. I feel a bit unanchored and directionless until I have prayed, and then a whole lot happier after I have prayed.

Reading Scripture for me is another source of wisdom, sanity, and happiness—besides being a stabilizer!

* * *

My second greatest source of joy is my garden. I love being alone in it, working, while the sun shines and birds sing. It’s the most sublime relaxation.

I love museums and art galleries, losing myself in paintings. I have taught myself quite a lot about art over the last quarter century or so, but am self-taught, and almost wonder if a naïve appreciation heightens my pleasure. Perhaps not. However, if I overhear the experts talk about my favourite paintings in museums I often wander away—I prefer letting paintings speak to me in their own language, rather than analysing them in a left-brain way.

I love movies, and enjoy them thoroughly while I watch them. Movies, though, hold you enthralled, and you can’t really analyse them in medias res as you can’t gauge the plot twists. If they are disappointing, I am left with a de-energized, dissatisfied emptiness, a sense I have wasted time. But Roy loves movies, and so many are magical, so yes, they are on my happy list.

* * *

Somehow, over two decades of being married to a man who does not love reading, and amid the hurly-burly of parenting, running a business, and blogging, I suddenly found that reading, one of the greatest sources of happiness from my single days is slowly slipping off my radar.

I have instead got into the habit of tearing the heart out of books—skim reading. I am, however, slowly recovering the habit, through a reading project in which I read a book in 30 days in January, 29 days in Feb., and so on. By the end of next year, I will be back to reading a book a week. I used to read more than that as a single woman, but just returning there will make me happy— besides, of course, the pleasure of the good books.

Travel! I love it. A great source of pleasure, joy and happiness for me. It’s partly the perfect moments—sitting out in a garden in Europe, sipping tea, looking at the layered Romanesque and Gothic architecture around you, while the birds sing, and you are perfectly at peace. Sitting out on a beach, watching herons, cormorants, and the blood-red sun sink.

I love the change, the relaxation, the narrow winding cobbled streets in Europe, the past so present, the unforced living history, the experience of new foods, new shops, new customs. And the sheer beauty of nature, as in Ireland or New Zealand.

* * *

When my kids were young, say under 5, watching them, watching their joy was perfect happiness. Teenagers are, well, teenagerish, but the sudden moments of perfect harmony in family life are happiness. As is perfect rapport with a friend. Conversations which stretch your horizons, and make you feel as if sparklers are exploding in your brain. Books, lectures or sermons which do the same.

I am, sadly, not particularly physically fit, but sometimes when I walk, it’s as if my whole body comes to life and pulses with vibrancy and energy. And then I am so happy to be alive, to feel the joy of movement, to be high on endorphins, to feel the sun, soak in the green fields, and hear the birds.

And one of the things which makes me the happiest of all is writing. I love the first draft, and I love editing—though the multiple edits necessary for a polished piece of work can bore me!!

Writing out what makes me happy makes me happy to realize how simple and inexpensive and available most of them are.

How about you? What makes you happy?

anita.mathias