Six things you should know about Happiness No. 1 - A Song Playing Quietly On The Radio

Six things you should know about Happiness
By Mark Anderson

1. They say our “chronic happiness level” is governed by 3 major factors:
genetics, life circumstances outside our control and our own activities and practices.
Up to 40% of our happiness level depends on our own actions, according to the scientists.

My chronic happiness level is governed
by a billion factors, including, but not limited to,
the sound of the grinder,
the earth of the beans
mixed with the soapy steam coming from your shower,
the enlightened kitchen window sill
framing an original masterpiece each morning,
the cracking of two eggs
by my own hand,
and the sizzle and flair
of fry-pan possibility...

A Song Playing Quietly On The Radio
By Michael Herman

“What’s the most alive you’ve ever felt?” she asked me.

This was the way our conversations would start. I couldn’t explain it or her to anyone else. It just was this way. I knew how to respond.

“How do you mean?”

This gave her a fork from which I could read her intent. Either she would start talking about it at great length and with asides and footnotes or she would clarify what she wanted to know from my answer. Basically, I wanted to know if she wanted my attention or my opinion.

“What I mean is this. If you had to think about a moment when you experienced what it means to be alive in your opinion, what would that be?”

It was the latter.

“I’d have to think about that. Does it have to be something which actually happened to me or just what that moment would be like if it happened?”

“Either. I’m not necessarily looking for a peak moment like getting a hit in Little League or the first time we kissed. But you get the idea of a representative moment I’m going for?”

“I do. Let me think about it.”

She was a good sport in these moments. I knew she wanted to have explosive conversations where grand proclamations were made about Love and Beauty and Truth. That’s not the way I’m wired though and she allowed for the differences in our approaches.

“Okay, how about this? Imagine a radio. And on this radio is a song. And the song is a very quiet song. On top of that the radio is turned down very quietly. So it’s coming out of the speaker very quietly.”

She was leaning in as though what I was saying was the song coming out of the radio. It was probably involuntary but it also almost broke my concentration.

“Now the room you’re in isn’t noisy or have a lot of people in it. It’s just a quiet room where you’re sitting alone, let’s say. And there‘s this radio playing quietly in the corner. So to listen to it you focus intently on it. It‘s the only thing which has your attention.”

“Okay.”

“The thing you wouldn’t think is how noisy that room really is until you try to listen to the song playing on the radio. It’s so faint and you have to try so hard to listen for it, everything else you’d been blocking out becomes really loud. You hear your own breathing. You hear the floor squeek as you shift your weight underneath you. You probably hear something happening in the next room or outside which you’d been ignoring before then.”

She was being very patient and listening though I knew she probably already had follow-up questions.

“I think that’s what Life is like. There are obviously situations like when we first kissed where the radio is blaring and you can hear the song loud and clear. Most of the time… Most of the time you’re straining to hear the song. It’s when you’re straining you hear stuff you wouldn’t otherwise and that stuff is what Life really is.”