Happiness in Doing

When people talk to me about my grandmother, they often mention her beauty. She was remarkable looking, so I suppose that is understandable. They also mention three things about her that they loved, her salt pickles, her plants, and her dresses. As I've written about before, my grandmother made simple house dresses as a gift for any woman who was ill. The dresses were easy and simple to wear. They made a huge difference in the women's lives.

Many people loved her pickles. I did as well. They were the kind of pickles that could have won contests if she'd ever entered. They were so sour it was almost tough to eat them, but so worth it. My grandmother didn't even consider herself a good cook (no one did, actually), but she was a mean pickle-maker. She could also grow amazing plants. She had beautiful ferns and elephant ears. She grew all kind of flowers and until she was too ill to do so, she grew things in the garden.

She didn't make any money off of these things. I don't think she ever would have even considered doing so. After my grandmother recovered from breast cancer, I think the dresses were her way of coping with it. She didn't know how to really talk about what happened or how terrified she was, so she made the dresses to do what she could to provide women with a bit of comfort.

Her mother taught her to make the pickles and I think it was her way of honoring that. She and her mother had little in common. My great-grandmother was gentle and sunny and tended to look at the world in a positive light. My grandmother was the exact opposite of that. She couldn't honor her mother by seeing the world the way she did, but she could make the pickles and think about the time they spent together making them.

As for the plants, growing things in the yard was my grandmother's joy. In all the ways she never really seemed to relate to humans, she felt comfortable with plants. There was an understanding between her and the things she grew that always fascinated me. She knew when to replant them. She knew where they would get the best sun. She knew where they would have the most protection in the winter. They would thrive with her and she seemed to find such contentment in that.

Do I have a point here? Yes, actually. My grandmother was a deeply unhappy person. Like, basically hated everything. And yet, she found meaning and contentment, even joy, in her creative activities. She found joy in DOING things, which, as I am sure we've all noticed, is something people do less and less of these days.

I think this is another reason why personal identity politics has become so radicalized. We're less focused on producing things and more focused on consuming. Think about how often we're told if we buy this or buy that, we'll be happy. Then people buy the things and still feel empty, still feel lost.

Like I said, my grandmother was, at the best of times, prickly, but even she had these three aspects of her life where she felt completeness. I think it's a worthwhile thing for all of us to find things like that. Maybe it would help us to find The Happy again.