The Evolution of Happines

Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Today is Erin Morgan’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Erin! Birthdays tend to be a day of reflection to stir up fond memories from the past and eagerly anticipate the best years that are yet to come in our lives. We have some time for introspection amidst nail hammering, foundation digging and more nail embedding and it gets one’s mind wandering…

What made us happy last year? Last week? This week? There will likely always be six degrees of separation from the happiness we felt before this trip and the happiness we feel after its completion, but I think we’ll all see and feel happiness in a different light.

Shamefully, happiness for me last year was quite self-centered: having weekends free for social activities with friends; having the sun shine all day so I could veg out at the beach and get a tan while doing so!; being able to take days off for a personal vacation; so forth and so on.

Since we started talking about this trip, happiness started to come from other things: every donation that came in that made us realize that the dream of this trip was going to become a reality; watching the slideshows and hearing the experiences of last year’s crew, Operation Biloxi; thinking about the families we were going to help bring hope to…the list goes on.

Happiness has taken on a new meaning this week that is hard to accurately describe with words. Happiness has become more than just a feeling…it has become a deep, heartfelt emotion. Happiness now is that the Maddox family, a family of seven, has a front yard where their kids can frolic; that the Gray-Silvan family has shelter for their “almost seven (baby due any day!)” children; that Cleo and ten-year old Destiny Quave have a roof over their heads and clean living conditions so that Destiny doesn’t get sick so often anymore. Perhaps most poignant was when the Stogner family, a family of four with a daughter who has cerebral palsy, was presented with the key to their house. The key was given to the mom, Mary. After the ceremony, she graciously and emotionally thanked all who had contributed to the building of their dreams and in turn, presented the key to her husband, tearfully telling him that ‘It’s finally here.’

The happiness we are experiencing here is a different breed. We’ve gone from being happy that the surf is good in the morning to being proud of our teammates who erect a wall or put in flooring over the foundation or lay a roof. Happiness is the smile on the faces of these families, the patience in the Habitat supervisors, the pep in every volunteer’s step. Sure, we’ll still have the personal bouts of happiness (ie when American Idol is on or when we catch a good wave), but we’ll never see happiness the same again after this trip…and we are damn lucky of that.

Thanks to all.
Amy