It's Your Decision

This is the first of three posts from a recent sermon I preached at Avondale UMC about how we have the power to choose, to decide, what our response to life's daily challenges will be.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~Abraham Lincoln

I think one reason why the world remains chronically unhappy is because we are under the impression that happiness is just a feeling. Which, of course it is, but that is not all that it is. Happiness is also a decision. Marriage Encounter, a world-wide marriage enrichment program teaches couples that love is a decision. People become disillusioned in relationships when the “feeling” of love begins to fade. Feelings change; they are ephemeral and despite all of our best efforts are never completely within our control. But when you make love a verb, an action word instead of a noun, a thing you discover that this you can control.

It is the same with happiness… we cannot hold on to or pin down the feeling of happiness. We all love the giddiness of feeling really happy. It is such a powerful feeling that we are constantly in search of ways to recreate it and that gets us into all kinds of trouble. If we make happiness a verb, however - if we make a conscious decision to be happy then we are in full and complete control of our happiness. It takes some work and determination, especially when circumstances or other people seem determined to squash all happiness but it can be done.

The first thing we have to do is to raise our awareness of gloom. That seems counter-productive, focusing on gloom when we’re trying to decide to be happy but it is very important. Gloom is an insidious thing, it’s like a cancer. Think about it… you probably have been in a situation where you have been a part of a group. Most often this happens in the workplace but it can happen in other places too, in any group situation such as a civic group meeting or even in a church. Things seem to be swimming right along and then all of a sudden, over there in a corner, somebody gets grumbly. Then the people in their immediate vicinity start to think, “Yeah you know, I’m unhappy about that too. And I really don’t like this other thing so much either!” And now, this topic and tone of conversation spreads and spreads, farther and deeper until the focus is all about all of the things we are unhappy about. It’s not something we set out to do intentionally but it seems to have just sneaked up on us and now we wake up to realize that we have become grumbly hateful when we really need to be humbly grateful.

Fortunately, if we are vigilant and watchful of our attitudes and our words we have the ability to prevent the gloom from gaining any traction or spreading. We make the decision to turn away at the first sign of gloom and grumbling. We simply refuse to participate. And when the gloom has nothing to feed on it starves to death. And good riddance. ...to be continued...