Authentic happiness in the seemingly mundane …
Sarah Ban Breathnach wrote Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy in 1996. I have the Australian and New Zealand edition published in 2005 after having given away my hard copy and several paperbacks to friends over the past 12 years. This book sits beside my bed providing daily lessons of comfort and joy to help in one’s search for an authentic life. Sarah creates entries for every day of the year and is mindful of the seasons and the gifts they bring. In her entry for January 7th, she writes of an Englishwoman, Joanna Field, who decided to keep a journal to uncover what makes her truly happy. She wrote it “in the spirit of a detective who searches through the minutae of the mundane in the hopes of finding what was missing in her life.” Her journal, “A Life of One’s Own” was published in 1934. She discovered she delighted in “red shoes, good food, sudden bursts of laughter, reading in French, answering letters, loitering in a crowd at a fair and a “new idea when it is first grasped”.
Perhaps if one really knew when one was happy one would know the things that were necessary for one’s life — Joanne Field
One truly authentic pleasure in my life would perhaps be cooking. Not the rushed meals of an evening but the slow cooking of a Saturday afternoon. For example, yesterday John came home with 2 organic chickens and some fresh vegetables: ginger, celery, carrots and onions. Chillies, lemons, rosemary, thyme, parsley and coriander were snipped from the garden; cummin, turmeric and cinnamon snatched from the spice rack. With these 2 chickens I was able to make Syrian Chicken (a Karen Martini recipe) with the thighs and wings, 5 litres of Chicken Stock with the two raw carcasses (Jamie Oliver) and I have frozen the remaining 4 chicken breasts to make up Winter Chicken Soup (Marie Claire) and Chicken Curry (Jamie Oliver). There is no single joy but the round up of many simple pleasures ~ purchasing fresh produce, interacting with the locals, coming home and moving through my garden, seeing what is sprouting and what needs attention, the sunshine on my shoulders, chopping and working the ingredients back inside, and getting the most out of the produce. 4 meals from 2 chickens makes me feel like I have not wasted anything (something our grandparents would have been very mindful of) and the result is a beautiful meal brought to the table for the family to share. And while I am doing all of this I am in a headspace that only a Bruce Springsteen song can do for me on a long road trip. It is a rare moment of authentic happiness where I get to spend a few quiet moments with self stripped bare: inner, peaceful, happy self. I am quickly returned to my real world but I return knowing that those moments are a rare glimpse of my authentic self.
