10% Happier

My sister put in my hands the book 10% Happier by Dan Harris.  I read the delightful book and have put into practice several of the meditation exercises he espouses. This meditation may involve no more than five minutes a day. The idea is that we don't have to meditate hours a day to achieve more personal peace and harmony in our lives.  And we don't have to be twice as happy  to feel better about ourselves throughout  any given day.  This "enlightenment" has  made a big difference in my attitude, disposition and overall quality of life.

I have some very good camera equipment that helps make me happy.  I have some very good music equipment that yields hours of satisfaction and enjoyment. I have a very nice automobile that not only gets me places in style, but its Bose stereo system, including Sirius/XM radio, is a never ending source of musical pleasure. Who would have thought I could live the 60s again? And in stereo !  None of this stuff was cheap.

However, I recently made a purchase, including shipping, that cost about $14.00 that is providing for me a fountain of joy.

I love everything about my home.  After moving three times in five months, we settled in this house in 1986 and have been here ever since. As much as I enjoy just being home, there is a place in our home that's my personal space. In one corner of our den there is an oak computer cabinet. We bought it for a desktop computer. I filled each cubby hole with my tower and components. Now my laptop resides on this desk and I fill the cubbies with other useful things.   Like anyone, I use the computer for a number of things, but the thing I do most often is to combine Spotify with my Bose noise-canceling headphones. This marriage then becomes a well-spring of musical pleasure. Besides Spotify, this is where I see and hear movies on Netflix using the same headphones.  My wife's television doesn't bother me and my movies don't bother her.  This arrangement works for both of us.

I find noise-canceling headphones to be amazing things. The device not only delivers sound, but it also listens to sounds and eliminates them.  It has a microphone that picks up ambient noise.  "Its circuitry then creates a wave that is 180 degrees out of phase with the noise, thus canceling that frequency" (internet sources).

To power this circuitry, the headphones use a small battery. The battery came with the device. As I listen to music and movies this battery gets used up as batteries tend to do.  Since it takes several hours to charge the battery, every couple of weeks I'm out of business for a day. And sometimes it goes dead right in the middle of a good movie . I realize that this is a first world problem, but since I live in the first world--it's a problem.  A few weeks ago while listening to music, the very obvious solution popped in my head--buy another battery! After a quick online search, I found the battery . A few clicks and a credit card number later, the battery was on its way to my house

The Amazon box in the mail was like Christmas morning! Now while I'm listening with one battery, the other battery is charging. The fresh battery  not only fills the  gap of a lost day of music, but enhances my enjoyment of the battery in use just knowing it's not going to die alone.

The thing about happiness is that I never know how happy I'm supposed to be?  Although I'm relatively happy, should I be even happier? How would I know? But I do know that I'm finding more and more joy in little things. Some of those things cost $14.00 or less, but most of those things cost nothing at all. I'm finding that in daily meditation contentment is as close as my breath. And that makes me at least 10% happier.