The Happiness Project (17 page)

If I was going to “Be serious about play,” I needed to embrace this suppressed passion and have more fun with it. But how? While I was trying to figure that out, I had lunch with an acquaintance who was a polished, intimidating, well-established literary agent. We were having a “we’d like to become friends but haven’t figured out how yet” kind of conversation when I mentioned how much I loved Stephen King’s
The Stand.
Now, I felt as though this was a bit of a risk, because I feared she might be the kind of person who would disdain Stephen King.

“I love Stephen King, and I love
The Stand,
” she said. Then she added, “But it’s not as good as Harry Potter.”

“Oh, do you like Harry Potter?”

“I’m
obsessed
with Harry Potter.”

Eureka, I’d found a kindred spirit. We talked about nothing but Harry Potter for the rest of lunch. As we talked, it occurred to me: I knew a third person who also loved children’s literature. Could we start a book group?

“Let me float an idea by you,” I said tentatively as we were paying. “Do you think you might want to start a children’s literature reading group?”

“A reading group, for reading children’s books? Like what?”

“Whatever we want.
The Giver, The Secret Garden, James and the Giant Peach,
whatever. We could take turns meeting for dinner.”

“Sure, that could be fun,” she said enthusiastically. Fortunately. If she’d said no, I’m not sure I would have asked anyone else. “I have a friend who might be interested in joining, too.”

So I sent out a few e-mails and started asking around. Once I spoke up, I was startled to discover that I already knew and liked many people who shared my passion. Because I’d never mentioned my interest, I’d never known about theirs.

For our first meeting, I sent around an e-mail inviting everyone to my apartment for dinner to discuss C. S. Lewis’s
The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe.
At the end of the e-mail, I included a quotation from Lewis’s brilliant essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”:

This apologia didn’t mean much to anyone else in the group, because they’d never tried to squash their interest in children’s literature. Why had I? No more.

From our very first meeting, this group was a huge source of fun for me. I loved the people, I loved the books, I loved the discussions. I loved the fact that many of the people in the group didn’t have children, so there was no question about the fact that we were reading children’s literature
for ourselves.
I loved our kidlit tradition that the dinner’s host must serve some food that tied in with the book. This started when I served Turkish delight for dessert at the first meeting, because Turkish delight plays a significant role in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
At our next meeting, we drank Tokay, the wine that appears at a key moment in Philip Pullman’s
The Golden Compass
(I was surprised to discover that Tokay was real; I’d assumed it was part of Lyra’s world). For Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
we ate mock turtle soup and treacle tart; for Blue Balliett’s
Chasing Vermeer
, the blue M&M’s that are the signature candy eaten by Petra and Calder; for Louisa May Alcott’s
Little Women,
Meg’s blancmange, which Jo takes to Laurie the first time they meet. At the dinner to discuss Louis Sachar’s
Holes,
we ate Dunkin’ Donuts doughnut holes—for the pun.

Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship and also brings about a 2 percent increase in life satisfaction. This group gave me a bunch of new friends and a lift in life satisfaction that felt much higher than 2 percent. Also, it was fun just
being part of a new group. Group membership makes people feel closer and brings a significant boost in personal confidence and happiness.

By contrast, around the same time, I was elected to the Council on Foreign Relations. Interesting subject, interesting group, and so very
legitimate.
Which group brought me more pleasure? Which helped me form new relationships? Kidlit. I’m passionate about Winston Churchill, I’m passionate about John Kennedy, but the truth is, I’m not passionate about foreign relations—so that group didn’t form as solid a basis for fun for me.

So once again, one of my resolutions led me right back to my First Commandment: “Be Gretchen.” I had to know and pursue what was truly fun
for me.
That was the road that led to happiness. But what else, beside the children’s literature reading group, could I do for fun? I was stumped. Was I so cheerless and dull that I couldn’t think of a single other thing?

One thing that’s both good and bad about living in New York City is the sense that I could be doing so much—going to the ballet, going to an off-off-Broadway play, taking a graphic design class, shopping in Williamsburg, eating in Astoria. But I almost never do those things, so the possibilities are exciting, but also a reproach. I’ve been haunted for years by a public ser vice poster I saw just one time, in the subway. It was a photo of a Chinese food take-out container sitting on top of two videos. The caption read, “If this is how you spend your time, why are you living in New York?”

Fun abounded in New York City, if only I had the largeness of spirit to tap into it.

I told a friend that I was trying to have more fun, and instead of pointing me toward the “Goings On About Town” column in
The New Yorker,
she asked me a question: “What did you like to do when you were a child? What you enjoyed as a ten-year-old is probably something you’d enjoy now.”

That was an intriguing idea. I remembered that Carl Jung, when he was thirty-eight years old, had decided to start playing with building
blocks again, to tap into the enthusiasm he’d felt as an eleven-year-old. What had I done for fun as a child? No chess, no ice-skating, no painting. I worked on my “Blank Books.” For my tenth birthday, my uncle had given me a book that looked like an ordinary book but with blank pages, titled
Blank Book
. Now such books can be bought anywhere, but when I got this one, I’d never seen anything like it. Before long, I’d bought several more.

I turned my Blank Books into commonplace books filled with clippings, memorabilia, notes from school friends, cartoons, lists, snatches of information that interested me. Jokes cut from my grandparents’ back copies of
Reader’s Digest
sometimes found their way in. A special series of my Blank Books were illustrated books of quotations. Every time I read a quotation I liked, I’d write it on a slip of paper, and when I saw a picture in a magazine that I liked, I’d cut it out, and I created my books by matching the quotations to the pictures.

Keeping up with my Blank Books was the main leisure activity of my childhood. Every day after school, I sat on the floor sorting, cutting, matching, copying, and pasting while I watched TV.

I set off to replicate this experience. I was eager to give it a try, plus I’d thought of another potential benefit: I’d noticed that many of the most creative people are inveterate keepers of scrapbooks, inspiration boards, or other magpie creations. Twyla Tharp, for example, dedicates a file box to every project she begins, and as she works on the dance, she fills the box with the material that inspired her. Having some kind of physical way of preserving information keeps good ideas vivid and creates unexpected juxtapositions.

I bought a huge scrapbook and started looking for items to include. A motley assortment emerged: a portrait of Princess Diana made of tiny photographs of flowers; a review from
The New York Review of Books
about Books of Hours; a photograph of an artwork by Portia Munson called
Pink Project
(1994), made of a table covered by pink objects; a map of the counties of England, which I wished I’d had when I was writing my Churchill biography; one playing card from the pack I took from my grandparents’
house after they both died, decorated with a Thomas Kinkade–like picture of a water mill.

Working on my new Blank Book made me look at magazines and newspapers in a different way. If something caught my attention, I’d think, “Why am I looking at this for a second time? Is it worth keeping for my Blank Book?” I was a less passive recipient of information. I also liked the process of cutting, placing, and pasting, so familiar from my childhood.

All this thinking about fun made me realize that I had to make time for it. Too often, I’d give up fun in order to work. I often felt so overwhelmed by tasks that I’d think, “The most fun would be to cross some items off my to-do list. I’d feel so much better if I could get something accomplished.” I felt virtuous when I delayed gluing pictures into my scrapbook in order to deal with my e-mail.

In fact, though, turning from one chore to another just made me feel trapped and drained. When I took the time to do something that was truly fun for me, to reread
The Phantom Tollbooth
for the fifteenth time, for instance, or to call my sister, I felt better able to tackle my to-do list. Fun is energizing.

But I have to admit it—being Gretchen and accepting my true likes and dislikes bring me a kind of sadness. I will never visit a jazz club at midnight, hang out in artists’ studios, jet off to Paris for the weekend, or pack up to go fly-fishing on a spring dawn. I won’t be admired for my chic wardrobe or be appointed to a high government office. I’ll never stand in line to buy tickets to the Ring Cycle. I love fortune cookies and refuse to try foie gras.

It makes me sad for two reasons. First, it makes me sad to realize my limitations. The world offers so much!—so much beauty, so much fun, and I am unable to appreciate most of it. But it also makes me sad because, in many ways, I wish I were different. One of my Secrets of Adulthood is “You can choose what you do; you can’t choose what you
like
to do.” I have a lot of notions about what I wish I liked to do, about the subjects and occupations that I wish interested me. But it doesn’t matter what I wish I were like. I am Gretchen.

When I posted on my blog about the “sadness of a happiness
project,” I was astounded by the response. I’d thought it unlikely that my sentiments would resonate with anyone else, but dozens of people commented.