* Ecstatic moments
* Happy days
* A good life
Ecstatic moments are the peak experiences in life, the ones that send you right off the top of your own personal Richter Scale. According to Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of The Happiness Myth, traditionally individuals and cultures have enjoyed four kinds of ecstasy:
* Drug induced
* Sexual
* Bacchanalian
* Spiritual
You don't have to be a smack freak to enjoy the drug induced kind. That first jolt of caffeine from your morning coffee is a mini-moment of drug induced ecstasy. Alcohol, chocolate, tobacco, tofu (OK, maybe not tofu) all contain euphoria inducing chemicals.
If you've gotten this far in life and you don't know what sexual ecstasy is, take a field trip to The Kinsey Institute, or call Dr. Ruth.
Bacchanalian ecstasy is better known by the term "party!" Group celebrations, holidays, rites of passage, all contain, if done right, the bacchanalian element of euphoria.
And finally, spiritual ecstasy, those all-encompassing, intuitive moments of harmony, clarity, and bliss. Hard to describe because they blur the personal-universal dichotomy, moments of spiritual ecstasy are "you'll know it when you feel it" type experiences that are so powerful as to leave you nearly speechless.
All four types of ecstasy are important, though your happiness depends on finding your own individual mix, and being ready, willing and able to remix the elements as your priorities change and your life circumstances warrant.
But wait -- we've still got happy days and the good life to discuss! Happy days are just as they sound -- days in which you do that which you really enjoy with people you really love. Happy days are spent in all kinds of ways -- lazy summer days with the kids or grandkids, or doing work you love, or traveling to either new ports or down well-worn paths, or physical activity like gardening or sports. Whatever makes your heart sing and your eyes shine can be an integral component of a happy day.
One secret of happy days is being able to both plan & flow. Choosing to do things you love is important. Getting too rigid about how the day has to go, though, is a real buzz kill. Many a happy day takes unexpected twists and turns, and it's the very elements of serendipity and surprise that make it so wonderful.
And now, to the good life. The good life is the overall tenor of your time here on this planet. It's when you look back from the rocking chair and assess how it all went. Imagine yourself in that position -- how many woulda, coulda, shouldas will you have? Obviously, part of having a good life is to make it chocked full of ecstatic moments and happy days. But it's more than that. The good life is your own personal evaluation of how you've chosen to spend your time and how satisfied you are with those ongoing choices.
As with damn near everything in life, the secret is in the balance. Spend too much time chasing ecstasy and you may end up on a roller coaster ride that leads far, far away from the good life. Invest too much time and energy into planning the perfect life, and you may experience all the ecstasy of a maintenance engineer grinding out 40 hours a week for 40 years at a waste water treatment plant in Siberia. Ho-hum... And, if you get too controlling and try to make everyday a happy day, you'll end up with a disastrous, National Lampoon Vacation type of life.
Yeah, even happiness takes some work, or at least foresight, flexibility and attention. And, it's never one size fits all. Your mix of moments, days and overall life will be different than mine, different than your best friend or spouse's even, uniquely, quirkily your own. Embrace it. Play with it. One thing we need to be careful about with all this happiness research is that we don't get too damn serious about happiness!
Ecstatic moments, happy days, a good life -- may you enjoy them all!
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