Week 40 Review: Marching, Bouncing, Not Road Raging

Forty weeks! I’ve been working on this Happiness Project for as long as it took me to gestate my first child (my second child took about a week longer). It feels like there ought to be something big to mark this milestone, or at least some big realization I can share, something that has been growing and developing within that has now come to fruition and that I can present to you whole and complete.

Perhaps happiness has a longer gestation time than human babies.

I admit that I’ve not focused outward very much this week. This week has been consumed by job-related concerns and decisions and preparations, which is nice in the sense that we have things to be concerned about and decide and prepare for.

I’ve made a point of being extra accommodating while in traffic, letting people in front of me even when I’m in a hurry. I have a tendency to think of all other motorists as enemies, so looking out for ways to assist them in their driving pursuits helped me to have more empathy for them and see them as human beings rather than an internal component of a large, mobile, metal structure. That improves my mood rather dramatically, at least while driving.

My big project this week was walking in the March of Dimes March for Babies with my daughter. It was a pleasant 1.5-mile walk on a beautiful day, but I didn’t really feel connected to the cause as a result of the walk. I’d collected all of my donations online, and really our walking brought no additional benefit to the organization that I could tell. My daughter got a bagel and a chocolate milk and got to spend thirty minutes in a bouncy house. While we discussed the messages written on other walkers’ shirts and the mission of the March of Dimes, I’m not sure if she felt much of a sense of service from the experience, either.

It was a fun time, though.