This week, we in the United States held our presidential election. As I watched the election returns roll in, words from “America the Beautiful” kept running through my mind. We sang this hymn at the memorial service for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, less than a year ago. I clerked for Justice O’Connor, and I was told that she herself chose this hymn for her service. Today, too, the middle verse keeps echoing through my mind:
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America, America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.
Thinking of those words makes me tear up. It’s one of the great dreams of my beloved United States…America, America! God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law. I’m asking myself: What can I do, in my own life, to live up to the great ideals of my country?
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
I love to walk through new neighborhoods, and I’m always delighted when I come across a Little Free Library—small boxes on posts filled with books that people are free to take. Each dollhouse-sized structure looks different and is filled with different books—a reflection of its neighborhood and its maker. The Little Free Library movement was started by Todd Bol in Hudson, Wisconsin, in 2009; now there are more than 175,000 Little Free Libraries in 121 countries. Every time I find one, it reminds me of the generosity of strangers, of the kindness of people, of the shared love of reading, and how our communities can be places where our values become visible.
The other day, I saw a spider web lit up by the sunlight, and I was struck again by how easy it is to overlook the beauty of the world.
A different way to consider the majesty of nature and to gain perspective is to watch the 1977 “Powers of Ten” film, a nine-minute video illustrating the relative size of things in the universe.
Occasionally, something I read leads me to the discovery of something completely different. I recently finished the brilliant novel Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, and it led me to listen to Gregorio Allegri’s haunting “Miserere,” a work for nine voices written around 1638.
I remind myself: I admire nature, and I am also nature. I resent traffic, and I am also traffic.
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This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin
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