Five Things Making Me Happy (Updates from England / Tennis vs. pickleball)

In partnership with Wilderness England, Elizabeth and I are on a hiking trip through England’s Northumberland and the Lake District. We’re having a terrific time—hiking, exploring, visiting museums and sites. And still no blisters! I’ve been using “anti-blister balm,” which I’d never tried before, and perhaps that’s been the secret.

Among other things, I’ve satisfied a lifelong desire. I’ve re-read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s brilliant children’s novel The Secret Garden about thirty times. In that novel, Dickon tells Mary about the beauties of the moors, and I’ve always wanted to see a moor for myself. Now I have—lovely. (The Northumberland moor I saw might not look exactly like the Yorkshire moor around Misselthwaite Manor, but close enough for me.) I’ve also learned something about myself: I love a stone wall covered with moss with flowers and grasses growing from it.

Onward,

5 Things Making Me Happy

Because I love proverbs, aphorisms, koans, and all kinds of teaching stories, everywhere I go, I ask people if they know any “proverbs of the professions.” I learned a good one from a civil engineer who is a fellow hiker on our trip. She told me, “As civil engineers, we say, ‘We learn more from our mistakes than our successes.’” I want to remind myself of this idea in the future, when I make a mistake.

Ever since I wrote my book Outer Order, Inner Calm, I’ve been particularly interested to see how people use their spaces and possessions to project their identities into their environments. It’s very satisfying when the place we live reminds our visitors—and ourselves—of what we value. A thoughtful reader sent me a great article, “Cowboy hats and koi fish photos? There’s a reason,” that shows how some interior designers decorate their apartments to remind them of their hometowns. (Plus I love a koi fish reference.)

One reason I wanted to write my book Life in Five Senses was that I realized that I spent so much time locked in my head, so I was enchanted by reading a description of an installation by artist Scott Polach at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego. In his 2015 Applause Encouraged #111415, on a cliff overlooking the ocean, at forty-five minutes before sunset, eight participants were ushered to a row of foldout seats cordoned off with a red ribbon. Posted signs reminded them not to take photos. The attendees watched the sun set, then applauded. What a beautiful reminder to notice the extraordinary beauty of an ordinary sunset. Here’s a photo of a sunset I recently applauded, myself. Consider trying it for yourself today.

My daughter Eleanor used to have a very bad sense of direction; she once got disoriented at 84th Street and Park Avenue, which, if you know the grid of Manhattan, you’ll realize is a pretty hard place to get lost. Over the years, she has worked hard to develop better navigational skills—and also good map-reading. So I took a personal interest in the fascinating article, “Why do some people always seem to get lost?“ about why people differ in their ability to make their way from place to place. I’d never before thought about the difference between “route-following” (ability to navigate by using landmarks) and “survey knowledge” (ability to build and consult a mental map of a place). Turns out route-following is the easier task.

I have no eye-hand coordination, and I don’t like games, so I’ve never tried pickleball. For some reason, however, I enjoy reading about the kerfuffles that sometimes arise between tennis players and pickleball players; unrelatedly, I also love learning terms that help me understand the world better (e.g., “acting in reliance,” “constructive eviction,” “hedonic forecasting”). In the article, “The economics of the tennis v pickleball contest,” in a mash-up of these two interests, I read the economists’ argument that instead of being “substitute goods” (where demand for one reduces the demand for the other), as is often assumed, the two sports may be “complementary goods” (where rising demand for one boosts demand for the other). Pickleball is easier to learn, so it may stimulate interest in racket sports; it’s easier to play, so it may be picked up by tennis players when they find tennis too demanding. Apparently, several decades ago, something similar played out with skiing and snowboarding.

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This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin

PODCAST EPISODE: 491

We share listeners’ suggestions and resources for identifying our personal styles. We also discuss an easy hack for clearing out shelf space in a responsible way, and we talk to entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk about his imaginative new picture book.

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