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you want to be enthusiastic, you can get there by acting
as if you were already enthusiastic. Sometimes it takes
a minute. Sometimes it skips a beat. But it always works
if you stay with it, no matter how ridiculous you feel
doing it.
Feel ridiculous. If you want to be happy, find the hap-
piest song you know and sing it. It works. Not always in
the first few moments, but if you keep at it, it works.
Just fake it until you make it. Soon your happy singing
will show you how much control you do have over your
own emotions.
Zen monks do a “laughing meditation” in which they
all gather in a circle and get ready to laugh. At the stroke
of a certain hour the teacher hits a gong, and all the
monks begin to laugh. They have to laugh, whether or
not they feel like it. But after a few moments the laugh-
ter becomes contagious. Soon all the monks are laugh-
ing genuinely and heartily.
Children do this, too. They start giggling for no rea-
son (often at the dinner table or some other forbidden
setting and the giggling itself makes them laugh). The
truth is this: Laughter itself can make you laugh. The
secret of happiness is hidden inside that last sentence.
But adults aren’t always comfortable with this.
Adults want kids to have reasons for laughing. As I used
to drive my children long distances to visit relatives,
I’d get most irritated when they began laughing and gig-
gling in the back seat without reason. I developed a back-
stroke swing to curb the laughter. “Why are you laugh-
ing?” I would shout. “You have no reason to be laugh-
ing! This is a dangerous highway and I’m trying to drive
here!”
But adults, like me, might want to get back that ap-
preciation for joyful spontaneity. We might want to con-
front the question, “What is the one thing that most