Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

Out of over 200 titles, there are three Beatles songs that I call my favorite.  I can’t discern amongst them a ‘first favorite, second favorite, and third favorite’… I just know that these are three incredible pieces of music.  One of these favorites is Let it Be from my first post.  Another is Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

This song is one of Paul McCartney’s magnificent creations.  Its bouncy, reggae feel and carefree lyrics make it RIDICULOUSLY HAPPY.  It’s a story of two people, Desmond and Molly, who fall in love, get married, go through all of the motions, and are absolutely blissful the entire time even though they live a very average existence.  In between the verses telling the story of the couple’s life, the chorus sings, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Life goes on.”

I picked Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da for this week because of this crazy thing that happened – nothing happened at all.  Realizing this, I started to wonder… When I graduated from high school, I was told that the next four years would be the best of my life.  I came to Penn State and was welcomed along with the rest of the freshman class with the famous “It’s Your Time” videos.  Supposedly, my life is at its prime right now.  If that’s the case, then why don’t I have anything noteworthy to say? – no funny stories to tell, no interesting musings.  Don’t get me wrong… I LOVE college.  But sometimes I can’t help but wonder, “Is this really it?  Is this all the more exciting my life is going to get?”

Wracking my brain as to how to make my life more, well, amazing, I thought about the fact that one can only do so many extra-ordinary things over the course of a lifetime.  We’ve all got our share of spectacular memories, but for the most part, our lives are spent in routine.  Here at college, I go to class, I eat meals, I study and write papers and read textbooks.  I go out with friends and go to club meetings, and for the next four years, this is pretty much what my life is going to be like.  I came to realize that therefore, the way to truly make the most of life must be to find more happiness in my average, day-to-day activities. I’m not saying that I’m depressed or even that I’m sad… I’m not!  But maybe if I learned to be a little bit happier every day, I would be more satisfied with life and would therefore have more to write about.

Be happier…. That’s pretty abstract.  After pondering the origin of happiness for awhile (just call me Socrates,) I realized that it’s really tough to put a finger on how exactly to gain happiness.  I also realized that over the course of my 18 years, my level of happiness has never really changed much even though I’ve had both sad and happy events occur in my life.  Basically, my happiness has only ever depended on the circumstances in my life temporarily before stabilizing out again.  What, then, causes a person to be happy?

I couldn’t sleep late one night, so I started searching online for the answer to that age-old question.  I stumbled upon a fascinating blog called “The Happiness Project,” by Gretchen Rubin, an author who spent one year trying to make her life happier.  Like me, she wasn’t looking to cure some bout of sadness, she simply believed that genuinely happy people are, “more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier and healthier.”  Who wouldn’t want that?! Anyway, Gretchen Rubin’s take is that you feel happy when you act happy, unlike contrary belief that you act happy because you feel happy.  As a psychology major, I’ve heard this idea before.  In fact, studies show that general mood can improve just by smiling.  It’s all about the self-perception theory, which explains that we infer our emotions from the way we act in certain situations.

Gretchen’s doctrine really makes sense to me.  Happiness is all about the way you think and act, about the lens through which you see the world.  Sometimes it rains and you fail an exam and your dog dies and your boyfriend cheats on you and the cookies in the dining hall at West Commons are cold, but you know what? “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.”  When my life falls into a routine, I want to remember to soak up every minute I spend at Penn State.  “Life goes on,” even when we aren’t paying attention, and if we don’t make it a point to be happy every day just like “Desmond and Molly,” it will be gone before we know it.

“And if you want some fun, take ob-la-di-bla-da.”

http://www.happiness-project.com/  ...Here is the link to Gretchen Rubin's blog.  I definitely recommend it!