The Decision to Be Happy  

An Excerpt from “When the Rocks Sing”

Marty was, in the most profound way, the light and love of my life for the 19 years we were together and beyond. She had the ability to accept her situation at face value, whatever that happened to be, and to make well-reasoned decisions as to how she would view and respond to events. I found her ability to weigh options and make choices about how she would deal with every aspect of her life to be remarkable and unusual.  But she would say, and I would agree, that we all have the capacity to decide how we respond to life’s events.  

The most fundamental choice Marty made over and over again during her life was to be happy. That is as profound as it is simple.  When we decided to spend our lives together, she said she had one request. I asked what that was, and she told me, “To be happy, you have to decide to be happy.” Until then, I hadn’t realized that it was such a straightforward decision. Throughout her life, and especially at difficult moments, she steadied herself with her decision to be happy, and it guided her actions going forward.  

Let me say briefly that she considered happiness to be less a matter of circumstance than of a way of living, a way of being in the world where impermanence underlies everything.

Because she had decided to be happy, not even cancer could take away her happiness at being alive. Because she had decided not to be afraid of death, she gave all of us around her the courage to face her death.  She loved with an open heart and taught me everything I know about how to live and how to die. Thank you, Marty.  

Marty passed from cancer on July 4, 2017. Later, in December of that year, I took a solo trip to Australia and New Zealand.  I referred to that trip as ‘my resiliency tour.’ The idea was to travel to a place I’d never been and where I knew no one, to put myself out there and get comfortable in the world again. Traveling alone was a way for me to build resiliency within myself. A part of the reason solo travel helped me so much is that traveling alone meant that I had to interact with the people I met along the way rather than primarily with a person I was traveling with. Travel gives me courage to be a human being in the world, wherever I may be on the planet. 

On the backside of the trip to Australia and New Zealand, I spent two weeks driving the coastline of New Zealand’s South Island. A week or so into that part of the trip, I landed in Te Anau in the southwest part of the island. Walking the shore of Lake Te Anau, watching a beautiful New Zealand sunrise take shape on New Year’s Day 2018, I once again made the decision to be happy.  

For me, it was a reconfirmation of how I choose to be in the world and is the most foundational decision I have made since Marty passed. It is a remarkably simple decision to make with massive consequences for everything you do going forward. Clever girl, Marty.

Let me add that making the decision to be happy in no way denies your loss or your grief. Instead, it gives your grief added purpose.