Don’t Mess with Happy
“Don’t mess with happy.” That’s what Jay Wright said. He’s the immaculately dressed ball coach who strolls the sideline at the small parochial basketball powerhouse of Villanova. That’s been his response to the mating call of the biggest of the big, and I suppose to the pressures that accompany uber success as well. Don’t mess with happy. I love it. I keep it on a hot pink Post-it note on the mirror in my study. It’s so insanely simple, I’m terrified I might forget.
“Don’t mess with happy.” That’s been his response to the mating call of the biggest of the big, and I suppose to the pressures that accompany uber success as well. .
Kurt Vonnegut says people rarely notice when they’re happy. Perhaps that’s because we have our eyes peeled for something that is grand. We think happy comes with fireworks and champagne bubbles and the crescendo of an orchestra dressed in black and tux and tails. That’s why we often miss it when it gathers at our feet. But bagpipes and loud speakers are saved for thinner things. Happy usually just shows up, unannounced, while we’re looking elsewhere, so stubbornly ordinary that we often mistake it for not good enough.
On the night before my wedding, I remember the florist arranging the candles at the front of the church. We had finished rehearsing and were headed to dinner in the church’s mess hall when my soon to be mother-in-law grabbed me to take a look at the cascading candelabras. They looked incredible. But “how about this?” we said. The possibilities were just so mesmerizing. And so the florist tinkered. And for all the twisting and sliding and nudging she tried from that point forward, those candles never got back to the incredible that they originally were. It didn’t change our ceremony one bit, and no one but me ever knew. But every time I see a picture from that day, I remember how foolish it was to jack with a really good thing.
For some reason, however, that seems to be the way we are wound. We imperfect, often inane, human beings just cannot help thinking about the greener grass. Even if it’s been photoshopped and we know it. More, more, better, better, pinch, poke, tinker, touch.
We do it with flower arrangements, hair dos, jobs, houses, sentences, food presentations, and almost anything that involves paint. If it’s good, then how good might better be? We can’t get out of our own way.
When I was a little girl, I used to sneak off down the hill beside our house to The Sand Rock. In my little eyes it was a destination, like a place grown-ups saved coupons for. It felt so big and full of adventure.
It was a rock.
A slightly different rock than the ones littering the side of the road, but it was a rock. The soft stone surface was a large canvas with various layers and tiers, and what I did for hours on end was carve on it. I’d write words and draw pictures and live a million lives on the muted pink sand rock just beyond the tall weeds that bordered our yard.
It was my happy place.
I went there to be. I had one under the weeping willow, too. And I have one in my backyard now, between the Alaskan weeping cedar and the trailing pink hydrangeas. It’s just a spot. With a rock juxtaposed just so (although this one isn’t pink and soft like sand). And though it is the place that most reminds me of the blessings of my world, I find myself tempted, almost daily, to stab something pretty in the bald spot where one of the hydrangeas has failed yet to trail. It’s sometimes so hard to balance what is with what could be.
This last year and a half of sloshing has given us ample time to consider all of our options. And despite the atrocities of late, most of us have a lot of happy. The temptation being, once we recognize it and allow ourselves to roll around in its wonderfulness, we cannot resist putting our hands all over it. Like every beautiful thing behind every protective glass ever: the urge to touch is just so strong. Stand and admire—the protocol of art museums across the world—is a really hard thing to do.
October was always my favorite time of year in the basketball calendar. Everybody was undefeated and players weren’t caught up yet in who may or may not play. October was for the purists, the time when teachers taught and learners learned and team offenses grew from the seeds of individual skill sets that players had honed on their own time. It was the magic month when you got a glimpse of who you might be able to become, together, as a team. And there would always be a day—or two or three…or maybe even a week—where the offense purred like a kitten. Poetry in motion, with the ball ping ponging, simply, and players moving off of one another like they shared the secret language of twins. It was breathtaking to witness. The team knew just enough about the how and the why and the when and the where to feel it, and they rode it like the wind.
And then I’d teach more.
I am a striver in my bones, with a belt full of tools that I sometimes even sleep in so that I can tinker at a moment’s notice, if need be. If better is possible, good is not enough! Right? I think I even had that on the wall in our locker room at one time. (File that in back in paragraph 5 under, “we can’t get out of our own way”).
As coaches, however, we know what’s going to be needed, if not shortly, certainly in the months that are coming, somewhere down the road. And we know that over time we’ll have to be able to counter things and attack various defenses and that there is still so much the players need to know. But the good stuff sometimes makes us trigger happy. We can’t wait to see what else our offense might be able to do. So we cram in more when we might be better served to allow the good to root in and get used to itself. At our core we’re wiggly creatures, better at chasing and catching than holding any day. But good stuff cries for stillness. We might need the bright pink Post-it to help us pause to see.
October was for the purists, the time when teachers taught and learners learned and team offenses grew from the seeds of individual skill sets that players had honed on their own time. It was the magic month when you got a glimpse of who you might be able to become, together as a team..
Don’t mess with happy. Jay Wright is onto something.
Most really good things have a Humpty Dumpty wall. A place where it’s best to perch, cross our ankles, and take it all in. And that doesn’t mean we settle. It just means we learn to look for happy and when we see it, be restrained enough to simply let it be.
Sherri Coale
P.S. “Go ahead, be mad. I dare you ….”