Smash and grab your happiness

I have a friend who is spookily good at finding four-leaf clovers.

I used to think of it as a sort of magic power – I don’t know … maybe her great-granny shagged a leprechaun or something. But the trick, she once explained to me, is a lot simpler and less soaked in Guinness.

You look for them.

This is the kind of thing that normally annoys the living shit out of me – the kind of homespun, aphoristic Gary Player “the more you practise, the luckier you get” horseshit that emotionally terrorised my childhood.

But the problem is: she’s absolutely right. If you make a habit of looking for four-leaf clovers, chances are you’ll find them. And then you’ll get better at finding them. And then you’ll find more.

The world record for finding four-leaf clovers was, at one point, held by a guy who was literally in prison. He looked for them during his outside breaks on a single patch of grass in the prison yard. He had nothing else to do, so he got Guinness World Record-level good at scouring for four-leaf clovers.

The optimist’s dilemma

Right now, there’s a similar and profound challenge facing people who self-describe as optimists – like the prison guy, confined to a single patch of grass from which to try and find your treasure, except at the moment, that patch just seems to be turning up cigarette butts and clumsily buried poo.

It really doesn’t feel like a particularly good time to have a sunny outlook on things. And yet, I somehow still identify as a generally optimistic person. But it’s almost something I’m scared to say out loud – because freely admitting that kind of thing feels like you’re inviting cynics and sceptics (who inevitably think what you’re doing is the worst form of naivety) to take a free shot. But I’ve always felt that optimism isn’t as passive as people assume it is. To me, it’s somehow … tactical?

It’s not wilful ignorance, or failing to understand how bad things really are (cue the beard-stroking superiority of everyone who thinks watching a hysterical YouTube video designed to farm conspiracy clicks counts as reading the news). But optimism – real optimism – isn’t hippyish reality denial.

It’s strategic. Especially right now, where it’s about as easy as falling down to only focus on all the colourful varieties of the apocalypse we’re getting served on the daily like hot breakfast.

What could go right?

To me, it’s simple: giving equal weight to what could go right doesn’t just feel more useful – it actually gives you a kind of real-world jumpstart.

Maybe that’s hubris? But also, I think South Africans are particularly good at this. We have to be, because at this point it’s been welded into our DNA, that sort of necessary, muscular optimism that’s the reason your rof uncle says, “Ja, just another shit day in Africa” every time he kicks back under the lapa with a brandy and coke. Sure, things are challenging. But they’re also good, and it’s not the worst thing to call it out when it’s in front of you.

And the funny thing is that the doom and gloomers are generally not quite as right as they want you to think they are. In most public and private conversations, it was an absolute given that our government was going to collapse and that the VAT increase was going to spiral us straight into anarchy and chaos.

But it didn’t.

But at the time, it really wasn’t easy to suggest that things weren’t maybe as bad or inevitable as everyone was saying they were.

The case for small pride

I’ve found that one of the biggest threats to a sense of optimism is shame. Shame about hope. Shame about believing in positive outcomes. Cynics always seem somehow cooler, and it’s easier to point to bad things that have happened rather than to good things that might.

But pride is an underrated counter to that – and not just because it’s the opposite.

I’m talking about small pride. The kind that bolsters your self-worth in small, but important and easy-to-achieve ways.

There was a podcast I really enjoyed for a time called Tiny Victories – the entire premise of which was celebrating small achievements with the same fervour and delight we normally reserve for big ones. Literally making your bed, changing the light bulb in your bathroom, or going for a run in the rain even though you didn’t want to. These are things worthy of a kind of bolstering pride and I think there’s such a valuable lesson there. It can quickly become the engine room of finding nuggets of regular joy or positivity, even while it feels like you’re constantly being wrong-footed by a world that seemingly decided to go insane on purpose.

Despite everything, you changed the lightbulb. And that counts for something.

Finding small things to be proud of – or even deliberately pursuing small things to attach that sense of pride to – is something I lean on heavily these days. And it’s funny how quickly habit-forming it can be.

Unlikely lessons

As a result, I’ve developed a phrase I repeat to myself as a kind of one-chapter playbook for being alive amid all the bombastic noise of Right Now:

You have to smash and grab your happiness.

(Suck it Gary Player. Two can play at this game.)

The idea being: you’ve got to go after your own little nuggets of joy with the same forceful opportunism South Africans know all too well. Don’t let flimsy barriers (which, let’s face it, are usually ones we’re inventing) get in the way of experiencing something that will make you happy.

Optimism isn’t about believing everything will be okay. It’s about believing that you’ll find a way to be okay anyway.

You are what you notice

So, among an unceasing news cycle designed to make you angry or afraid of just about everything, defiantly choosing your own small moments to spend time with a friend or eat jellytots or whatever almost becomes an act of rebellion.

We are all the sum total of the things we pay attention to.

I stole that line from Ezra Klein, who is very smart and better at aphorisms than golfers. And the reason I like it so much is that it highlights your own role in shaping your own outlook-information feedback loop.

What you choose to pay attention to shapes the tone you pass on to the people who pay attention to you – whether it’s the articles you read, the jokes you make, the podcasts you queue, or the joy you choose to smash and grab.

And yes. Also four-leaf clovers.

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