College

The Pro-cess Is The Thing

Posted by Jean

Last night I saw Little Shop Of Horrors for the third time this week.  The first two were at my son’s high school.  He was in the chorus and had a small part in an ensemble of 50.  The third was at Columbia University where my fiance’s daughter directed a cast of 8.   On my night off in between, I went to a meeting with scores of other parents at my daughter’s middle school where she is auditioning for a production of Annie.  And there, the director put the entire week into perspective.

The play is not the thing, he said, daring to disagree with Hamlet. It is not about the two or three nights in front of an audience for applause.  It is about, as he put it in his enviable British accent,  “the pro-cess” of a group of kids becoming a company of actors who cooperate to build a show.  It is about the time spent tableu-ing scenes, discussing their meaning, researching the time period, and of course learning songs and lines and steps.   That is why, he said, the few kids who drop out after getting smaller parts than they (or their parents) felt they deserved inevitably come back and see the show and wish they’d stuck with it.  Those kids see that they missed a journey.  It’s the journey — the pro-cess — that makes them happier than even the end result.

It’s very much what the excellent Judith Warner blogged about in today’s Domestic Disturbances column for The New York Times website.

For me, I realized in that moment, happiness is inextricably bound up in striving. In straining for achievement, of whatever kind. In having a challenge and making it to the other side.

It doesn’t much matter what the challenge or object of achievement is. If none is obvious, one always presents itself.

…. Thursday was the book. Friday was the chicken. Saturday morning dawned with the thought that it was perhaps a good time to lose 10 pounds. On Sunday, I was plagued by the certainty that I’d never get that done, and on Monday I met with my editor and learned that I had to rewrite the book’s first 149 pages. And I was saved. Lifted out of darkness, I was on the road to happiness once again.

So what does all of this have to do with money?  I’m getting there.

If you’ve been reading my posts on my new book The Difference you know happiness — optimism — are proven to be linked to wealth and success.  You don’t want to be blissed out, but rating an 8 out of 10 on a happiness scale (where 1 is misery and 10 elation) serves you well in finance, health and life overall.  And one of the things that can help you get happier is involving yourself in the process of setting goals — big and small — for your life and then making progress toward them.  You don’t have to reach the end of the line to get the happiness charge, just taking steps toward those lines whereever they happen to be does the trick.

Even when the goals are financial.  Even in this environment.  After about 3 months of actively NOT looking at the balances in my kids 529 accounts, I took a deep breath yesterday and took a peek.   Did I have losses?  Sure, these days not having some would have been near miraculous.  But they weren’t as bad as I anticipated, and the fact that I’ve continued to contribute during these down months — buying more shares at cheaper prices — insured that my balances were higher than the last time I checked.  I felt like I was making progress toward the pro-cess of paying for college.

Did that make me happy?  You bet it did.