The Secret to Happiness
As a mother and a life-long learner, I cannot help but to look for and to find connections between my experiences as an adult and the content of the 100’s of children’s books I read to my kids. Recently, my daughter and I started reading (and quickly became obsessed with) a series of books by Mary Pope Osborne called Magic Treehouse. Many of her books are written in groups of 4 in which the main characters, two school-aged siblings named Jack and Annie, are trying to accomplish a mission in 4 parts: become Master Librarians by finding 4 specific ancient books; trying to find 4 things or solve 4 riddles to free someone from a spell, etc. In the last group of four that we read, the kids were trying to learn the 4 secrets to happiness to save Merlin of Camelot.
As we read through the second book in this quadrilogy, I asked my daughter what she thought the secret to happiness was. She caught me off guard when she said that she thought there were three: being yourself, helping others, and letting other people help you when you need help. I was floored by her answers because she is merely a 6 year old kindergarten graduate! If someone asked me the same question, I might have come up with a similar answer but I would have needed a lot more time to think and I would have made lists, slept on it, crossed ideas out, and then probably still offered a “working draft.” She was so confident and quick with her answer and as soon as she said it, my mind could only respond to her eloquence with: “Wow. Yep.” At this point, it’s probably unnecessary to say that for over 6 years, she has been one of my favorite teachers.
My husband and I both have a heart for service and we have tried to incorporate service into our family life since Elaina was born. But, now that we have 3 kids, those opportunities are harder to come by, harder still to bring to fruition, and harder still to make them feel meaningful and impactful for all 5 of us. Add that throughout this year we have fiercely tried to protect and shelter the kids throughout the pandemic, it truly surprised me that her joy is still generally rooted in the same place as mine – specifically in being authentic and in serving others. I wondered if any of the Magic Treehouse “secrets to happiness” would reflect her own understanding of what it means to be happy.
As we read on, we learned with Jack and Annie that the next secret to happiness is “to have compassion for all living things” from the smallest to the greatest creatures of the sea. And finally, as we visited Antarctica with the characters, we learned that the final secret to happiness is to “take care of someone who needs you, and let someone take care of you.” Or in the words of Elaina, “help others and let other people help you when you need help.”
As we reached the conclusion of the book and we realized how aligned her answer was to Mary Pope Osborne’s, we were delighted! With time to consider my rising first grader’s secrets of happiness, I also realized that I should not have been so surprised initially. While we have not taken advantage of many kid-friendly volunteer opportunities this year, it is still true in our everyday lives that Elaina loves helping others and she loves working hard. She is fiercely independent but she also craves a lot of attention and snuggles. She knows how good it feels to be needed, to be useful and to figure things out on her own. She also knows how good it feels to have someone help you at that moment when you are most frustrated because shoes are really hard to tie!
In my role as a mother and in my role as an educator, it is my job to teach children about how good it feels and how important it is to help others. As the Service Learning Coordinator for Compass Community Schools, I support our K-12 students and teachers as they build relationships with community agencies and work to meet the needs of those agencies. In continuing to reflect on the Magic Treehouse definitions of happiness, I am reminded of Compass’s primary partnerships. For example, our 3-5th grade students partner with Clean Memphis and learn to “pay attention to small things in nature” and to help preserve it by learning about our environment and how to protect it by investigating and engaging with sustainable practices. Our K-2 students “take care of someone who needs them” by providing virtual, engaging programming to residents of nursing homes so that the residents feel thought of, supported and connected to the community even throughout this year of disconnection. Our middle school students “show compassion” to others who are food insecure by learning about the issue of hunger in the Mid-South in order to have greater empathy for those who are food insecure, collecting food items, sorting them at the Mid-South Food Bank and distributing them via mobile food pantries in the community. Our high school students are able to practice “curiosity” by following a curriculum sequence that allows them to learn more about their own strengths and the needs of Memphis. Through this process, they learn how their strengths can be used to make a positive impact in the community.
Because our students engage in Service LEARNING, they are truly taught to stay “curious” at every opportunity. They are taught to investigate their agencies, ask questions, reflect on their wonderings and feelings, and to continually build on their experiences so that each interaction and chance to serve is more meaningful and impactful than the last.
Imagine my surprise as I finished reading these books and realized that as our students matriculate through our schools, they are also learning the 4 secrets of happiness!
