Is happiness in the church a facade?

[The Nehor]

26 minutes ago, mbh26 said:

If you're under the illusion of presently being happy, why would you go looking to find out whether or not it's just an illusion?  

Because to be human is to be curious and to want to know the truth of things.

[Teancum]

On 5/22/2025 at 11:44 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

A Happy Way to Live: For Muriel Christensen on her Centennial
By Kevin Christensen
In announcing plans for a celebration of Mom’s approaching centennial, my sister sent an email saying that “Mom made it clear that she would rather be known for something other than being OLD,” and has asked for memories.   I will gather a few memories here.   In gathering them, I want to put them together in light of comments Mom has occasionally made about the gospel as “A happy way to live.”  I’ve recently read a few articles on a Harvard Study of about eight hundred people over sixty to eighty years that focused on the decisions and actions people took that most contributed to their happiness.    So I will compare my memories of Mom with the six issues that the Harvard Study found as most important in contributing to happiness.  
First:  Avoid Smoking and Alcohol
Well, no surprise here.   That has been one of the perks of LDS culture, though, it should not be forgotten that it is not as though such choices were not always available.  Dad’s side of the family offered some cautionary tales on that.  And Grandpa Harry, we know, died of lung cancer, not because he smoked but, as I recall, due to second hand smoke on busses.  But the article also goes on to say “Maintaining a healthy weight increased lifespan and regular exercise boosted both longevity and happiness. Plain and simple: those things you know you're supposed to do to stay healthy? Do them.” 
When we were little, I remember Mom putting on the Jack LaLane work out show on TV, and joining him in his exercise routines.  And one of the reasons we had a push mower for the lawn rather than a power mower was so that we would get some exercise.  Mom got us outdoors to play stink base, or pomp, or Any I Over, or No Bears Are Out Tonight, and she got us out in the winter, dragging our sleds up the hill, and in summer, camping and hiking in the mountains and canyons, and on Memorial Days, hiking back from the Cleveland Cemetary.  In Kansas City Mom and Dad used to go to Malls to walk.  When they worked at the Church Office Building, they were known as the Roadrunners for taking the stairs, and walking round the neighborhoods.   We’d come to visit in the winter and find Mom in her 90s shoveling snow because it is good exercise.  And we should not forget the garden and our fruit trees as a fixture running through all of our memories as a constant presence and reminder of the cycles of life: weeding, and tilling, raking, planting, more weeding, and eventually the harvest, and canning.  And that effort contributed to well-planned meals, that included fruits and vegetables, and always balanced and sensible nutrition.  
Mom embraced the notion of living healthy, and continues to lead by example.  And I can remember from a very young age being impressed by the obvious differences in the life of neighbors where such things had not been embraced.   
Second:  Education
The years of education improved the health of everyone in the study, regardless of where they began, or where they went to school.  So Mom graduated from BYU, and got a teaching certificate.  And she encouraged us to do so as well.  So we all got degrees of one kind or another, however quickly or slowly we did.  Emphasis on education started early, with Dad reading books to us, and with Mom and Dad seeing to it that we had books in the house.  Thanks to them. we had encyclopedias, our own hardbound Wiki, our own little pre-internet in the family room where we could browse a wide range of topics, and read at random, letting individual curiosity guide us.  I remember the arrival of a box of records, containing not just music but programmatic commentary, giving us an in-house history of music and culture.  That was our YouTube.  Mom took us to libraries from an early age where she let us load up with books, and she took us on trips to zoos and Pioneer Village, and to Dinosaur Monument, and the Cleveland Lloyd Quarry.  And she saw to it that we did not watch too much TV by setting limits, especially during the school year, and more importantly, setting an example.  Mom and Dad both read, conspicuously, avidly, and joyfully.  And she told stories.  I have very early memories of Brian and I in our bed, and Mom coming in to try to settle us down with Three Little Pigs, and my favorite, Three Billy Goats Gruff.   I remember laughing uncontrollably as Mom acted out the Big Billy goat butting the Troll off the bridge, clutching her hair in my fingers, basking in the feeling of being loved, as she left the room, and turned out the lights on another day.
Third: A Happy Childhood
Mom grew up in Cleveland Utah, a tiny little town in Emery County, with a little bit of side walk by the two little stores, and the church, and the post office, and the school.  And then the lines of poplar trees, and the open irrigation ditches, and the wood and wire fences, and gardens, and stacks of coal in the yards, and the milk weed and wild asparagus.   Harry and Myrtle Mortensen had four girls, Arvalu, Muriel, Ona, Lael, and  the boy, Boyd.  Mom has such fond memories of growing up that I have heard her say wistfully that she wishes they could have all stayed at home and lived together forever.   She talks about going out for a church activity that amounted to gathering around a campfire and having a baked potato.  She grew in a little desert town during the Roaring Twenties, missing the roar, and spent her teenage years during the depression, saying, “We didn’t know we were poor.”  One of my favorite Mom stories comes later, when grandson Rob and Mauvia’s daughter, Jamaica was in about third or fourth grade, and they had been asked to come and do a report for her class on what it was like to grow up during the depression.  So Mom and Dad prepared, and when they got there, found that all the walls dividing the different classes had been moved aside, and their presentation was for all the kids, not just one class.  Undaunted, Mom tells us that she brought out a shoe box and asked the kids if they knew what that was.  
“A shoe box?”
“No,” says Mom, “This was my doll house.”  And she showed how she cut out pictures from catalogues to make her dolls.  And she showed them how she did it, demonstrating with people she had cut out for that occasion.  And Dad showed how he used a spool and nail and an elastic band to make a racing toy.  And they were off telling about the ways they made their own fun.  She says that the teachers probably expected to hear all sorts of deprivation stories of hard times and suffering.  But by the end, Mom finished by saying, “So, do you think we had fun during the Depression?”  And all the kids shouted in enthusiastic unison, “YES!”  
The Aging Well Study directly says that “for both the Inner City men and the Harvard men the best predictor of a high income was not their parents' social class but whether their mother had made them feel loved.” 
The Study also says that:
So if your childhood was less than perfect and your adolescence felt like a bad reality show, does this mean you're doomed? 
No. What went right in childhood was much more predictive than what went wrong.
And finally, for those who had a lot go wrong:
And there's even more reason for hope. Sometimes love and support come late — but that can be enough to heal old wounds. 
When people found a loving spouse or trusted friends in adulthood, the damage of a tough childhood could be undone.
Mom has also offered love and support to many that has helped undo the damage in a rough childhood. All of us have had our difficulties, either imposed on us, or as a consequence of poor decisions we have made on our own at times.  But Mom has always been a steady source of love and support.  I am told that when I was very young, I had asthma, and there were nights when Mom stayed up with me all night to make sure I would make it through.  That is tough on a parent, but they endured, and better days came. 
On one occasion when Merilee needed to get a shot, Mom and Dad decided to smooth the way by saying they were going to get ice cream.  Well, Merilee is still mad about that and so parents have to learn from their mistakes.  
The Aging Well Study says:
It is not the bad things that happen to us that doom us; it is the good people who happen to us at any age that facilitate enjoyable old age.
For example, once when Mom played the flute in the band in her little high school, about to settle into her chair, a thoughtless boy pulled the chair out from under her, so she sat down hard on her tailbone.  It hurt a lot.  Well, she later married the culprit.  It’s important that she told him that he had hurt her and that he never did it again.  That too is part of living in a happy way.  Being able to forgive, and accept forgiveness.
Their love story has remarkable aspects.  Dad had gone into the army in 1941, and was due to get out in 1942, which turned out not to be a good year to get out, thanks to the U.S. entry in to the war.  There were Depression Era rules that if a single woman got married, she could not have a job.  And a soldier had to get permission to get married.  And there was the looming prospect of war itself.  But as Mom told us, Grandma approached her and said that she had a strong impression that she should marry Wally.  So, Mom considered the situation, and then proposed, arrangements were made, and they met in Ogden for long enough to marry before Dad went back to his duties, and Mom went back home alone.  Once married, Dad, who at that time was company clerk, decided that he ought to become an officer to better support his family.  And that led to a series of serendipitous events that led to Dad going to Europe in a Tank Destroyer Battalion, rather than to the Philippines in an Infantry division that became part in the Bataan Death March. He survived his time in North Africa, and the war in Europe, and returned to his wife to begin a family.  She’d write to Dad, and say, I hope you aren’t in this action, and he’d write back, “That’s just where I was.”  But he survived.  In late life, Mom has reconsidered the importance of following that inspiration.  A passage in the D&C says, “Let no man count them as small things; for there is much in futurity… which depends on these things.”  There is a vast difference in results between acting on impulse, not considering the consequences beyond the moment, and acting on inspiration.
Fourth: Relationships are Everything
The Aging Well Study directly states:
Successful aging requires continuing to learn new things and continuing to take people in ... a widening social radius at age 50 was just as important to successful psychosocial aging as emotional maturity.
One of Mom’s most visible and extraordinary talents is that she knows what is going on in everyone’s life.  She knows about the lives and circumstances of all of her children, their spouses, their children, and their children’s children.  One of the effects of that ongoing love and interest on her part, is that so many take a reciprocal interest in Mom.  My daughter Karina named her second daughter Muriel, because, as she says, “Grandma is amazing!”
The Aging Well Study says:
What's one of the biggest mistakes we make when it comes to relationships? Not working hard enough to create new ones when the old ones fade away.
Mom has known losses.  I remember after Grandma Mortensen’s funeral driving past the home that was setting for her childhood, and Mom commenting that with Grandma’s absence it looked “like a house with a broken heart.”  And she has lived past many more losses since then, outliving her brother, several sisters and just a few years ago, her husband.  But she characteristically learns new things, and embraces changes as she guards her traditions, and nurtures new relationships. 
After Grandma Mortenson died, Mom reports being in the Temple.  At this time, daughter Merilee had grown and was pregnant again, after having six boys.  Mom reports that she very clearly heard Grandma say, “It’s a girl!” as though the secret was too good to keep to herself.  Our losses aren’t the end of our joys.
One of my favorite memories with Mom is when Karina brought her little namesake to see her.  When we’d say, “Muriel, do a somersault,” and the little darling did so, Mom laughed and laughed as though she didn’t have an almost uncountable hoard of other grandchildren, and great grandchildren, seen over decades of life, celebrating that moment for itself and the joy and newness of it.
Fifth: Coping Skills
The Aging Well Study contrasts good and bad coping skills:
Blaming others, being passive-aggressive, living in denial, acting out and retreating into fantasy were all maladaptive coping mechanisms associated with poor outcomes. These behaviors soothed bad feelings in the short term and wreaked havoc in the long term by ruining relationships and producing lousy life decisions.
However presidential that behavior sounds, it does not describe Mom.  How about the good coping skills? The Aging Well Study says the good skills can be described as Virtues.
These four mature coping strategies are not only associated with maturity, but they can be reframed as 
Altruism:  doing as one would be done by; 
Sublimation: artistic creation to resolve conflict and spinning straw into gold;
Suppression: a stiff upper lip, patience, seeing the bright side;
Humor: and the ability not to take oneself too seriously.
Mom has always demonstrated the Golden Rule.   I can think of one incident when I was trying her patience with a series of poor grades in seventh grade English, when she finally lost her temper with me.  I later became an English Major, and have been a professional writer since 1984, and have published dozens of essays.  So I eventually got that sorted out.  But Mom, within an hour or so of losing her temper, came and apologized to me, and never did it again, which, considering me, is quite remarkable.  She has shown characteristic patience in dealing with the sorts of challenges that life offers, and taken joy in life’s simple pleasures.  She talks about how much she enjoyed her first washing machine, “looking at the suds.” 
It was Mom who taught us to bake our first cakes and batches of rollout cookies.  Even before that, I remember being home with Mom and her coming up with notions of using flour and water and salt and food coloring for us to make little sculptures of our idea of some animal.  That is her preventing conflicts and getting us involved in creation.
As for seeing the bright side, a few years ago, while visiting Mom and Dad, and hearing Dad talk about how as a child he has suffered burns and scarring on his neck and part of his face from a celluloid collar being ignited by a tossed match, and talking about how that scarring was a source of shame to him for a long time.  (The complete healing took him into adulthood.)  Shauna asked Mom how she felt about Dad’s facial scars.  “I fell in love with the other side,” she said, without a pause.   After 80 years together, Mom and Dad teased and laughed together. 
Sixth: Generativity- that is, Community Building
The Aging Well Study says:
Generativity can mean serving as a consultant, guide, mentor, or coach to young adults in the larger society. Research reveals that between age 30 and 45 our need for achievement declines and our need for community and affiliation increases.
Aside from building her own family and maintaining connections to her siblings, and dad’s siblings, Mom famously served as a guide patrol teacher in the primary for eight years.   Dealing with ongoing squads of squabbling squirrely baby boomer boys for that long is remarkable.  After Blake started going to school, Mom went back to teaching, first in Utah, and then in Kansas.  And after Dad retired, they served a mission working with an Asian Branch in the Washington DC area, hearing stories of boat people, who had escaped the wars and violence in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  She used her skills as a teacher to help them, even bucking the authority of a local leader to do so.  After their mission, and into their retirement, she and Dad performed a series of service mission in the Church Office building, doing genealogy work.  And they traveled to Iceland and Norway, and Egypt and New Zealand, as well as Goblin Valley and the Grand Canyon.  They attended the Hale Theater for years, watching a wide range of plays.  She does her visiting teaching and ministering, and reads the newspaper, and books, and scriptures.   She cooks and cleans, and visits, and writes emails to family, and uses computers to track all of the birthday cards she wants to send to all her descendants, involved in family, making it both a work, and a glory.
Ultimately, what matters most is not how long or short we live, or what happens to us, but what we become.  And Mom has become a wonderful example of a happy way to live.

I wrote this five years ago for my Mom's Centennial.  She died last year at 105.  Til the end embodying a happy way to live.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

This was really a great read and full of wonderful principles to build a healthy happy life on. Thank you for sharing it.

[Stargazer]

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