Learning Happiness
Written by Katerina Jukub
After six fast-paced, exciting, and chaotic years of getting married, landing my first teaching job, welcoming two babies, completing my graduate degree, moving to a new town, and beginning a new job, a quietness settled over my life. As I looked around, I realized I had everything I once believed would fill my heart and bring me happiness: a beautiful family, a supportive community, and a job I loved.
But it was in this stillness that a looming fear grew within my heart: maybe I wasn’t actually happy. What I thought would bring happiness wasn’t enough. I had never doubted happiness was something I could achieve, so I didn’t know what to do with the fact that I felt stuck and confused. Looking back, I can see that it was this restlessness that would teach me a new way of recognizing happiness in my life.
So when I first read the title of Niall Williams’ 2019 novel, This Is Happiness, something stirred in my heart. Of course, I didn’t expect a how-to on achieving happiness, but I felt desperate that someone might understand my sense of emptiness.
I found it easy to trust Noe, now an old man, reflecting on the summer Christy unexpectedly slipped into his life and taught him happiness. As a young man, Noe leaves the seminary after his mother’s death and lands in rural Faha, a forgotten, damp corner of the world. While the people of Faha attend the Holy Week services, Noe remains home. On Good Friday, he recognizes the undercurrent of joy around him, but “when your spirit is uneasy,” he writes, “stillness can be a kind of suffering.” I resonated with Noe’s attempts to control his future and the confusion that comes with realizing how impossible this is.
But Williams doesn’t shy away from the messiness of life in the pursuit of happiness. Christy isn’t a spotless Christ figure; he’s a man who has experienced a lifetime of suffering and regret. Unlike Noe, he accepts his failures, and he teaches Noe that these wounds don’t have to be an impediment to happiness. Christy understands that failure is an integral and unavoidable experience in life. His happiness isn’t dependent on immediate results or changed circumstances but on his willingness to remain present to life as it is.
On one of their night quests to hear the musician Junior Casey, Noe asks Christy why he isn’t more disheartened by his failure to reconnect with his ex-fiancé Annie Moony, and Christy tells Noe, “This, is happiness.” Looking back at this moment from years in the future, Noe writes,
“…you could stop for one heartbeat and, no matter what the state of your head or heart, say This is happiness, because of the simple truth that you were alive to say it.”
Noe and Christy’s search for the music of J.C. is the experience of happiness. While they never find J.C., it is these moonlit bike rides that teach Noe what it means to be alive and unafraid. Happiness isn’t a thing that is manufactured or achieved; it’s an experience that arrives like grace, unseen and unannounced.
Christy’s ability to invite happiness into his heart, despite life’s tragedies, is hard-won. A lifetime of wounds—some inflicted on him by others and some of his own doing—tenderized and taught Christy’s heart, deepening his capacity for happiness as he chooses to continue onward.
After the most trying year of my life, I’m convinced of this: happiness is an awareness of the preciousness of life and the heartbreak that is part of every life in a fallen world. What Christy knows – and what Noe learns in This Is Happiness – is that the search itself is where joy, serenity, and belonging are found. Along this journey, we find forgiveness and healing.
Happiness is not something we achieve, but something we accept. It is a surrender to the peaks and valleys of life, a recognition that our lives are a mysterious gift to be savored, even – and perhaps especially – in moments of heartbreak and loss.
About Katerina Jakub
Katerina Jakub lives in Nebraska with her husband, Spencer, and their three “little women.” She teaches literature and theology at a rural Catholic high school and spends her summers outdoors: gardening, reading, and playing pickleball.
About Well-Read Mom
In Well-Read Mom, women read more and read well. Our hope is to deepen the awareness of meaning hidden in each woman’s daily life, elevate the cultural conversation, and revitalize reading literature from books. If you would like to have us help you select worthy reading material, we invite you to join and read along with us. We are better together! For information on how to start or join a Well-Read Mom group visit our website wellreadmom.com
