Mrs Jones, a 92-year-old woman who lost her husband after 70 years of marriage, was being moved into a nursing home. This would be her new home after her husband’s death.
After waiting patiently for several hours in the lobby, she was told her room was ready. She smiled sweetly. While gingerly manoeuvring to her room with her walker, she was provided with a visual description of it, including eyelet curtains that had been hung on the window.
“I love it,” she said with enthusiasm.
“Mrs Jones, you haven’t even seen the room…just wait,” her escort said.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she said. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. I already decided to love it.”
“I make a decision every morning when I wake up, she explained. “I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work (she is legally blind), or I can get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away just for this time in my life.”
She went on to say, “Old age is like a bank account—you withdraw from what you’ve put in. So my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories. I am still depositing.”
With a smile, she shared five simple rules to being happy:
Free your heart from hatred
Free your mind from worries
Live simply
Give more
Expect less
What are you depositing in your bank of life? Is it fear, uncertainty, impatience, bitterness, envy, or hatred? Such deposits would only leave you bankrupt in no time. So instead, like Mrs Jones, be deliberate to live a joyful, lovely, praiseworthy, and excellent life.
