Happiness and Stability

Gretchen Rubin from the Happiness Project www.happiness-project.com
Recently wrote about Happiness and Stability.

She refers to the 5 vows the monks of Cistercian make at the beginning of their profession: in addition to the vows we all know of poverty, chastity and obedience, they also make vows of stability and conversion of manners. (from a book titled The Sign of Jonas by Thomas Merton).

Like Gretchen, I find the vow of stability intriguing.

She applies it to marriage but I like to think it applies to most of the external relationships in our lives.

Gretchen writes “In the book, Merton explains: “By making a vow of stability the monk renounces the vain hope of wandering off to find a ‘perfect monastery.’ This implies a deep act of faith: the recognition that it does not much matter where we are or whom we live with…Stability becomes difficult for a man whose monastic ideal contains some note, some element of the extraordinary. All monasteries are more or less ordinary…Its ordinariness is one of its greatest blessings.”

We all believe at times that our current external situation is causing us unhappiness and cast around for the perfect relationship we think will make us happy: the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect country. When the newness and excitement of the relationship wears off, we are left with the “ordinariness and normality” of the situation – this is when one can sometimes begin, again, to search for the “perfect person; perfect place, perfect relationship”. This is the time when we should examine the “stability” in ours lives and recognise this special quality. The “perfect monastery” is an attitude – not a place.

Realistically, there are times when an external change to our circumstance will make a great deal of difference to our happiness. When those situations present themselves, consider them wisely.