Happy, Shiny People

My wife adopted a new mission this past year (which she works on every day) and about once a week she sets off to devote an entire afternoon to it.  On those days I don't wish her the usual "Have a good day", but something else.  I'm going to change one word of that wish to make it more universal.

I say "Go make Happy People!".  And she does, she talks to people, and listens to people, and helps them learn the tools they need to make their own lives happier.  It's hard work, on both sides, and both are often more content at the end of the conversation than before.  Sometimes it doesn't work that way, and they walk away sad, or angry.  But, so far, they learn things, and practice things, and before long, they are happier people.

This is a big leap, since my wife has spent much of her life doing something that sounds similar, but is fundamentally different.  She would "Go Make People Happy!".   She still does that in her job in the service industry.

Making people happy seems to involve indulging them, spoiling them, granting them their wishes.  Of course, there are limits, and sometimes you have to draw them.  Those boundaries often come as a complete surprise to the customer, since they have had free rein up to this point.  Sometimes, people walk away UNhappy even though they have received excellent service, just because they have demanded something ridiculous.

I've done the same thing in my life, with lesser success.  I've gone to great lengths to "make people happy", so that they like me but also so they leave me alone to do what I want.  I've indulged people beyond reasonable limits.  I've built resentment while doing it, so, while "making people happy", I have made myself unhappy.  Then I try to make myself happy with indulgence too.  At this point I am filled with resentment and guilt, and my "customers" are disappointed.  Who's happy?

Good parents learn the difference between making their children happy and making happy children very early.  A happy household relies on trust and respect, not trips to Disney or the latest toy.  If I had raised young children I might have learned to be a good parent, which would have brought me closer to understanding than I am now.  I'm still learning, and still making some progress.

Good relationships between peers are the same way, except that one should not expect to be able to (or want to!) mold another as a parent molds a child.  If you foster consistency and trust with your peers, they will eventually achieve their own growth, their own happiness. 

You will help each other Make Happy People.

New word? Merchantithe / Mercantithe

merchantithe
- noun - The goods or services, which are marked by the vendor promising to contribute a share of the profits to a charitable organization.

- verb - The act of contributing a share of a business's profits to a charitable organization

also:

mercantithe
- adjective - Describing the industry centered around moving a share of profits from a business to a charitable organization, and the marketing thereof.

A friend of mine (Mary Ann Dimand, pastor and economist) posted on Facebook that she was searching for a single word for charitable profit pledging, and we came up with the above. As a new word that nobody is using, the definition is still in flux.

This is the first thing that looked like a word, that I've tried to Google and came up dry. I thought you could submit any string of nonsense to the search engine and someone, sometime, would have typed it into a web page.

Of course, by posting this, I think that mercantithe and merchantithe will now show up... in blogsearch.google.com if nowhere else.

Since I am a computer professional, and mildly interested how people themselves behave, it will be interesting to see what comes next. I predict one of three scenarios:

1) The Lead Balloon - merchantithe will disappear into the blogosphere.

2) The Internet Effect - I will get a hundred responses, over the course of several years, from people pointing out how there is a perfectly good word already for this, that I am corrupting the English language by inventing a word, that Dictionaries are Prescriptive vs. Descriptive, and that I need enlargement or reduction of various body parts while paying low interest rates.

3) The word will actually spread, slowly, and fill a need for a small number of people. It may actually get added to some misguided slang or "urban" dictionary.

Any result will be informative.

Frist Psot!

I generally hang out at http://greyman.livejournal.com but wanted an account here to access http://xphitau.blogspot.com