I got my idea of happiness from Jerry my childhood dog. Every day, when we fed him the same crummy brown food, his tail would explode into joyful spasms of wagging. I took that to mean that he wasn’t comparing the present moment with anything else. So today, if I feel even mildly unhappy, I know it is time to enter more fully into the present moment, and to stop comparing it with imaginary alternatives. Even if I am shoveling my way out of a hole, the secret of happiness is to put myself fully into the digging.