One of the few words and expressions I know in Thai, and one I use often, is the phrase I transliterate as “wanee binwa teedee,” which means “it is a good day.” I sometimes use this phrase when I am waking up the guys for the morning meeting in their dorm, or in the meeting itself to the sleepyheads there. Occasionally it pops up, as it did today, in the course of a morning of work on the farm. Sometimes it pops up literally, sometimes sarcastically, sometimes people say (as today) that it is not a good day because it is raining, but it is a frequent subject of conversation nonetheless between the the students and me.

What makes a day a good day? For some people, good days are highly dependent on others. For many of my students, a good day depends on subjective moods, or sunny (but not too hot) weather. If someone is unkind, or the weather is less than friendly, then the day is ruined. In practice, one would think that with so many things that could ruin a day that many people do not think that the days are good. And even those days that are thought of as good might become bad so easily because their goodness is such a fragile thing in the estimation of others, so easily ruined by an unkind glance or hasty word, or the sudden fury of a storm.

Our happiness is far more safe if it is a choice that we have made regardless of circumstances than if it depends on the weather or on the good will of other people. Mind you, there are certainly days where it can be difficult to find reasons to be happy, and some places where happiness is a more serious choice than others, but it is surprising just how many reasons one can find to be happy if one has the will to do so, and one has made the conscious choice to be happy in spite of everything. If our freedom and happiness are contained within us, and we take full responsibility for them, we can be happy and free no matter what our circumstances because our hearts and minds are within us and no one else can take them.

The choice, of course, is ours. Do we choose to be happy, or do we let our happiness be the result of chance? If we leave our happiness up to chance, it means that we have to try to control our environment if we want to preserve a good emotional state. But if we choose happiness, we must develop the patterns of thought that lead us to be happy even when we subjectively feel bad. This sort of disciplined thinking is not easy for us to practice, and it takes some time to get it right. Still, we have to determine whether we value the end destination enough to go through everything it takes to make things right. And that is a decision we can only make for ourselves. No one else can make it for us.