The Power of a Happy Place

What if you had to endure something horrible happening to you…something like half your teeth being pulled out, your enamel cracking so loud you wince, your mouth being tugged at by a dentist?

Well, it helps if you have a happy place you can go to. You can hold off a panic attack if, in your mind, you can go somewhere, perhaps to Hawaii, to one of the remote islands, where you discover a path to walk along, one covered with plants, and you climb that path, occasionally catching a glimpse of the great blue ocean, then hike some more, encountering a monkey here, a donkey there, then a snake right on the path. You keep hiking until you reach the peak, the peak of this great island in the Pacific Ocean, just you, standing high, arms outstretched, jumping up and down, “I climbed it, I climbed it” you wail.

Then you’re interrupted! Wait. What was that crack? Was that my tooth?

Yes, that’s the happy place I went to in my mind as my dentist pulled, cracked, yanked and tweezered half the teeth out of my mouth. After removing the teeth, he would then glue in three bridges.

At birth, half my teeth had no adult teeth behind them. Therefore, at fifty years old, half the teeth in my mouth were still baby teeth, exhausted from having done their job—even more than their job—and they were ready for social security and Medicare. They had applied for it in my thirties and I said, “No way.” The baby teeth unionized and reapplied in my forties. I said, “Just hang on a while longer.” Then at fifty, I caved.

Do you know what that’s like? To have your mouth wide open, to be alert, and hear all that cracking and snapping inside your very own mouth. Even though you’re Novocained, it’s still unnerving. If you focused on what the dentist was doing inside your mouth you’d have a panic attack.

But I did great. I hardly remember a thing because of one trick: going to that happy place in my mind. I built a world in my mind, down to the finest detail, a motion picture, filled with real and imaginary characters and features, while a war was going on in a different part of my body.

That was about fifteen years ago. And since then, I’ve gone to my happy place many times. I don’t go to Hawaii anymore because I quickly bored of that place. I've found that the part of me that builds these mental worlds is quite the pretentious snob and gets bored easily. “Far be it from me to occasion an island with tourists on it,” I’ve heard him muse.

Now I use my happy place to help me fall asleep. Usually, I’m in the Sierra Nevada mountains and I discover a native Americans still living up there (you wouldn’t believe how elaborate the story is).

Now I use my happy place if I’m bored in a meeting (which these days is every meeting I go to). I’ll write out my place, pretending I’m taking notes.

And I also use this world-building ability to help me write the novel I’m working on.

I’ve found mind-transport is a powerful thing. The mind trumps the body. Control of the mind is one of life’s great skills. And I have a feeling it will come in very handy over the rest of my life. Nearly Medicare eligible, my body is holding up quite well. Other than a heart attack scare fifteen years ago, most things still work. But I know the old body will start to break down sometime soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in five or ten. Or maybe, like some of the lucky ones, not for a couple more decades. But when it does—when the body starts to surrender key parts of itself—when the body becomes noisy and cranky—my mind, and my ability to place it where I want it to be, will be key.

The Bible puts it this way in Colossians: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Setting the mind is a thing … a skill, if you will. Placing it where you want it is as much an act as pressing a key on the keyboard. I want to get really good at placing my mind where I want it to be.

Then, if I ever have a dentist waving a crow-shaped forcep in front of my mouth, or some part of my body decides to do its own thing, or some chronic condition dogs me, I’ll know I can handle it. As long as I can “set my mind” or go to my happy place or dream of the ultimate happy place, I’ll be fine.

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