On a More Serious Note: The Key to Happiness

I was reading today in the Ensign a talk given by President Uchtdorf in General Conference called “Happiness, Your Heritage” and was immediately inspired that I needed to read this talk. He states the greatest happiness we might ever have is the Happiness of our Heavenly Father. We cannot know exactly what our Fathers’ happiness is because His ways are greater than ours. However, His work and His glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. He then states that He is able to accomplish these two goals because He is a God of creation and compassion. So it then follows that we, as His children, might experience that kind of happiness as we create and as we are compassionate.
There is a patient in our intensive care unit that mystifies us all. In morning rounds yesterday, I joked with the doctors that we needed to call HouseMD to figure it out. No one knows what is wrong with this lady. She has been intubated (on a breathing machine) for almost two weeks now and her pneumonia has not improved. No one knows what kind of pneumonia she has, as it is not responding to our treatment. The doctors seem grim about her outcome and she will need to get a tracheotomy. Despite being intubated, this lady is almost completely awake. We usually sedate our patients who are intubated, but for her, we have not. When I came to work yesterday, she was very anxious and depressed. She was tapping on her bedrails, bouncing her legs up and down in such a way as to express anxiety. My first reaction, as many of us nurses in intensive care, is to sedate. But before I increased her propofol drip or her fentanyl, something stopped me. I started to think of all those nursing interventions I could do without medicine that might help the situation. Working in intensive care, I am often so busy with trying to stabilize that often we forget to care for the spirit of the person. I leaned over and asked if she’d like to listen to some music. She nodded yes. I then proceeded to list different genres of music, as she could not speak. When I got to classical, she nodded yes. I then went and got a few CD’s from our music collection that she might like. We started with Andrea Bocelli and she instantly calmed. I then noticed how awful her skin looked, as she is on a steroid that makes skin quite fragile. Because she was my only patient at the time, I had extra time to give her some TLC. I applied lotion to her skin and gave her a massage and talked to her. As I did this, I noticed on my monitor, her heart rate slow, her breathing slow, her blood pressure lower and the anxiety decrease. And then something interesting happened, as I did these things for her, I felt a sense of happiness come over me.
I have always felt I was a creative person. When I was younger, I loved to paint, even if I never had lessons nor was any good. It brought me happiness to create something individual to me. I also have always loved to cook. As I create meals, I feel a sense of joy because I am using my creativity for good. Cooking for others is a passion of mine. I had a friend who told me that they knew I loved them because I show my love in my cooking. Recently I have had a greater desire to learn photography. Some love to take pictures of nature, architecture and what have you, but I love humanity. I want to photograph God’s greatest creation: His children. I had this thought a few years ago about what my vision is for myself. I have been educated as a nurse and have that skill available to me to teach others. Ever since I was a young girl, I had a strong desire to care for the sick of the World. International work excited me and filled me with a sense of adventure and accomplishment. In fact, thinking of nursing in Africa got me through nursing school when I thought I couldn’t do it anymore. As I have grown in my profession, my vision for my international endeavors has shifted from caring to teaching. As the scriptures teach, give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for life. (In fact, I don't know if that's scripture or just some old adage but, oh well). This applies to international nursing. My greatest goal would be to travel the world and teach nurses in Africa how to care for Africans. If I ever accomplish this great goal of mine, I think I will feel a happiness I’ve never felt before in my life. And this just in: I'm taking a sewing class! I found a sewing class through PCC and am very excited to learn another means to be self-sufficient. I love being self-sufficient!!!
So often in life we look towards things that won't make us happy. Doing things. What I mean by that are those things that are fun but not truly lasting in their happiness. Yes, it's fun run marathons and compete or go mountain biking, but I'm not a believer that those things will sustain happiness. As President Uchtdorf so eloquently proclaims, happiness comes through creation and compassion.