I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about routines, rituals, and traditions.

Studies show that routines, rituals, and traditions are good for people’s physical and mental well-being. They help make life seem predictable, under control, and meaningful, and they provide family cohesiveness and predictability, which people—especially children—crave. In families with strong rituals, couples reported having happier marriages, and kids had more contact with grandparents. Children in families with predictable routines did better in school and were healthier.

I see the importance of dependable routine. At bedtime, the Big Girl knows that her father will read to her for thirty minutes, and then I’ll lie down with her for ten minutes after her light is out. Because she knows what to expect, she can look forward to it. And this routine means that the Big Man and I each have a special time with her each night.

We need more family traditions. Cinnamon toast for Sunday brunch? Breakfast in bed for Father’s Day? We need a good Fourth of July tradition – that’s a terrific holiday, and we don’t do anything special. July 4 is my mother’s birthday, so we always had a great celebration when I was growing up, but for the last several years, for one reason or another, she hasn’t been with us on her birthday. I want to come up with a plan — one involving lots of sparklers.

I still cringe when I remember that two years ago, I forgot to buy a Halloween pumpkin. We had decorations, costumes, and trick-or-treating—but no pumpkin! That’s Mommy Malpractice. Never again.

*
My friend Marci Alboher has a great new book that has just hit the bookstores — One Person/Multiple Careers. It’s about how people manage multiple careers — lots of fascinating examples, plus great advice about how to manage a dual existence. She talks about “the slash model” — I’m a lawyer/writer, for example — which of course is becoming more and more common these days. She also has a blog Hey Marci where she talks about these issues plus much more.

This morning, I was struck by a Life Lesson.

New York City got a fair amount of sleet and snow last week, and although most of the sidewalks have been cleared, there are still big, uneven piles of icy snow around the curbs and on some parts of the sidewalks.

It can be tricky to walk across these patches, and it’s even harder to push a stroller through them. Our morning walk to school took much more energy and patience than usual.

I hardly noticed the aggravation, however, because on the way, the Big Girl and I were busy recapping her birthday party yesterday, and on the way home, I walked with a friend who lives two blocks from me.

I was so absorbed in my conversations that I only absent-mindedly noticed the inconvenience — even when, at one point, I had to walk backwards and pull the stroller because I couldn’t push it across the snow.

It was only when I got home that I realized how difficult the walk had been.

There’s a Lesson for Life here, I think, about why it’s important to make the time and effort to have fun.

If you have plenty of fun in your life – if you make time to see friends, to learn about things that interest you, to do the things you enjoy, like reading or going to movies or hiking – you have a higher store of patience and tolerance.

On the other hand, when you don’t have much fun in your life, it’s easy to become preoccupied with the aggravations and frustrations. There’s nothing to distract you from your bad feelings.

It may seem selfish to focus on having more fun and happiness. But as I’ve seen dramatically proven in my own life this year, by working to be happier myself (and happiness takes a surprising amount of work), I’m far better able to make other people happier.

I’m less crabby. I laugh more easily. I find it easier to go out of my way to help other people. I’m less resentful, judgmental, and insecure.

And I don’t get as annoyed by little things, like having to push the stroller through snow.

“Herein lies the real value of education. Advanced education may or may not make men and women more efficient; but it enriches personality, increases the wealth of the mind, and hence brings happiness.” –William Lyons Phelps

One of my successful happiness-project initiatives is to keep a “one-sentence journal.”

For quite a while, I’ve been alarmed by how little I remember about my own past. As a consequence, I’ve become much more careful to take photos and videos regularly, as a kind of diary to keep my memories vivid.

Also, I wished that I could keep a proper journal, to maintain a colorful record of what’s happening in my life, but that would just be too much work.

Instead, I came up with the idea of keeping a “one-sentence journal.”

Now, each night, I write one sentence (well, actually, usually it’s three or four sentences, and I type them into the computer) about what happened that day to me, the Big Man and the girls.

It’s a good place to record those kids-say-the-darndest-things moments. I always think that I’ll never forget, but I do. Until my mother reminded me, I’d forgotten about the time when, as we were driving on the Bruckner Expressway, after I said to the Big Man, “Have we ever driven on this road when the drawbridge has been raised?” the Big Girl piped up, “If that’s the drawbridge, where’s the castle?”

My hope is that, years from now, when I’m trying to remember what life was like at this point, I can look back at my one-sentence journal.

I started it on August 1. After the completion of each year of the journal, I plan to publish it as a book on my favorite site, Lulu.com. That way, I’ll have a keepsake hardcopy version.

It’s a very satisfying project: it’s manageable, so it doesn’t make me feel burdened; it gives me a feeling of accomplishment and progress, the “growth” so important to happiness; it helps keep happy memories vivid (because I’m much more inclined to write about happy events than unhappy events), which boosts my happiness; and it gives me a reason to pause thinking lovingly about the members of my family.

This sign is posted all over my neighborhood. The truly charming thing about it is that the sign’s words are printed in green, and there’s a faint green shamrock behind the words. Think of it: someone in the city bureaucracy actually took the time and effort to print the words in green. That’s the spirit!

This is one of the things that I love most about New York City—the sense that things are astir, that people are excited about some happening of which I know nothing.

I never thought much about St. Patrick’s Day in NYC until a few years ago, when I happened to walk down Second Avenue on the afternoon of the parade. It was jammed with people, with green and shamrocks and Irish flags everywhere. How had I never seen this before?

Last year, when I served on a jury, the policeman who was on the witness stand and the judge both wore green ties on March 17.

It’s like Fashion Week, or when the United Nations meets, or Chinese New Year, or when Wagner’s Ring cycle is at the Metropolitan Opera House. These events don’t matter to me, but I love the feeling that something exciting is happening nearby. One day, who knows, maybe I’ll decide to show up, too.

*
Zoikes, there’s a lot of great material at Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog. Talk about a happiness project — she actually MOVED cities, from New York City to Madison, Wisconsin — because the happiness research indicated that she’d be happier there.

I guess the pleasure of seeing the signs for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade wasn’t quite enough to keep her here.

Her explanation of why she moved, and the happiness data she drew on, is fascinating.