Happiness and Your Day Today

A rose in a neighbor's garden that Husband and I sniff at when we pass by on our walks.  It makes us happy.

Psychologists have been doing quite a bit of research in recent years on "happiness." What exactly is happiness? What is it that makes people happy? Is there anything people can do to be happier? There are three actions you can take, one of our faculty explained to us recently during a Bible study time, that research has indicated will make you happier.

The first thing you can do is to keep a gratitude journal. Write about things that make you feel grateful. "Check" for me!  My first blog was called "Joyful Woman," which was an attempt to do that. I have always wanted to live joyfully, but I think it became a conscious thought after a guy I liked said, "I just want to marry a joyful woman." He went his way, and I knew he didn't have any interest in me, but he gave me a great gift in motivating me to consciously make Joy a goal in my life. And so I try to speak and write with joy, humor, and appreciation. Whether I accomplish that is something my regular readers would probably be able to assess more readily than I can. But I'm finding happiness in trying.

The second strategy for happiness is to name three blessings daily. That's one I'll have to work on. Could it get redundant after a while?  Not necessarily. I could say to Husband before I fall asleep each night, "Here are the three blessings I had today," and I think there would always be new ones appropriate to that day. I can already name two of my three blessings today. I had a lovely online chat this morning with my long-time friend Betty, who has lived for years in a breathtakingly beautiful rural area of France. Betty has the gift of remembering details about my life, asking about our kids, and commenting on some memory of me when we knew each other as teenagers in Singapore. It's a pleasure to be in touch with her more frequently again. Here's another blessing: it's Daughter #1's 30th birthday today, and she is a gift in my life. She has an inquisitive mind and makes me feel like I'm valued and sought out for my ideas and opinions.  At my [advancing] age, that makes me feel like the lessons of my life may be helpful to the next generation. I'm so thankful for the joy of getting to know Daughter #1 over the years.  And at the end of today I'm sure I'll be able to tell you of at least one more blessing! It bodes well for a happy day.

The third strategy for happiness is to make a "gratitude visit" to thank someone to whom you owe a debt of gratitude. This can also be done in writing.  I can readily think of times when someone took the effort to come and say thank you to me, and how much that meant. So why not give someone else that joy? I don't think a "gratitude visit" has to happen every single day, but certainly if you can't remember the last one you did, it's time to do another. Right now I owe a simple debt of gratitude to Husband, who washed the dishes and left the kitchen looking great before I even got out there this morning.  And I'll tell him so.

With the path to greater happiness being so simple, why not give those three strategies a bit of attention today?

The Best, the Most, and the Capital

Yesterday, on our walk to the Oregon state line (it's only three miles from home, so please don't overestimate our fitness), we passed the JS Ranch and spotted the sign shown above.

"I think a committee designed that sign," said Husband.

"Yeah," I responded, "and they got in a deadlocked vote as to which slogan to use, so they used both.  'Queen of the beef breed,' and 'The supreme beef breed.'!  I think the girls voted for the first one, and the boys voted for the second."

I was amused enough to take a picture with my ever-handy pocket camera.  And then we walked on by.  But for some reason, I looked back at the sign after we passed by, and I saw this:

And then I really laughed!  "The world's most versatile?"  So they have the best of the beef, and the best of the horses!  This struck me, as someone who grew up in another culture, as so "very American."  Let me explain.

When I was growing up, we used to come to the United States for furloughs. Our visits often included a road trip to visit interesting places across the country.  This served two purposes:  you didn't wear out your welcome with relatives, and you got acquainted with Americana, which was handy for us kids since we had American passports, but Asian lives.

One of the things I noticed (and continue to notice) as we passed through American towns, was that they are very often the capital of something.  For example, Austin, Texas is the "live music capital of the world," and Las Vegas is the "wedding capital of the world."  You might be further interested in the following capitals across the United States:

• Battle Creek, MI:  Cereal Capital of the World
• Fort Payne, AL:  Sock Capital of the World
• Mount Horeb, WI:  Troll Capital of the World
• Beaver, OK:  Cow Chip Throwing Capital of the World

You'd probably be even more gastronomically edified if you knew that Collinsville, IL is the Horseradish Capital of the World; Alma, Arkansas is the Spinach Capital of the World; and Castroville, CA is the Artichoke Capital of the World.

With all these capitals, my fifth grade Social Studies memorization in that little one-room schoolhouse in Malaysia didn't mean squat.  All I knew was a capital for each of the fifty U.S. states!

Which brings me to my questions:  Why does America have such a deep need for identity?  And why does it need to be the best, the most, and the capital? Why must my ranch have the best beef and the most versatile horse?  Why must I always seek to win, to be applauded, to gain celebrity or renown of some sort?  What would it look like to drive into that town about half an hour from where I live, and see the town sign say, "Dixie, Washington. Another nondescript wide spot in the road. Carry on."?

Now that would make me laugh.

The barn at Dixie.  Really rather attractive, in a rural sort of way.

Assailing the Fortress, Part IV

So what is there to be said to wrap up these thoughts on assailing the fortress?

First of all, no person or organization is an unbreachable fortress. We are all, people and organizations, living things that are vulnerable to attack. Eventually, as a fortress wall can give way to rocks slung at it by a trebuchet, as a solid hillside can give way under a constant drip of water, as rocks can be carved out by windblown, sharp sand particles, people and organizations can fall under assault.

The sad thing is that so many of us are willing to assail "fortresses" that stand in some way for things that we care deeply about.

So the plea of this series is for people and society to take responsibility, to know the power of careless words, of harsh criticisms, of unverified stories retold.  My warning is to take care, take care, my friends. We may lose the very people and places to which we might have wanted to go for strength and safety, which represent our identity and value.  And that would be a great loss.

Mama and Me

To celebrate Mother's Day, I want to send a huge "Happy Mother's Day" greeting to my Mama.  I've been scanning pictures for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary reception, where I'll do a slide show of their life together.  So it's been easy to find "Mama and Me" pictures at the same time.  Some of them I'd never paid attention to before, because there are so many photo albums with so many pictures.  Hope you enjoy them.

These first ones are of my 35-year old Mama with me, her first child.  She was already a very busy Ob-Gyn physician in Bangkok when I came along to make her and Daddy into three.  (Daddy was often behind the camera in these photos, so you'll have to wait until later to see him.)

What strikes me funny is how much this picture (above) looks like my granddaughter who was born last December. We share no DNA, but the big eyes and facial expression look a lot a like her. I sure love those Grands and their parents!

I think this was the picture taken for our passport together; we were headed back to the U.S. for a visit when I was one year old.  Makes me think of that poem, "There was a little girl, with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead..."

Suddenly, when I was just over a year old, my little brother arrived on the scene.  As you may notice, he looks rather ho-hum about it, Mama looks delighted--one child for each arm, just like she wanted it--and I look less than thrilled.  I'm told that when my parents brought my brother home from the hospital, I went up and took a look at him, then slapped him on the face.  Yikes!  Sorry, Mama.  Sorry, Bro.

One of my very favorite pictures of Mama and me that I'd never noticed before I started this photo scanning project.

We lived on islands throughout my childhood, and thus we got to ride on creaky old wooden boats from time to time. Riding on boats continues to be a theme in our family. Mama had us wear orange kapok-filled life vests.  To my knowledge, neither of us kids ever fell off a boat, but Mama did a time or two.  But those stories are for another time, another place!

My mother loved to travel and see the world.  She had done a lot of traveling before she married Daddy and had us, but we kept on traveling after her kids showed up, too.  Here she and I are at the Acropolis in Athens.  Cool needlepoint purse, Mama! Very classy.

It was awfully hot where we lived.  Once and a while we pulled our sweaters out of storage and headed for the highlands.  The White House Hotel was in Cameron Highlands on the Malay Peninsula.  I remember eating white toast and marmalade at this hotel for breakfast.

The other reason Mama liked going to the highlands was the riot of flowers up there, flowers she knew from her own years of growing up in the United States. I was quite pleased, in this picture, with my lovely new binoculars.  I think they were for bird watching, but I never have been very interested in watching birds.  They hop, they chirp, they fly.  That's about it.

Despite her very busy medical practice, Mama always found time for us in each day.  Looking back on it, I don't know how she managed it. Maybe it helped that we had an amah to look after the house and cook us lunch each day.

Mama read to us nearly every morning before going to work, using Bible story books as well as other books about nature by Sam Campbell, the Wisconsin naturalist. It's nearly impossible to be biblically illiterate when you have a mom who loves reading and loves Bible stories.

Through my awkward, chubby years, Mama was always there for me.  For some of those years she was a predecessor of the "sandwich generation," looking after her mother on one side and her children on the other. We look a bit solemn in this photograph, but I remember it as a good and busy time in all our lives.

I went away to school in Singapore at the age of fourteen--and loved it there, even if I was a tad bit homesick. My parents came to visit as often as they could, which was about once a year.  Other than that, we went home for Christmas and summer vacations.

Mama wouldn't miss a big event in my life for anything.  She and Daddy came to California when I was honored as a "teacher of the year" at the college where I worked.  But I got to her big events, too, like when her medical school alumni association honored her as an alumnus of the year.

I think Mama was nearly as happy as I was on Husband's and my wedding day.  She had a sparkly outfit to wear, and she likes sparkles. And her daughter was marrying a man who likes her, and that is guaranteed to make a mama's heart happy.  And her daughter was happy, and that makes a mama's heart happy, too.

I'll end with a picture from nearly a year ago of Mama and me and the Bro.  Forty-something years of her being our mama, and I'm ready for her to go another forty-something more in that role.  Happy Mother's Day, Mama!  Love you!

Assailing the Fortress, Part III

I've made some specific points about some downsides of "assailing the fortress," but let me make one more, that of reputation.

Reputation is almost everything in this world. It's easy to lose, as any adolescent, many former celebrities and a number of major corporations can tell you.  Reputation takes a long time to regain; in fact, they say that it takes at least 3-1/2 years to regain a good reputation, once lost. As long as your reputation is positive, the world is full of opportunity. If it's negative, doors are shut either in front of you, or behind you as you're pushed out.

I learned as I grew up that negative gossip was the equivalent of stealing--stealing someone's reputation and good name. But I think that extends further. You can also kill or steal the good name of an organization or system by telling a tale or airing an opinion unfairly, resulting in the loss of a person's trust or positive regard in that organization or system.

Note that I used the word, "unfairly." There are legitimate reasons to share information regarding a person, organization or system. One reason I can think of, offhand, is to protect another individual from harm or loss. But in such a case it strikes me that you'd better be very sure that your tale is true, that you have carefully checked it out, and that your comments are specific rather than containing sweeping generalizations.

It's a burden, checking out the truth of a tale. It takes time, it takes a lot of work, and it takes the courage to confront that person or entity, or to do careful research. Hmm. Does this sound like the process described in Matthew 18 of the Bible?

For example, let me return to the three examples mentioned in Part II of this series. If I have not done my research and obtained credible documentation that President Obama indeed belongs to the Muslim faith, then I have no right to pass on that inflammatory e-mail. If I have not taken the time to talk with my senator's office about the state budget, to understand all difficult issues connected to balancing the budget, then I'd better not paint sweeping criticisms of how it's being done.  If I am a book publisher and I don't check out every detail of an author's manuscript, including personally contacting and listening to people who could be negatively perceived by others as a result of what is written in the book, then I have no ethical business publishing that book. If I am a journalist covering famous people, and I simply repeat the "dirt" on those people without checking my facts and with no regard to the positive things those people do, then I am functioning somewhat as a zit upon the face of Mother Earth.  (Sorry, but I rather liked that metaphor.)

Having worked in various educational organizations over the years, I have found that people view these organizations (and their leaders, as well) as fortresses. They pass on comments that are not carefully considered, assuming that the fortress will still stand unhurt, no matter what they say or how ill-informed it might be. It's like throwing mud at a concrete wall and assuming the wall will not budge and the mud will wash off.

If you believe the fortress-assailants, I have worked at a "less classy school," a "party school," a "liberal school," and a "small, dumpy school." In each case, I would not have recognized those descriptions from my experience working at the school. I would have described these very schools as "the friendliest school with the best parents," the "school in a gorgeous location providing excellent academics," the "best school if you want your kid to experience a combination of robust spiritual life and high academic standards," and "the school with a close family feeling."  Unfortunately, each of those schools suffered harm from the "sticky" negative message that was passed on in chatter by some people.

At a more personal level, people also contribute unfairly in my world to reputations of some teachers, ...although I will admit that some teachers create their own weather on this count. Still, no teacher is a fortress.  And none of us sees the entire story about another human being. In light of the span and breadth of person's life experience, we know that we perceive others only from little snippets of experience or conversation with them. So how can we truthfully characterize them?

When you contribute to a negative reputation, be it that of a person or organization, you ethically bear a solemn and heavy culpability for having assailed the fortress--a "fortress" that may not in truth be as strong or as impervious as you assume.

(to be continued)

Assailing the Fortress, Part II

There is a belief in our society that assailing our fortresses (a.k.a. institutions we have valued such as government, church or heroes) cannot bring them down, or will bring down only the parts we don't like.  It's acceptable, even blood sport, to take potshots at these institutions or people.  I'm not sure if it's out of jealousy, or some need to make ourselves feel "smarter, more beautiful, and darn it!, more capable" than our heroes.  Or perhaps it's simply to assure ourselves that our little brains and voices have some value.  There just seem to be more attacks on anything with visible strength in our society these days. Nothing is above our disrespect.

For example, I get forwarded e-mails from Aunt Mabel (*not her real name) telling me in panicky tones that President Obama is taking us all to hell in an handbasket.  There was another e-mail the other day from Mr. Rondo*, a friend of our family, with an appeal to go watch a stupidly spliced together video trying to make it look like the president had announced straight out that he is a Muslim.  The implication, of course, is that we should all be shaking in our boots because an infiltrator is leading our country. In the olden days, you may recall, the fear was about Kennedy being a Catholic--which in that case was actually a fact. What action is called for by these e-mail forwards is unclear.  It is set up to make people angry and fearful with no place to go--at least until the next national election.

Add to that all the "government is broken" rhetoric of recent times, and you have even more people angry and fearful with no place to go, especially since another election or two is not going to fix a broken government. It's easy to see how this can result in national despair, or vigilante groups and internal terrorism as a way to fight back. This "assail the fortress" dynamic may be replicated at the state level.  I've heard the same kind of shrill rhetoric applied in assessing the stances taken by our governor, who by the way is managing to get the state budget balanced, whether you like how it's being done or not.

The incoming cannonballs hit the fortress, and the damage is more significant than we realize.

Moving on from government to the institution of "church," there are sieges going on against that fortress, as well.  I could talk about the Catholic church, or about the recent articulate writing and speaking by atheists against Christianity, but let me share an example closer to home for me.  It's one in which the attack is coming from our own people.  (Hmm. I wonder if we destroy ourselves more vigorously when we perceive no significant external threat?  Just a passing thought.)

Within my church denomination there exist offshoot groups or purportedly "free press" groups whose mission it is to show that the leadership of the denomination is a bunch of nefarious, double-dealing crooks. Is this just our subculture, or does it happen in other churches, too? One such group recently published a book accusing the church leadership of unethical accounting practices.  The author, who has a conflict of interest because his employment was terminated for moral reasons, included slander about specific people, some only tangentially connected to his story. The book is going like hotcakes with translations into other languages underway.

I am not knowledgeable to comment on the accounting issues, but I do know the story about one of the people who was portrayed by the author as a mentally unstable liar, and it's unconscionable what was written about her. She is being victimized by him yet again, and the book publishers have bankrolled this by paying to publish the book. Now get this: the book publisher admitted in a personal written response to me that there are problems with the book and that they are discussing what they will do about it. What's to discuss?  I had called for them to stop selling the books and to issue a public apology to their magazine readers and to the people slandered in the book.

Six weeks have passed since that admission of poor journalistic practices, and there's no indication that they have pulled the book. Nor have they issued an apology. In fact, at their website they recently announced that the denomination had barred them from selling the book at their booth at the worldwide church meetings coming up this summer. Now all the website commenters are railing at denominational administration (a faceless evil group, of course), whining that the church is shutting out the truth from being told. Come ON, people!  Who said that a church has to give booth space to someone selling lies and criticism about them at their own conference meetings?  I'm surprised the this group still has a booth space!

Throughout all of this, our denominational leadership has to stay silent. They can't name the lies for what they are, for several reasons. It would be "chasing the devil's dogs," and they have a greater mission to accomplish than to defend their dealings from ankle-biters. (And I'm not saying that leadership is perfect, but in this case I know more about the inside story than I typically do.)  Second, if they respond to the book, which deals with the former employee's termination and ensuing lawsuit, they could end up in further legal action from the person who has shown himself to be litigious.  The dollars given to the church need to be spent on mission and ministry, not in legal defense. And finally, any response could be seen as the big monster beating up on the little yapping ankle-biter, and unfortunately in this case, American society tends to sympathize with the little guy. It's the mantra of at least half the movies made in this country. So you don't end up winning anything at all as an organizational leader if you spend precious time and money to reply to lies and slander. And this is just one of a number of people/groups that build up their self-importance by taking potshots at the church institution.

And yet, the incoming cannonballs hit the fortress and the damage is more significant than we realize.

Another example of "assailing the fortress":  the way our press deals with heroes. We have a propensity for creating heroes, and then ripping them apart. We're talking about human beings, not gods! They can barely withstand being made heroes, and then when the tearing-down part comes along, they can barely survive that--if they're lucky.

You'll probably remember quite clearly that viral You-Tube clip showing Susan Boyle's initial performance. This woman who can sing circles around you and me shoots to fame, is the darling of the water-cooler chatter, and becomes a sermon illustration in fifty-hundred churches everywhere. Now watch her not win the final prize.  And watch the British tabloids criticize everything about her, including her makeover. And be sure to print the dirt from her friends on how she's really unhappy and very lonely.  Now watch her fall apart (our heroes are supposed to be above disintegration, you know).  And then when her first full album comes out, be sure, oh you music critics who probably couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, to rip that apart, too.

You see?  We build people into a heroic fortress, and then we assail that fortress.  For what reason?  What kind of dysfunctional media and societal game is this?  The incoming cannonballs hit the newly-built fortress and the damage is more significant than we realize.

(To be continued in the next post.  Should you disagree with me regarding some of my examples, please hang in there until the series is done. We may reach more agreement than you suspect.)