The Examined Life

MamaBear said she never thinks about whether or not she's happy - so she guesses this must mean she is. This was food for thought for me, who thinks about that kind of thing all the time. I can't help myself.

Now, this isn't to say that MamaBear isn't a reliable source of great wisdom, because some of my most fundamentally comforting beliefs come straight from her - mainly, the conviction that eventually things work out and that if there's something you want to do you can find a way to make it work.

But still, I found myself wondering, what accounts for this difference in the way we think about the world? Why do I spend so much time pondering, and Mamabear comparatively little?

For one thing, Mamabear has had many decades to find her groove. She has a lifelong partner to whom she's been married for more years than she hasn't been married to him, several lifelong friendships, was and is a peerless Mommy, has a meaningful career about which she is passionate. And she is also a force of nature. I don't know how much contemplation the winds need to do, because they just are.

Still, for whatever reason, this gust of prairie wind spawned a sensitive, emotional little creature who wept over Little Women at age 10 and still does at 25. Just this morning I got tearful reading an article in the Kenmare News about how the Berthold Bombers high school basketball team got warm-up suits that said "4 Hope," to show support for one of their teammate's mom, whose name is Hope and is undergoing cancer treatment but never misses a game.

But sensitivity is a strength, too (after all the more sensitive an instrument is, the more it costs). I am good at understanding people's motivations and feelings and I am empathetic (sometimes painfully so.) I have accepted the fact that I am someone with a lot Feelings. My waters are often choppy, my mental space unpredictable and requiring a good deal of verbiage to get me to where I feel peaceful and like I know which end is up.

It's true, that at times when I have done a lot of temperature-taking regarding my mood, it's generally been because my mood has been unsatisfactory. Generally, I think it's good to hope that you would be so caught up in living your life that you don't have much time to think about it.

But I think what I mean when I say happiness - or happyishness - is a shortcut for something bigger. It's not necessarily that I am looking to walk around at all times like a big yellow happy face at a parade.

His Holiness Martin Seligman writes that it is perhaps more useful to think about happiness, which is so unspecific and can mean so many different things to so many different people, in terms of "the good life."

And I think pursuing a good life is what I mean by pursuing happiness. A life with good stuff in it, stuff I care about and find important. And figuring out what those things are. Things like helping and being there for people, reading, writing, walking in the woods, eating great food around a big table. Laughing, music, re-discovering forsythia every spring. Having time to rest and think and nap.

For me happiness isn't so much about the way I'm feeling (although, obviously feeling crappy is not helpful), it's about the way I'm living. It's about trying to get my life to be in line with my values.

MamaBear is someone whose values are clear. You can see what they are by looking at her life: hard work, family, participating in democracy, being informed about world events, practicality, efficiency, advocating for what's right even when it's not what people want to hear. I think if she had one of those "your days are numbered" type encounters that you hear about, there's not all that much she would do differently. Overall, it seems that she's doing what she wants to be doing. One thing I love about Mamabear (in addition to her unparalleled cuddliness) is that her money is where her mouth is.

And here in early adulthood, I am in the process of a) figuring out where my mouth is and b) attempting to put my money there. Which is kind of what keeping this blog is about.

So although MamaBear would probably never write paragraphs upon paragraphs dissecting the meaning of happiness, the fact that I do do that makes me more like her, not less. By putting all my Deep Thoughts into words, I am trying to clarify for myself what's important to me, so that I can live a life in which that stuff comes first. It's so that I can live a life that I believe in - just like she does.

C'mon Get Happyish

I decided to change the name of my blog. I realized that what was preventing me from sharing it with a wider audience (although my current audience of one, The Twin, will always be among my best) was that the title was just too earnest. Some days I am that earnest, but not all the time. Sometimes I like to land sassy side up.

Why Happyish? For one, I believe in setting achievable goals. For two, you would not believe how many blogspot domain names involving happiness are already taken.

Not to say that one couldn't sail right past happyish into the wide wide world of full-on, balls-out happi*ness* some days, but why set yourself up to fall short of the mark on days that are, all things considered, slightly above average. If you happen to knock it out of the park once in a while with straight up joy, all the better.

I think it acknowledges the reality that although it would be nice, you can't walk around in a effervescent glow of happiness at all times. Life is tricky; sh*t happens; happiness is slippery. So if at the end of the day you do all the adding and subtracting and wind up with a positive number, and overall you are happyish, then great. There are a lot more Greek Tragedy-esque ways it could've turned out. I mean, just read the newspaper. Happyish is nothing to sniff at.

Welcome to My Sweet and Sour Soup

Speaking of people you are totally jealous of whose idea you totally had too, here is the blog for The Happiness Project, the book I had really planned to write someday, except that someone already did. (She spends a year trying out all advice about happiness she can find.) It just came out in December and is a bestseller, and probably the only reason I haven't read it yet is abject envy. That, and my book budget doesn't generally cover new hardbacks.

However, the nice lady who had my idea keeps a lively and down-to-earth blog about her Happiness Project, and it includes a way to start your own Happiness Project group, something I'm pretty sure I was born to do. (Any interested participants? Comment at me, Gentle Reader.)

It's funny, I never understood the blogging thing really, except when I read blogs kept by family and friends, because they're like little portholes into the generally brilliant and lyrical internal worlds of loved ones. And when I wrote a blog to chronicle the boredom and degradation of the temp jobs I took, it was a really fun way to stay in touch, and tell people in detail about my life without having to call each one up individually. It was like sending a mass email that no one had to feel obligated to read if they didn't want to. But now that I have a very general subject matter (becoming a celebrant and what that will teach me about relationships; the desire for happiness; the hunger for meaning in life) I think I kinda get it more. There are other people writing about these matters dear to me, like this guy , a thoughtful Buddhist doctor, and this guy, a motivational speaker type who is notch more Type-A corporate than suits my personal preferences, but nevertheless is thinking about things that I think about.

I like reading these blogs (in fact I've been reading them this afternoon instead of doing things that have a more direct correlation to my current livelihood).This makes me wonder why I have hesitated at sharing this blog I started with family and friends. My family adores it when I write about anything, and when I kept the temping blog they were known to request posts when there was a lull.

I guess the thing is that topics like, say, Love and Hunger, cut to my quick, to places inside that I don't share with just anyone. I have always walked this tightrope - on one side, you have the most warm n' fuzzy, chicken soup for the soul, incense-lighting, bow-to-the-light-in-you-and-me gal you'll ever meet. On the other side, you have my deep appreciation for potty humor. I feel like I go back and forth all the time. One minute I'm all, yes! Let us dance most jubilantly with our spirit totems! And the next minute I'm like, seriously? You seriously considered naming your blog "Love, Happiness and Hunger"?

Sometimes I have a hard time letting gray areas be gray, rather than trying to parse out the black and white of it all. Maybe I can just let myself be both sweet and sour. In fact, I hope to turn this into my niche market as a Celebrant - someone who can be both down-to-earth and touchy-feely. (Spangles tells me this could be particularly appealing to clients of the male persuasion.) I will eschew pink, and bells, and doves, and hocus pocus. And yet I will try to have lots and lotsa heart.

I suppose it's always scary to put yourself out there. It's one thing to write about the minutiae of the day and gloss it over with a little patina of sarcasm to show everyone how cool you are and how everything just rolls right off your back. It's more difficult to let it all hang out, admit that you care and care deeply, tell the people about the things you guard most carefully in your heart. Reject my little jokey descriptions of the office and life goes on. Reject this - my longings, my nascent dreams, my Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey - and it's much more difficult to continue. (Plus people sometimes use the anonymity of the internet as license to be mean. Then again, some people don't even wait for anonymity.)

Still, what kind of person would I be if I spent all this time talking about the kind of person I would be and then not dig in my heels and admit it: I have feelings and hopes, I'm sensitive, I care what people think, I cogitate on things like how to be happy and what it means to love. The world can be harsh, and we're no dummies - we quickly learn how to make a protective shell around ourselves, be it with sarcasm or shyness or judgment of others or pretending we don't give two hoots. But I think that one of the ways I want to be with other people is open. I want to have the ovaries to reveal myself in all my cracked, insecure, mentally insane glory. Why?

Because, um...well, because that's how you connect with people. Because I want to be real. Because I want to tell the truth about myself. Because I don't want to spend my life in hiding, constructing elaborate facades to obscure my me-ness. And if that opens me up to the possibility of people kicking me in the gut when I'm at my most vulnerable, then so be it. That's on you, gut-kickers.

So here I am, world. Know me.