On Happiness

While shopping at the exchange book store a couple weeks ago, I came across the print version of The Happiness Project, after the blog by Gretchen Rubin about living out advice for happiness.  It was a cheap paperback, and the print was so small as to look blurry – or are my eyes aging? Reading that book would not make me happy; it would give me a migraine.

Anyway, the existence of this book seems to suggest that you can make yourself happy if you just do X, Y, and Z.  Keep your nails painted a happy color, organize your house, and set fresh flowers on the table - you’ll be happier than if you don’t.  Actually, after looking at the blog, I found that most of the advice is about being polite, smiling when you don't feel like it, and trying to make other people happy, which requires you to be happy yourself.  Start by telling yourself you're happy, and you begin to believe it.

But it seems that something is missing in the idea that happiness is something you can maintain for a length of time.  Isn’t happiness something of a fleeting emotion, not a state of being?  Maybe I’m spinning a different meaning for the word happiness than the author intends. Can you describe yourself as happy if you never are sad? Or if happiness is a case of living well, as Aristotle argues, then simply trying to live the examined life virtuously should be enough to be happy, or rather, content. Reminds me of that article I referenced some time ago about how people who seek their own happiness are sometimes unhappier than those who don't.

I have a problem with too much self-examination.  Am I happy now? Am I happy still? Why am I not happy?  I find myself most unhappy when I start asking myself these kinds of questions.  I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked if we like Guam.  I like Guam just fine when I am not thinking about whether or not I like it. But when queried, I can’t help but think of the things that could be better about it.  Not a lot of wildlife here, lots of rain, lots of potholes, lots of mold.  My husband calls this being pessimistic, especially when I mention it to people who might possibly entertain the notion of spending a few thousand dollars to come visit us, but I prefer the tag realistic.

The thing is, I don’t think about those things on a regular basis, especially when we’re out and about with other people or when they are hanging out at our house. We’ve gradually been adopted into a group of friends. We go to each other’s kids’ sporting events, we ate an early Thanksgiving dinner together, we hang out at the beach sometimes.  Last week we got together at Pizza Hut for a surprise party for one of the guys. It was just cake and pizza and all the kids chasing each other around while the parents talked, but it was fun. It made me happy. 

But I can wake up the next morning and make myself miserable just as easily by thinking about something I'm missing out on, or something I don't have or can't do.  I have to remind myself of that magnet that says, "Happiness consists not in being served but in serving others."

With Advent and the holidays approaching, happiness is much on the mind. How can I make this a happy season for the kids when they are not going to see their grandparents and cousins? They are not going to get all the toys on their lists. 


But we are planning to go to the school band concert and the hanging of the greens at the chapel, and we are semi-joking about wearing elf hats to carol around the neighborhood with these friends and then imbibe wassail and eat cookies together. This will thrill my youngers and make my elders plot ways to escape.

In the back of my mind I seem to remember my mom saying something about how her job wasn’t to make us kids happy. That’s actually a rather liberating feeling – my job isn’t to make my kids’ lives pieces of pie but to teach them to deal with what they are dished out. 

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t deliberately try to make them suffer, unless they’ve done something to deserve a dose of castor oil. And I waste a lot of time wrinkling my forehead trying to decide whether to let them do what they want to do or make them do what I want them to do, if it means a more frenzied schedule.

What I should ask myself before I give them something or give in to something is not whether this thing will make them happy, but whether it will add to, be neutral, or detract from what will help them live out their vocations.  I want them experience wonder and awe and joy on Christmas, but I don’t want those emotions to be tied to the gifts under the tree.  I’m trying to teach them to be loving and generous, to want to praise the greatness of creation and the Creator, to desire and attain eternity.  I want them to value excellence and beauty and truth.  And if that makes them happy, all the better.

Tarzan Falls and other things to be thankful for

Last weekend we drove about 4 miles, hiked about 40 minutes and ended up at this beautiful spot: Tarzan Falls.

Wild orchids are still blooming.

The top of the falls. This would have been pretty enough.

The teenagers trying to find a way down.

You can't really see it, but a little eel is stuck in the right arm of the Y-shaped crack.

A lesson in ingenuity and determination from a tree growing out of a rock.

Nature's spa.

Don't walk under the swarming wasps!
These are not the dreaded boonie bees that can sting repeatedly,
but some other large wasp.

Bromeliads along the way up. 

What I'm most thankful for.

What Would You Fight For?

Go Fighting Irish!
Their commercials might be better than the football team...

I admit partiality.... Dr. Fallon was one of the professors I studied with -- but that classroom is a lot nicer than the ones we used.

Happy Feast of Christ the King

A Sacramentary from the Getty Collection.

I can’t believe it is the week of Thanksgiving.  The sun is shining. We went snorkeling and hiking in shorts this weekend. I have a sunburn.

I know it’s snowing back in the states. But out here, we’re still in perpetual summer. I guess I’ve noticed that the Halloween candy bins are now full of Christmas candy, and in the front of the commissary, there are flats of pumpkin pie filling, canned cherries, canned yams, flour and brown sugar, but the reality of the season hadn’t really sunk in until we were invited to a Thanksgiving dinner last week with friends who are traveling over the holiday. 

And now today was the Feast of Christ the King.  We have twice attended parishes called Christ the King, and the one we belonged to used to put together quite a celebration for the feast day, complete with a group from the symphony playing at Mass. The service today was much simpler, but moving, nonetheless. Our priest gave a stirring homily about serving Christ, in worship and in the poor, and preparing for Advent, but more memorable was the blessing he gave to his Sacramentary. As he closed Mass, he explained how he had been given this book 17 years ago by his parents and had used it every day since then.  He got a little choked up as he prayed over it, retiring it, after its last use this morning. I wonder what he’ll do with it when he switches to the new missal. 

He started incorporating some of the changes several weeks ago, and really the only one that trips me up is the “And with your spirit.”

So now my spirit needs to prepare for the holidays, as does my body. We went to the Exchange this weekend, and the kids picked up the toy catalog. They’ve been crafting wishlists for the past 24 hours, asking for junk that I don’t want in the house. For instance, although we have a great wooden kitchen set I scored at a garage sale years ago, my five year old was getting spun into a tizzy describing how on Christmas morning she was going to wake up and find a new Little Tykes walk-in kitchen. It would be the biggest present in the room, and I would think it was mine, but then her dad would say, no, that’s for her! I quashed her dreams, saying that Santa would not bring things that we already have. Nor would he bring any of those the ugly dolls advertised lately – Monster High and the button eye dolls?   The Exchange stocks the newest and most popular toys – not the finest quality.

But there are not many other places to shop.  One of the nice side-effects of living on a small island is that shopping opportunities are limited. I can’t just run to Target or Walmart for one thing and spend $100 anymore. While a number of wives complain about this, I find it liberating to no longer feel compelled to browse through dollar bins. I'm freed somewhat from buying what I don't want or need because it's on sale. But I'm fearful my kids may turn out like what Thomas Merton describes: 

The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television. His head is filled with inane slogans, songs, noises, explosions, statistics, brand names, menaces, ribaldries, and cliches. Then, when the child gets to school, he learns to verbalize, rationalize, to pace, to make faces like an advertisement, to need a car and in short, to go through life with an empty head conforming to others, like himself, in togetherness."

In order to liberate my children from the gimmes, I trashed the catalog after they went to bed tonight. I would like to liberate them from the idea that Santa will bring them whatever they want, but even though I don’t promote Santa fantasies, I can’t bring myself to disabuse the youngers of their beliefs, and the olders haven’t taken the opportunity to deflate their siblings’ dreams. Perhaps since we're talking about ancient Greece, I'll have them copy this from Socrates: "He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have."

Furthermore, I’m going to make them write their lists of what they are grateful for as a handwriting list.  They so quickly forget how much they already have.  Maybe we’ll cut up pictures to make a gratitude poster, or at least try to do some activity that diverts their attention for a short time from what they want to what others need.

Since we don’t have family within a few thousands miles, we’re going to go serve dinner with the Salvation Army this year, something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m even going to dry out our own turkey to consume after our shift at the Salvation Army. We’ve put out an open invitation to some friends and some single junior officers to join us. Maybe nobody will come, but at least I’ll have the motivation to scrub the bathrooms.

It won’t be the same as being with family, but we’ll gather some photos and paste the cousins and grandparents into our poster. At least they’ll be present in thought.

Unguilty pleasures

I've been indulging again in juvenile fiction...

Firrst Word after Word after Word by Patricia MacLachlan -

Sometimes MacLachlan can be a bit too sweet. But I can't read her picture book All the Places to Love without crying, even when I'm not pre-menstrual. Her new chapter book for young readers was sentimental, but I was drawn into the story, and even better, my 9 yr old, who only wants to read Judy Moody or Harry Potter books, liked it.  Hurrah! Word after Word after Word is Maclachlan's response in novel form to "Why do you write" questions. I felt like I was in the classroom with the students, silent, listening to the mesmerizing voice of Ms. Mirabel.  My throat thickened when the fictional author dumps a bag of prairie dirt on the table and exclaims "This .... is landscape!"

Suddenly, I'm back home. I want to gather all that dirt up in my hands and shove it in my back pocket.  A touch of homesickness. A longing to return. The slightest twinge of regret that we didn't plunk down some theoretical cash for a rectangle of dirt in southern Indiana, and then pack some up in a Ziploc to bring along.

But here we are. And someday we'll miss here, I suppose. I appreciate that yesterday was one of those breezy, sunny days that brought hordes of kids out to the playground in the middle of November.  And I love the way you can just stick a twig in the ground, and it will sprout.  And nothing quite compares to the shock of discovery when you dunk your face underwater in the coral reef, and what looks like a bunch of rocks from the surface becomes a kaleidoscopic fantasyland of living creatures.

But the dirt is red here. If you dumped in out of a plastic baggie, it would thunk, all clumped together. It's clay.  It's resistant to movement.

Maclachlan admits in the author's notes that this book is somewhat autobiographical, and that she really has bags of dirt on her desk and next to her bed and in her pocketbook to remind her "of where I began as a child and the stories I brought with me." I have a friend who has a collection of sand in bottles from all the beaches she's visited.  Ms. Cash, the classroom teacher, has a bottle of ocean water. We've got quite a collection of little shells from past duty stations and vacations. But I wish I had a little bag of dirt to open and sniff every once in a while like a black organic drug, a sedative.

I suppose this emotional response was just what Maclachlan was after when she decided to write about words, "the writer's tool."

The other book I just consumed was When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, which was the Newberry winner a couple years ago, and the subject of a number of favorable reviews.  For a couple chapters, I questioned the reviews - the book is set in a gritty NYC apartment in the 70s, and the main character a sixth grade girl.  Where is this going to go? The way of Francesca Baby, that awful example of Scholastic after-school-special literature we had to read in 7th grade so we'd sympathize with children of alcoholics?

Fortunately, it doesn't go that way. Miranda, the main character, becomes more likable, and although the book starts out feeling like a melodrama, it makes a shift for the better. It's hard to describe without giving away the surprise plot element, which may be why it hasn't been selling like some of the fantasy fiction for preteens, a least that I know of. I wonder if kids who hadn't read A Wrinkle in Time would enjoy it though.

The apparent naturalism of this book did remind me of an reading by Norman Juster in honor of the 50th anniversary of The Phantom Tollboth on NPR last week.  He made the remark that at the time he had finished his book, publishers weren't interested in fantasy. They were afraid it would disorient children.  Now fantasy books take up 85% of the shelf space in the YA section.

And finally an unguilty pleasure that tastes like a guilty one: Chocolate Zucchini cake. A nod to the cuisine of my past. A guaranteed way to make kids like eating zucchini. Made some today in order to appease my twinge of homesickness.  A more appealing evocation of midwestern dirt than dirt.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake with chocolate chips:

1 c. sugar 

1/2 c. butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 c. flour

1/2 c sour cream (I used vanilla yogurt, since I didn't have sour cream)

1/4 c. cocoa

1 tsp soda

2 c. shredded zuke (I used two grocery sized - a little more than 2 cups)

6 oz. chocolate chips

1 c. nuts if you like them. 

Mix it all together and bake at 350 in a 13x9 pan for 40-45 mins or until done.

Can you see the zucchini?

St. Margaret of Scotland

Just because I liked this picture of Margaret, queen and  homeschooling mother of eight, yet never to busy to wash a dirty beggar's feet:

http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Scotland-History/StMargaretofScotland.htm

This one by William Hole from her rescue after shipwreck is pretty, too.

I like how she saw through her son's equivocation when he tried to protect her from the news of her husband's and elder son's deaths: "I know how it is."  (from here.)

Learning to read through metafiction

One of the delights of homeschooling has been discovering some new beginning reader books. Lately our favorite library books have been Mo Willems's Elephant and Piggie books.  Despite the antiquated, underfunded status of our library, it does have a section of brand-new books it receives through a grant program. These are loaner books, and my understanding is that after a period of time they will be passed on and a new set will arrive. By then, maybe we'll be tired of reading Elephant and Piggie, but maybe not.

My favorite so far.  Way better than Dr. Seuss. So much clever expression in so little text!

via: http://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/.a/6a00e5509ea6a18834015432ebd87e970c-pi

My five year old giggles just like elephant when she reads this.

And I'm happy she's enjoying reading a book about reading.