FOUND!

In the past 9 years I have lived at 12 addresses (not including the more transitory ones of a month or less) in 6 cities in 3 countries on 2 continents. Needless to say, in all this moving, things are lost. But! This past week some things were found!

• I lost my camera skiing in February. It was found and returned to me this past weekend!
• There are a number of CDs that I seem to have lost along the way….I found two of them under the seat of my car on Monday!
• Digital pictures – my old computer crashed (or something) – and I thought all of my pictures were gone. Many are – but some were recovered!

At times, all I see is how disjointed, delineated and fragmented my life is. It’s like looking at a Seurat painting up close and only seeing the individual dots of color and being confused at how a green dot, a red dot, another green dot etc., fit together. And then, stepping back and seeing a woman’s face emerge in a whole scene of leisure. Finding my pictures and some of my music allowed me to see the whole painting of my life. What I see is not so disjointed; the constellation of colored dots actually forms a coherent image of one woman journeying!

Also, I have found myself re-reading my roommate’s book, The Tibetan Art of Positive Thinking by Christopher Hansard.

Here is a bit on happiness:

Happiness exists of itself. In the same way that the sun releases warmth for our planet, happiness creates warmth for our lives. Everything is happy. The thought energy of happiness is already formed, we just need to accept it…Happiness is not to be found in the accumulation of material goods or particular events. True happiness comes from the sacred place within us and as we spend time in this place and increase our capacity for skilful thought energy, so we increase our capacity for happiness.

I myself am not versed enough to elaborate too much on skilful thinking but early in the book the author’s teacher tells him this:

“You are what you think. Thought directs all things. People pride themselves on how they think, but really it is thought that moves through people. Our thoughts create our lives, they make us sick, happy or successful. Our thoughts can pollute our planet through the actions we take. Thoughts on their own will gather like clouds in the sky, good thoughts coming together with other good thoughts and unskillful thoughts attracting other unskillful thoughts.”

Some things to think about.

May the day be sweet!

Philosophy of Happiness

I am very excited to be traveling on from Turkey but I must admit, it would have been nice have been able to attend this year’s Philosophy in Assos conference. The conference sounds like a real joy in terms of location and atmosphere and this year’s program is all about happiness! The program is full of interesting topics and heavy hitters – Christopher Shields was at CU when I was but I didn’t have the opportunity to take any courses with him – registration ends June 30th and while it is aimed at philosophy professors and students, it looks like anyone with an interest can apply to participate.

Something I have been very interested in lately is how definitions of happiness have changed, if at all, through the ages, and the last time I read a classical text on the subject was in one of my philosophy courses in college. It would be interesting to look at these issues again after I have been thinking about happiness and what it is / means etc., because of my own intrinsic desire to examine this subject and not because it is in a syllabus. It looks like this subject is talked about in the proceedings.
Yes, the conference does look like a good one indeed! If anyone reading this blog, I think there are only two or three people who do, but in case someone who does read this, does go, please let me know how it goes!

Spring in Ankara

Just three days ago we had some friends visiting us from Canada. We took them to the castle at the top of Ulus and then to dinner in Kizilay and then to a little smoky bar to hear folk music. It was a warm spring night and for the first time Ankara actually seemed nice to me. My jaded perspective was jarred into seeing something different through the eyes of our guests. Not that Ankara has ever seemed so horrible to me but it is the biggest city I have ever lived in (population near 4 million) and is undergoing a kind of urban renewal so the abandoned sixties style soviet looking buildings that first greeted me here are being transformed with new facades and updates and the city is starting to look almost sleek and stylish in parts. And in other parts, I have seen a donkey pulling a cart, open fires on the sidewalk and all sorts of rubbish on the side of the road. But in the spring, when the trees are green, flowers are in bloom and the nights are warm, things look much more attractive and I can see the charm of the capital of Turkey.

Ankara is a livable city but not one people around the world want to visit. Which is a bit sad. I think it’s nicer than Istanbul, actually. Of course, its not Istanbul but I personally think Ankara is a bit classier and more manageable. It doesn’t have the Bosphorus or skyline of Istanbul but it’s got some nice broad boulevards for walking, a funky old district (Ulus), a stylish embassy area and adjacent shopping and a fun, comfortable, relaxed dinner/drinking district. So a few nights ago, even though being here in Turkey has been overall very stressful for me, I was enjoying Ankara and thinking that overall I am happy to have had this experience. I don’t want to challenge myself in this way ever again, especially with the reality of the bomb two days ago in Ulus, but I have gained perspective, confidence, compassion and understanding by being here.

Happiness is tricky and paradoxical, as it seems that hard work; challenges, discomfort and patience are necessary conditions for happiness. That happiness only emerges from these sources – surely, that is not the case, but it seems to me that happiness does require pushing the envelope in terms of what we expect from others and ourselves. And also, being willing to forgive and accept to a huge degree when these expectations fall short or are not met at all. I suppose it’s that idea of reaching for the moon so that even if you miss you will still be among the stars. Although, more accurately, given what we now know, is the idea that you should reach for the stars so that even if you miss you may be near the moon or Mars.

I just wonder, how come no one ever said: happiness isn’t easy? I think we all hope that it will be and is, and that when we have happiness, life will be easy. But happiness is more like a job than a beautifully wrapped gift under the tree; happiness needs to be nurtured, noticed and something that is consciously sought: like money. We try to accumulate money, we always think about money and we are always after money. Well, I think happiness needs the same constant attention – it’s just that it’s a different kind of currency. And my feeling is it’s a good idea to attempt to spend your happiness notes in places your might not at first think worthy of them, and to look for them in places you least expect!

Reality Check

Envirowoman blogged about an article describing the huge amounts of plastic debris in the Pacific that is twice the size of Texas that is well worth the read, sad though it may be.
While the topic is not a happy one, being aware of the state of the world makes it much easier to make choices that ultimately make us happier as we choose things based on their positive affect on ourselves, others, and the environment. I don’t really like reading depressing news, and often I skip right over all those headlines about troops dying in Iraq and clashes in Lebanon not because I don’t care or I want to be uninformed but because reading about Elizabeth Taylor’s Van Gogh – though that too is controversial – is much more neutral and easier to deal with. Also, I like to read things related to animals – someone’s Berenese Mountain dog had a litter of 13 pups or the stories about the little polar bear in the zoo in Germany – these are heartwarming and always have cute pictures.

Pictures of men running with guns and bloodied bodies are not nice. Nor are pictures of turtles choked by plastic ties cinching their middles. But even though these things do not make me happy I shouldn’t only read about celebrity gossip, developments in science and other things that do not cause me emotional distress or cognitive dissonance because then I lose sight of how fortunate I am. I am not suggesting that we only read bad or troubling news in order to give us a foundation of comparison so that we know how great our own lives our, but this is one reason to do it. And if I said otherwise, I would be lying. But also, knowing what is going on allows us to again, make choices that we can feel good about. Feeling as though I am in control or part of something that is a force of good or change is a component of happiness. Granted, I haven’t been doing much in the way of keeping up on US politics since I moved away three years ago but I have become more aware of systems elsewhere and have been attempting to keep an eye on things (if only politicians were fuzzy animals with innocent eyes, I would pay so much more attention to them!) in an attempt to make better, more informed choices the next time I vote absentee.

Balancing what to read in the news is a hard thing for me though. I am not an unintelligent person but it’s hard for me to follow a lot of what is going on around the world. Which is to say, I am not particularly well informed about past events around the world. I took a number of history courses in high school – world history until the mid-1800s and US history until the mid 1900’s but I managed not to take any history courses at university given my majors and quite frankly I lack a lot of the knowledge base to keep up on things. But that is a lame excuse for not trying and I am trying to be more aware of things. But sadly, the plight of those two folks building their dream home (their third home!) on an island in Florida published on The New York Times online gets more of my attention. As do blogs on design, crafting, personal finance and happiness. But I do try to give myself a reality check because my own happiness ultimately, is in some small way tied to everyone else’s and in a huge way, contingent upon the well being of the planet.

Discipline

Steinbeck inspired me to try writing my own fiction. It’s a bit lofty I know, but what the heck? Right now is a good time for me to try it and I found this website that made it seem remotely possible. Plus, it is a way for me to write about an issue in my life that causes me much distress. So it’s more like therapy and thinking about the story and working on it makes me happy! So one goal related to discipline is to spend some time every work day on my story.

Also, I just decided to start running/walking six days a week. This too seems like a huge impossible task but so far I have made it four mornings in a row with a run/walk between 20 and 30 minutes each morning. The goal of this is to build up some strength and endurance in my body. I am a tall woman and fairly thin but with big hips and bum. I don’t mind my body so much and generally am quite happy with it. What I am NOT happy about is the fact that I have lived in a country without a car for almost a year, I walk everywhere and yet, I still feel tired after walking 20 minutes. This seems wrong, wrong, wrong, to me. I am going to turn 26 this month so it seems like now is a good time to try to build up some physical strength and endurance. If it smoothes out some of the bulgy edges that is fine but mostly I just don’t want to feel like I have the lung capacity of someone twice my age - which is how I feel lately.

Hence, the idea is to run/walk six days a week. This actually is not very much. And I did not set out with that idea on Day 1. On Day 1 I just wanted to see if I could do about 30 minutes of walking / running. And I could. I emphasize the walk/run idea because I do not run for 30 minutes because quite frankly, I am just too out of shape for that. But I did some reading on websites, which suggest that the best way to build up strength and endurance is to start slowly by interspersing intervals of slow jogging with fast walking, so that is what I am doing.

I do know though that one of the keys to performance and improvement and production in ANY area or skill is consistency. I think back on how I used to practice the violin an hour and a half a week thinking that made up for not practicing for five days but realize now that if only I had practiced even just 15 minutes a day instead of lumping it all in one day a week, I might be doing something else with my life. Although I have no natural rhythm so that is unlikely! But I also thought about this idea of short consistent practice in terms of other habits. Like brushing your teeth. Most of us brush our teeth twice a day for a few minutes and that keeps them fairly clean and healthy. But think! If we thought that brushing once a week for 30 minutes were the equivalent of all those mini sessions the state of our teeth would be very different! Of course, it’s better than no brushing at all but the effects are not even comparable. So thinking that taking care of my physical self is like taking care of my teeth prompted be to make it a goal to run/walk six mornings a week.

I have to admit that I have yet to want to do this run/walk each morning. No, I’d much rather sit at home and have my breakfast while surfing the web. But I do truly feel better even once I am just out the door and walking outside - it is very warm here now so I do this in the morning between 7am and 9am before it gets too hot. And when I have finished my run/walk, I do feel good. Not great. That would be an overstatement but I feel ready to start my day. So really, this is hugely about discipline for me. About just getting on with it even though I don’t really want to.

Also, when I took some of the tests on Martin Seligman’s site, the number of questions related to goal setting and discipline struck me. I don’t know much about his research apart from what I have read in my undergraduate pysch textbooks (I do a very different kind of psychology) but it makes sense to me that happiness has a lot to do with discipline. This is related to feeling in control of things, being productive and achieving goals which one sets. Happiness seems very related to setting challenges for oneself and then tackling those challenges consistently in smallish increments everyday. This of course, results in achieving goals and conquering challenges while not letting them overwhelm you. Let’s see if I am singing the same tune in two weeks time!

Sweet Thursday

I have just read Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday and I have wanted to share a few excerpts for the past two Thursdays. I can't upload the image I drew though and it is frustrating me so even though I like my posts to have an image at the top, this time, words alone will have to suffice.

There is too much to post at once so I will just have to post the joy I discovered in this book over a series of days. I forgot how much I enjoy Steinbeck. I am remembering how happy reading makes me…

From Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday:

“Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the bastard Time. The end of life is now not so terribly far away - you can see it the way you see the finish line when you come into the stretch - and you mind says "Have I worked enough? Have I eaten enough? Have I loved enough?" All of these, of course, are the foundation for man's greatest curse, and perhaps his greatest glory. "What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me?" And now we're coming to the wicked, poisoned dart: "What have I contributed in the Great Ledger? What am I worth?" And this isn't vanity or ambition. Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay, no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.

Doc's greatest talent had been his sense of paying as he went. The finish line meant nothing to him except that he had wanted to crowd more living into the stretch. Each ended with its night; each thought with its conclusion; and every morning a new freedom arose over the eastern mountains and lighted the world. There had never been any reason to suppose it would be otherwise. People made pilgrimages to the laboratory to bask in Doc's designed and lovely purposelessness. For what can a man accomplish that has not been done a million times before? What can he say that he will not find in Lao-Tse or the Bhagavad-Gita or the Prophet Isaiah? It is better to sit in appreciative contemplation of a world in which beauty is eternally supported on a foundation of ugliness; cut out the support, and beauty will sink from sight. It was a good thing Doc had, and many people wished they had too.

But now the worm of discontent was gnawing at him.”

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