Tonight our weekly tour around the web to provide you with some resources to help with your personal journey to happiness, have a read and a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
How to be Happy: Tips for Cultivating Contentment
Seven steps to being a happier person
10 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Happier
20 Hard things you need to do to be happy
The 15 Habits of Supremely Happy People
Delusion
For me, it is better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, no matter how satisfying or reassuring. ~ Carl Sagan
Ahh, this is one of those really annoying questions I ask once in a while, like what is the price for being you? But it is near the end of the year, a time that people seem to be a little more introspective and look back on the previous year. So I thought I’d venture out a bit tonight and ask you, and me, what is your most persistent delusion? I have very often said that human beings have two super powers, rationalization and denial. And what is denial but accepting of a self built delusion.
This is not an easy question to answer, first of all by its very definition, a delusion is something we don’t see. So it takes some effort and some thought and honestly, that’s the reason it’s such an important question to answer. So I’ve spent most of the day, I started writing this piece this morning, thinking about my most persistent delusion. To be fair, we all have multiple delusions, but what’s the one you hang onto the most.
So, what I settled on today was that my most persistent delusion is that I don’t need any help. Without a doubt I’m a loner, without a doubt I’m about as independent as a human gets, without a doubt living this way I have built a happy and successful life. But we all need people, even if it is small ways, even if it’s not often, we all need other people and I need to be more open to going to others for assistance.
In our society people seem to carry a lot of delusions, we believe that quitting is the worst thing you can do. So people stay in relationships and other commitments that are absolutely terrible for them because they don’t want to quit. We suffer from delusions that we are not good parents, not good friends, even when we have done the best we can.
So take some time my friends, think about what you might be telling yourself that just isn’t true and find ways to make things better and more honest. Knowing yourself better is a great step to having happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Fear is Killing Your Happiness
Overcoming Demons to Become Happy
San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every house a poem, every dweller within immortal. This is the whole truth. ~ William Saroyan
A quick post tonight, I did a lovely walk through San Francisco yesterday, starting to explore my new home. So I took BART into the Embarcadero Station and started from there. I made a quick stop at Embarcadero Plaza to check out the Bastille Day Celebration and watch some pretty amazing Tahitian dancers.
From there a quick selfie with Bay Bridge behind the Ferry Building.
I headed down the piers until turning left and climbing the 400 or so stairs up to Coit Tower.
The climb up Coit Tower’s steps is a slog, no doubt, but it’s also beautiful with lots of flowers and little surprises and gardens along the way like this one.
Even got to watch a Satanist working on a little ritual, the Earth didn’t open up,
so I moved on down the hill, across Lombard Street down through North Beach to Columbus Avenue. Rolling past Joe Dimaggio Park,
And saw that some of the locals had their drying box out drying their fish.
I bounced down Columbus Avenue to the Fisherman’s Wharf area
Walked up through the mall-like madness that is a Saturday on Pier 39, grabbed a quick hot dog, saw the president and the sea lions
then back up the piers back to the Embarcadero and BART, although it’s never really boring in the city.
Alcatraz in the mist as seen from Coit Tower
All in all it was about 6-8 miles and three hours walking in the beautiful San Francisco Summer weather, mid-60s and sunny with a breeze. Great exercise and a fun day. Sometimes it’s important to just enjoy what we have around us, hope you are doing the same and have a good day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell. ~
So, the image above may not strike you as something you’d see on a happiness blog, but stick with me, there’s a connection.
The Exorcist was released when I was nine years-old, I remember my mom going to see it with a friend. That day she’d made a big pot of pea soup, as you can tell from the image, a choice that would turn out to not be the best idea before seeing that particular film. It would be a couple of years later before I would finally get to see it. This was the early 70’s and it was an R rated movie. I can’t exactly remember if the first time I saw it was our first VCR player, HBO or if I convinced my mom, or a friend’s mom to let us see it in the theater. But I loved it and found it to be the scariest film I had seen up to that point.
Shortly thereafter one night, I was happily sleeping in my bed when suddenly, just like in the movie, my bed actually levitated and began to shake violently. Being woken up that way was utterly terrifying. And seriously, my bed WAS levitating and bouncing around, I began screaming, my mother rushed into the room and I could see on her face was a bit shaken as well, at least until she saw the tail. You see our dog was terribly afraid of loud noises like thunder and there was a storm going on. He had decided that safety was under my bed and he didn’t quite fit. So when he crawled under, violently shaking he actually lifted the box spring off the floor so my bed seemed to be levitating. Now that I was awake, he of course decided safety was in the bed with me, but that was ok, he was a great, if a bit nutty, dog.
The point of this story is that no matter how intense, how convinced you might be of something, it’s always important to a breathe and consider all of the possibilities. We all encounter things in our life on a regular basis that tweak us off. Something is written or said to us, that in the moment, we interpret as being meant to be offensive when, upon further reflection, we realize there’s another possible explanation. I think it is also important that we be careful that we don’t look for things to offend us. If we can, in general, assume people have the best intentions, we can reduce the amount of stress in our life that way. Sure, we’ll be wrong sometimes but we’ll be less stressed and have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Rev Kane and a hiking friend
Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas. ~ Edward de Bono
I don’t look like a Reverend, or a Dean or some people may argue I don’t even look like a nice guy. Looking not much differently than in the picture above I was once kayaking at Moss Landing near Monterey, CA. I saw a woman in another kayak start to paddle my way, stop, start, stop and then finally with great resolve paddle straight at me. I found it odd and eventually she pulled up alongside me and said hello. She was a volunteer who talked to people about the various species in the area and answered questions. After I’d explained I was an ecologist and likely more trained than her, she smiled and said goodbye. Then, she stopped and told me that coming up to me was her big challenge for the day. I looked confused and she told me she was completely intimidated and afraid of me because I looked so mean, and that coming up to me was an act of bravery and she was so happy that I turned out to be so nice.
Our perceptions are often wrong and my atypical appearance given the titles I possess often confuses people. We must overcome the reactions to our initial perceptions and look a little closer. I truly believe that seeing the world as it is, instead of how we believe it to be will bring us closer to happiness because it brings us closer to reality. The reason I decided to talk about this tonight was because recently I’ve had a string of these type of interactions, so I thought I would share as a way to remind all of us to guard ourselves against our own misperceptions.
Rev Kane at Mardi Gras in Mobile, AL
I was in the grocery store recently and ran into a woman I work with and she was with her young daughter, probably 3 or 4 years old. I said hello and the little girl got shy and wrapped herself on her mother’s legs. As I passed by she said to her mother, “was he a boy or a girl?” Her mother said, “Mr. Kane is a boy,” “but I thought only girls had pony tails,” the little girl replied. I laughed. I found it funny because she’d asked if HE was a girl and although I have a full beard, apparently the pony tail had more power. I like that my confusing presence has opened her little world a little bit.
The little statue I have pictured above is one of my favorite pieces of art that I owned. Recently my landlord’s wife was admiring it, telling me how much she liked it. We talked about the artist a bit and suddenly she says, “oh, God, it’s flipping me off I hadn’t seen that.” She was suddenly no longer interested in the piece. I thought it was cute that because the piece was aggressive she suddenly found it ugly. Same piece, just another perspective, another perception and everything was different.
Rev Kane in his first year at Burning Man
Watch your perceptions my friends, look for truth and have a happy day. ~ Rev Kane
Happiness and the Benefits of Gratitude
Fear is Killing Your Happiness
Rev Kane relaxing in the arctic snow flurries
Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful, and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun. ~ Don Miguel Ruiz
I love this quote and have written on returning to a child-like state before, it is a basic tenet in many eastern religions, the idea that in many ways we were born perfect beings and the best way to return to that state is to become child-like, not childish, but child-like. Tonight I am writing my 1000th post on the Ministry of Happiness Blog, it does not seem possible. I started this blog six years ago after returning from a twenty-two day trek in the Himalayas, a trip that obviously incredibly impacted my life. I wanted a venue to take the things I had researched and learned in my quest to overcome my own bouts of depression, and share it with others. My hope, that by publishing what I learned, I might help one person, if I did I would consider the project a success. Initially I thought that once I got to a 100 posts I’d call it quits.
Rev Kane and a hiking friend
Of course, 1000 posts later, that didn’t happen. Why? Well simply the feedback I got and continue to get about the Ministry of Happiness from its followers has been more positive than I could have hoped for. Instead of merely being a vehicle to help others, writing this blog has also helped me and transformed my life. The blog has changed over the years, it has broadened its focus to reflect my own interests in art, poetry, photography, adventure and travel as well as providing positive news and resources. I have become more and more of a proponent of happiness through action, that you have to effect change to become happier. That the best way to effect this change is through changing habits and getting out of your comfort zone. Then of course, if you’re going to talk the talk, and you want to be credible, you need to walk the walk.
So walk the walk I have, over 15 months ago I effected massive change in my life, sold my house, quit my job and hit the road. Along the way I did a bit of walking, 1000 miles on the Appalachian Trail. I have even written a book about that experience that I hope to have out in the next couple of months that I’ll be calling Appalachian Trail Happiness. There were other adventures, swimming with whale sharks and photographing Polar Bears. I saw a lot of beauty over the last 15 months including a northern light show in the Arctic that was beyond my wildest dreams. I changed the way I journaled about my adventures by coming up with a system of three questions to answer each day. What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today? What did I learn today? What made me happy today?
I hope that when people read about all of this they get one over arching message from all of it. Yes you can! You can make changes, you can have adventures, big or small. But most of all, you CAN be happier than you are today. If that message gets across to folks and they can put it into action than I really will have accomplished something with this work.
More than just reminisce tonight I want to talk about life and what’s next. If anyone ever writes my biography they should steal the title from the Grateful Dead and call it, What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been. You know we all start out as those perfect creatures in life and then ironically what gets in the way of us remaining that, is our life. We experience all manner of disturbances from without and within, family troubles, sickness, death, money problems. Our life and the responsibilities in our life, the choices we make can sometimes lead us into very unhappy places. That was where I ended up, a little over thirty years ago I was an angry young man, an alcoholic, abusing drugs, I had just failed out of college. People around me thought I was suicidal, it was bad. I hit rock bottom and was able to build from there. But even fifteen years ago, sober, building a career, I was still an angry man who fought through bouts of depression. My life from the outside was functional and fine but inside I was hollow and black. But the one thing that I had held onto from my most desperate point was one thing, it’s my fault.
Personal responsibility is a powerful concept, there are things none of us can control, but there are far more things that we can control. Most of all, we can control our choices and how we choose to respond to the world. Over the last fifteen years I’ve worked hard to find ways to control my internal anger, through writing, through finding ways to forgive people. None of it was easy, none of it happened quickly, but it happened. I began to mellow out the depressive dips I sunk into, I began to be generally happier. My life got better, not just from a surface view by outsiders, but internally where it mattered. Eventually I came to the Ministry of Happiness at a point when I was really, for the first time since the early innocence of childhood, a happy person.
I’ve worked hard since then to become happier and at the core that has meant one thing, trying to become more of the person I really want to be. We all have an idealized version of who we want to be, it’s a concept they use brilliantly in the first Matrix film. For me that person is very free, unconcerned with the opinion of others who are not in my inner circle. That person travels and writes, makes time for gardening and artistic pursuits. My idealized self is someone who is physically fit and spontaneous, grateful and kind. A person who is actively working on their bucket list because of an understand of the fleeting and precious nature of life .
At 51, it doesn’t seem possible that I’m in my 50’s, I feel like I’m getting there. I really feel like I’m making progress at being that person. At the same time I’m becoming very aware of the clock. I can realistically, barring some random accident or illness, expect to live another twenty years. When I write that it chills me, only twenty years, it is not enough time. That’s a little over 7000 days, suddenly each of those days seem really, really valuable and for good reason, they are, as have all the ones that have come before. And like most of us, I’ve squandered far more than I would like to admit. The idealized me doesn’t waste a day lightly and neither should you my friends.
All of this work is really just a gentle unfolding of what was there all along. The real work is clearing all of the layers of crap that I and the world have piled on. I’m thankful that all of you are here for the ride. Readership continues to grow, the number of followers has now topped 6200 and rising. I wish you all would comment more, but it’s the nature of blogs that most people don’t, I can see from the page views that you’re out there reading. So thank you all very much for your support and who knows, maybe some day I’ll be sitting down writing my 2000th post, let’s hope so, and let’s also hope we’ve all had lots of happy days in between. ~ Rev Kane
Fear is Killing Your Happiness
Our Best Happiness Posts for 2015
Revisiting Some of Our Best Posts & Pictures
There are Angels Among Us: A True Story of Giving & Kindness
So this question is one I get frequently. It usually starts with the standard question, are you married? You see in America, the script we’re supposed to follow says that as an adult you’re supposed to get married. So the question always starts there and then of course they assume that I must have been divorced. When they found out I haven’t been divorced, I get the statement/question in that weird and confusing tone, so you’ve NEVER been married?
Now the tone of that statement is always weird and it’s a really heavily loaded statement because it packs another question inside of it, which is what the hell is wrong with you? It’s an especially fun line to get on a first date. Because obviously I must have wanted to get married, it’s what people do, so if I didn’t there must be something wrong with me.
When people push and really want an answer to this question I have several options. I can go with what Bukowski said:
I could go with my granny’s theory on the subject, which is that the reason I’m not married is that my parent’s codependent wreck of a recurring marriage soured me on the idea. I loved my granny but insight into the complexities of my twisted mind was not her strength. Happily, and luckily for me, her strength was utter and complete unconditional love.
I could go with what most people quickly assume, I have a fear of commitment. I find this one particularly offensive if I’m being honest.
I could go with the quick answer that I often give, it’s near the truth and seems to satisfy people well enough to end the question. That answer, is that the timing was never right, I never met the right woman at the right time. And that answer is pretty close to the truth. The added layer is that marriage was never a priority for me. You see that script I mentioned at the beginning, that society has set out for us, well I’ve never really bought into it. Had I found the right woman at the right time I would have been happy to have gotten married. Of course, anyone who knows me, knows that any marriage I would have been part of would have not been standard fare.
But given that marriage wasn’t a priority, and the realities of my nomad existence, that I never got married is no real surprise. I wrote a piece a last night about Marriage and Love and talked about how to me true love is true acceptance. I’ve been blessed enough to feel that once, but the situation and the timing were unfortunate and so it never happened. But I can tell you, that level of acceptance was magnificent and changed my life.
What my point is in doing this post tonight comes down to this. We don’t all follow the standard script. Because someone has taken a different path doesn’t make them wrong or weird and we should stop making them feel that way. And please, stop saying to women who aren’t married, “but don’t you want to have children.” It’s such a loaded statement, what they rightfully here is, my god if you don’t have children soon you’re a complete loser who has wasted their life. Please stop making people feel bad because they’ve made a choice different from the one you made, or the one society tells us should have been made.
We are all individuals and the best thing we can do for each other is give each other love and support and help all of us have happy days. ~ Rev Kane
Are You Noticed, Valued, Loved?
Happiness is Love and Unconventional Wisdom
I have not ended up where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be ~ Douglas Adams
I moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1994 and very soon after I met my friend Chad. He’s a likable fellow and as such I immediately liked him. However, what Chad would come to be in relatively short order is one of the most interesting humans I’ve ever known. He’s a brilliant guy and the special part of his brilliance is that Chad doesn’t see things the way you or I do. He considers angles we often miss. It would not be unusual at all to roll into the brewpub in town and find Chad at the bar with some found object. Not some crappy little item but some map or piece of art or something else that should utterly not have been on the street. I always loved just talking with Chad, smart, positive and a generally happy fellow who is thoughtful and kind. Now, 3000 miles away I miss our chats.
One day at the bar Chad said, “I wonder how far it is to walk to the ocean from here.” It’s an interesting conversational topic and for most that’s all it would be, not for Chad. Shortly thereafter my friend Chad and his dog Sally was in fact going to walk to the ocean. I had not known the answer to his initial question beyond the fact that is was really, really far. The link below, shared with his permission is my friend Chad’s travelogue of that trip. It will take a few minutes to read, but it’s fantastic. The story is interesting, a little suspenseful, utterly insightful about our fellow humans and will restore a bit of your faith in humanity. Give it a read, and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
There are Angels Among Us, A story of Kindness and Giving
If you continuously compete with others, you become bitter, but if you continuously compete with yourself you become better. ~ Anonymous
One of the things about moving to a new place is meeting new people. This is something that I’m not particularly good at. It usually takes me more time than most for me to build up any kind of a social circle. This time around I’m doing a little better than I usually do and as a result I’ve been fortunate enough to have some interesting conversations, including some fairly deep ones. Some of the new people I’ve met have been deep thinkers and in the process of the getting to know me have asked some really good and deep personal questions.
Although I’m someone who has spent more than his fair share of time diving into his own head, I haven’t really been there in a while. My most recent year of travel saw me in a really active frame of mind, focused on my situation and travels more than myself. So in these recent conversations I’ve been asked to dive back into myself a little bit and it’s always nice to revisit that introspective part of myself. A realization has come out of that exercise, I may be happier right now than I have ever been in my life. Now, that’s a bold statement, and I don’t mean that I’m happier than any spike of happiness I’ve ever had, but that consistently, on a day to day basis I’m consistently happier than I’ve ever been.
There are a lot of reasons for this, there are of course recent reasons. I’ve taken a new job that looks like it’s going to be a really good fit. I’m living someplace that is fascinating, has great weather and being so close to San Francisco I get to explore a place I haven’t spent nearly enough time in. Additionally, being the attraction San Francisco is, I’ve already had the pleasure of having one friend come through, two more in three weeks and another a couple of weeks after that. I also have friends who live in the area who I will soon make the effort to visit and spend time with. Add to that the new beginnings of a local social circle and things are really good. But that is really only half the story.
The other half of the story is the work that I’ve done over the last thirty plus years. That’s of course a funny phrase, working on yourself, so what do I mean? Well for me, I was unhappy for a long time and fought some heavy depression. There was a lot of anger and despair in my heart and it manifested by turning the anger inward on me and killing my mood. I was almost always functional, I just wasn’t happy. I’ve written about it before, but I was an angry young man, angry at my parents, my situation, hell the universe in general. I didn’t have a lot of coping mechanisms, so I turned to food, booze and drugs. None of them helped of course, not for long anyway, just kind of numbed and dulled everything out.
So eventually I had to get reasonable, had to do something that actually improved my life. That’s when the work started. By this I mean I spent time looking at myself, thinking about my choices, my actions and how they impacted my life and my happiness. Eventually this meant doing some of the big things, finding ways to forgive the people who’d hurt me. Letting some of the people in my life go and more importantly letting some things I was holding onto go, the things that grind around in your brain making you crazy. I had to change some of the ways I thought and acted and the type of decisions that I made. I had to discover ways to burn off the excess energy that would eat me up. That was where my writing came into play, I found that through writing poetry I could burn off the negative energy and then, eventually, through writing about happiness could help build and improve my own happiness by helping others build theirs.
I don’t want to make this sound too easy, the idea is not complicated, the implementation however is a different story. I started in one form or another working on myself thirty-five years ago. I saw results, but it took me into my early forties before I really felt different. It is only now that I truly feel a legitimate sense of happiness and contentment. The work is not over, we can always be better. But I’m here to tell you my friends that the work is worth it. As a soon to be fifty-fiver year-old man, if I’m average I’ve got about twenty years left to live. Twenty years to do all that I’d like to do, to make a mark on my eight nieces and nephews, to make sure that I leave this life with few regrets, in the end, that’s about the best we can do. Now I might get hit by a piece of space junk falling out of the sky tomorrow, but if not, if I get my twenty years, or even more, it’s good to be at the place I’m at mentally while trying to have happy days my friends. Given that most of you likely aren’t has screwed up as I was, hopefully the work you can do won’t take you, as long as it took me, and you can have even more happy days than I do. ~ Rev Kane
Love is a naked shadow,On a gnarled and naked tree ~ Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
What I’ve always liked about the poetry of Langston Hughes is that what he wants to say is right there in front of you, raw, passionate but plain to see. Here’s a couple of his better known pieces, enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
I hope you enjoyed a couple of pieces of the poetry of Langston Hughes, he was one of the early creators of a unique style that some have called jazz poetry. Call it whatever you want his words are powerful.
The Ministry of Happiness 