See if paying attention to the nature of the mind early in the morning makes your mind more alert throughout the day. Your thoughts certainly will be more tranquil. The conceptual mind that runs on thinking of good things, bad things, and so forth will get a rest. A little non-conceptuality can provide a much-needed vacation. ~ Dalai Lama
Happiness is a way station between too little and too less ~ Channing Pollock
For today’s post I decided to write about happiness and wanting less. You see we are all always, particularly as Americans, told that more is better. We’ll be happy when we get a bigger house, a pretty spouse, more kids, a nicer car. But that’s not the answer; the real answer is underneath all of that. What is it that you really need to be happy? Does what you need to do to make you happy require that you be rich or famous? Or is it that you simply haven’t truly addressed the question. This is to the core of why the Ministry of Happiness was created, to help all of us, you and me, to find out the true answer to the question, what makes you happy? What is it that you need in your life for you to live the happy and fulfilled life we all dream of living? Simple questions, with simpler answers than you might imagine. What is necessary to find them, is for you, me and all of us to take the time to sit down and really think about and answer that question.
Below is a link to an article that addressed this question magnificently and hits the point perfectly, enjoy and have a happy day my friends:
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-want-less-and-be-happy-about-it/
Happiness and the Benefits of Gratitude
Fear is Killing Your Happiness
Because of the great differences in our ways of thinking, it is inevitable that we have different religions and faiths. Each has its own beauty. And it is much better that we live together on the basis of mutual respect and mutual admiration. ~ Dalai Lama
To be able to look back upon one’s life in satisfaction, is to live twice. ~ Kahlil Gibran
A list has been flying around the internet from a nurse who does end of life care. She listed what she recalled the most common regrets that people had at the end of their lives. This was the list.
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard. (“This came from every male patient that I nursed,” Ware wrote).
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Many of these are themes that we have touched on in this blog and I think each are incredibly significant in our life and lead to number 5, letting yourself be happier.
1. This is hard, to live a life that is true to yourself, you by default must be somewhat selfish. However if you are going to be happy, it is a necessity that you work to approach this goal.
2. This is a problem for most Americans, there have been a rash of articles lately relaying that Americans are granted the least amount of vacation time in the Western world and are very worried about taking what time they have. This is something you must change in your life and yes boss, I’m talking to you as well.
3. Early in my life this was a problem for me, I was someone who very significantly bottled up his emotions and didn’t express his feelings. This left me angry, which led me to drugs and alcohol and a very out of control and dangerous portion of my life. I was one of the lucky ones, I hit rock-bottom quickly and was able to use that crash to put my life back together, a difficult process but one that has paid innumerable benefits in my life and brought me to where I am today.
4. Our lives get in the way, we lose people and I will never advocate hanging on to people who don’t respond to your calls and e-mails. However, reach out and try, many times it will be a brief conversation and people will fade away again. But some, some will hang on and reconnect and fill holes in your life, take the time and reach out. My best advice on this front and I’m half the way done myself and need to finish, is to write the really important friends a letter and tell them how important they are to you. I’d love to take credit for the idea but Neil Young beat me too it and the lyrics are below:
“One Of These Days”
One of these days,
I’m gonna sit down
and write a long letter
To all the good friends I’ve known
And I’m gonna try
And thank them all
for the good times together.
Though so apart we’ve grown.
One of these days,
I’m gonna sit down
and write a long letter
To all the good friends I’ve known
One of these days,
one of these days,
one of these days,
And it won’t be long, it won’t be long.
And I’m gonna thank,
That old country fiddler
And all those rough boys
Who play that rock ‘n’ roll
I never tried to burn any bridges
Though I know I let some good things go.
One of these days,
I’m gonna sit down
and write a long letter
To all the good friends I’ve known
One of these days,
one of these days,
one of these days,
And it won’t be long, it won’t be long.
From down in L.A.
All the way to Nashville,
From New York City
To my Canadian prairie home
My friends are scattered
Like leaves from an old maple.
Some are weak, some are strong.
One of these days,
I’m gonna sit down
and write a long letter
To all the good friends I’ve known
One of these days,
one of these days,
one of these days,
And it won’t be long, it won’t be long.
One of these days,
one of these days,
one of these days,
And it won’t be long, it won’t be long.
5. LET YOURSELF BE HAPPIER!!!!!!! The world can be a horrible and dark place, we live and die in the end alone. The hours between our birth and death are far too short to be miserable. There is unimaginable beauty in the world, there are things that you can do that no one else has ever done, places you can go that will blow your mind and experiences that will melt your heart. Find and experience all of them, and take a moment, even during your most terrible hours and days and think about these things and smile. Allow yourself to be happier!
Fear is Killing Your Happiness
Our Best Happiness Posts of 2015
My favorite Appalachian Trail Photos of 2015
Each one of us is responsible for the whole of humankind. We need to think of each other really as brothers and sisters and to be concerned for each other’s welfare. Rather than working solely to acquire wealth, we need to do something meaningful, something directed seriously towards the welfare of humanity as a whole. ~ The Dalai Lama
This has special meaning for me right now and I look at making a change in my career. I hope all of you out there reading this will also take a few minutes to think about the wisdom contained in these words.
Today I return to Deng Ming-Dao, had planned to write on happiness and enjoying yourself and bumped into this and decided he’d done it better than I would have, so enjoy.
Sleek sky of cobalt blue;
Water like nectar satisfies deeply.
Air sweeter than the best perfume;
Sunlight warms a grateful cat.
It is hard to believe all life is naught. Can’t we take happiness when it comes?
There is admittedly a great deal of suffering and horror in this world. But if we are to accept life’s sad parts, we must also embrace its good parts. As long as we are in this world, we must accept it all. If what comes our way is occasionally wonderful, no one should deny our enjoyment. We all know hat every rise is followed by a fall. Why dwell only on the dread of the future? As long as we have behaved responsibly, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the best of what life has to offer.
Look at a cat as she stretches out contentedly in the sun. There is no thought of the next moment, only the sheer enjoyment of the present. Rest Assured that she will still be able to clean herself, still be able to catch mice, and still be able to do al the things that a cat must do. But she is without anxieties, and so she is purely and totally who she should be. She acts as if she were nature’s favorite. And who is to say otherwise.
Happiness & Aging: Deng Ming-Dao
If you’ve read this blog for a while you know that I at times fall back to my daily meditation book, 365 Day Tao by Deng Ming-Dao. A piece from a couple of weeks ago has had me thinking and so I thought I would share his thoughts on aging. The last line is incredibly powerful, have a happy day my friends.
Lines on the face, tattoos of aging.
Life is proved upon the body
Like needle-jabs from a blind machine.
The older one gets, the more one is conscious of aging. We can barely remember childhood innocence and exuberance. We are surprised by the youthful vitality and unmarked face when we see earlier photos of ourselves. When we look in the mirror, we reluctantly acknowledge the aging mask. It seems that there is no escaping the marks of life.
Every experience that we have, everything that we do and think is registered upon us as surely as the steady embroidery of a tattoo artist. But to a large degree, the pattern and picture that will emerge is up to us. If we go to a tattoo artist, it is we who select the pictures. In life, it is we who select what we will become by the actions we perform. There is no reason to go through life thoughtlessly, to let accident shape us. This like allowing oneself to be tattooed by a blind man. How can you help but turn out old and ugly?
Whether we emerge beautiful or ugly is our sole responsibility
So it’s graduation season and as an educational administrator I’ve sat through three graduations so far and have one more on Monday night. Many of you will sit through multiple graduations over the next month, some of you may have already been through a few. And although we are there for friends and loved ones, the graduation speeches are usually terrible. The same old, go forth and be special, life will be good, blah, blah, blah. However, last week I sat through the best graduation speech I’ve ever heard. It was delivered by a friend and a colleague and it was honest and touching and fired up the gypsy in my soul.
The talk encourage the students to chase their dreams, their passions and to sample all that life has to offer, the text is below, presented with the permission of my friend, Kim. Enjoy.
“Some drink deeply and quickly from the well of formal knowledge….and others….well others sip more slowly and like to sample from here, there, everywhere….kind of like bees of the invisible….going from flower to flower oooh…trip to burning man. Yes. Climbing in Yosemite. Yes. Two for one. Definitely. Yes.
This class, on average—took 8 years to complete their associates degrees. Three of these students have earned over 100 credits. Most are close to earning a second or third associates in something other than what is listed in the program. One student worked in Haiti, Morocco, and Egypt, another studied in Australia for a year and half. Samplers, wanderers, adventurers—this group.
In honor of this class, the theme of my address today is….all who wander are not lost.
So what of this wandering, and finding your way ….in this increasingly complex world. It can be daunting.
My daughter and I were recently driving in Boston….and the road system is pretty confounding…as are the rules….for instance, we learned that a yellow light means five cars can go, and a red light, only three. We were about 45 minutes away from our home base and the G.P.S. system (which we nicknamed Miss Directed), ran out of battery and could not be plugged into the lighter because it was broken.
And when the bleeping lights and electronic voice stopped, I had no idea where I was. Absolutely no idea…I couldn’t even tell which way was north or south. So we stopped and asked for directions…..the man started with….you go to the second dunkin donuts and go east…..and then ended with “you can’t really get dere from he-ah.”
I had relied on technology to mediate my experiences, and in the process, sacrificed my own instincts.
It occurred to me that a coyote can always find his or her way back to the den after a hunt. And in the sierras, when I am backcountry skiing, I know where I am and how to get home, even in the dark.
I have never been lost while being attentive to my surroundings and trusting my wildish instincts.
“You can’t really get dere from he-ah”….I’m sure you have all heard that at some point in your lifepath. Punctuated with lots of “shoulds”, and well-meaning advice.
John Muir, like you, was also a sampler, a wanderer, an adventurer. And I think you will relate to a story he tells about his youth in Wisconsin. Seems John’s father was a stern and critical Scot, who was very hard on his son. And he asked John to dig a well on the family farm. Every day John would dutifully be lowered in a bucket down to the bottom of the very narrow hole and put soil in the bucket. One of the farm hands would pulley it up. Day after day he would do this, even though he didn’t like it and the well became quite deep. Around 75 feet down, he didn’t know what was wrong, but he started feeling woozy…..seems there were some noxious fumes that were seeping into the space….but he was unaware of how poisonous they were. Still, every day he would consent to be lowered into that space, and try with all his might to dig.
One day, when the fumes were really bad….he felt like sitting down in the bottom of the hole, so he did. He became dizzier and more clouded in his thinking and realized that he couldn’t move. He tried a few times, but his limbs quite simply didn’t respond. He was numb in his mind and in his body…And after some time, he thought….it’s OK…it doesn’t matter…and he gave in to giving up.
As he drifted in and out of consciousness….looking up the narrow passageway to the light…..he caught a glimpse of a tree branch shimmering as it caught the sun. And there was something in that image that spoke to him….called him toward the light and towards life.
And he said to himself, John, get in the bucket. But alas, he could not move. Get in the bucket….inch by excruciating inch he lifted his arm and put it in…and then one leg, and a torso…until at last his whole body was in the bucket and he was lifted to safety.
Soon thereafter, he decided the farm life was not for him, and he followed his instincts and headed west….where he discovered his beloved Yosemite Valley.
One of the stories he tells, later in his life, about being there took place during a storm in the valley. He climbed to the top of a 75 foot Douglas fir and clung to its branches as it danced madly in the storm. He describes it as whirling ecstasy as he swung round and round on that tree, shouting with utter joy.
A sampler, wanderer, adventurer….so how do we navigate, whether we be giving up in the bottom of holes….or clinging joyfully to trees dancing in the wind? How do we identify the noxious fumes—or the invisible things that are hurting us, before they render us unconscious? For some, that might be ideas we have about ourselves, or ideas others have about us, or a relationship that is not sustainable, or a job that is killing you. How do we return to our wildish wisdom and know what we are being called to do?
And I don’t know the answer for you…but I would suggest that we begin by
1. use the gps as an aid, don’t let it replace our inner knowing….we can listen to what others say about our lifepath, but in the end, only we know the way.
2.have compassion for yourself. see yourself with the soft eyes of non-judgment. When we take risks, we make mistakes, when we make mistakes, we learn from them and it is the integration of that learning that deepens us, enriches us, makes us far more interesting. As an example of how we use mistakes to make meaning…
Take a moment to think back over your life, and the thing you regret the most….and please don’t say it out loud…just think what that might be. Now figure out…was it something you did….or something you didn’t do….
For most, it is something you didn’t do….which means that the things you DID do…have become an important part of who you are, even if they felt like mistakes at the time…As humans, we tend to make meaning out of our actions…and learn from them.
And 3. Figure out what that tree branch is for you…that thing that calls you to the light and to life. Begin by paying attention to what you love with your whole heart, let that be your guide.
And then when someone says to you “You can’t get dere from he-ah”…this class says, with a twinkle in their eye….oh yes I can. And you did.
Today you have arrived, at a very concrete place. You have wandered, yes, and returned to this path. And it is time to pause, reflect, and celebrate.
As you receive your awards today, I want to tell you that there is invisible writing on the back of the diploma…..and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it….I will tell you what it says.
You are brilliant, and the Earth is hiring.(Paul Hawken line)
The Earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters today. Instead, it sends you the diamond glint of new fallen snow. Sunsets. The smell of pine needles after the rain. Ripe cherries, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. And it tells you over and over that there is a place for you and your gifts in the family of things.
So if you are the bottom of the hole…get in the bucket….and if you are at the top of the tree…hang on. And remember…..all who wander, are not lost.
Congratulations.
This post comes from zdeaconblue.wordpress.com it’s the weeks fun Friday post and a really nice sentiment and video, I think it will make you smile.
http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/fun-friday-dancing-with-matt/
Friends, genuine friends, are attracted by a warm heart, not money, not power. A genuine friend considers you as just another human being, as a brother or sister, and shows affection on that level, regardless of whether you are rich or poor, or in a high position; that is a genuine friend. ~ Dalai Lama
The Ministry of Happiness 