Happiness on a bed of nails?

Posted on June 10, 2024 by Michael Kane
Screenshot

Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded Consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind. ~ Patanjali

Happiness on a bed of nails?

Like many other humans who have a job done primarily at a desk, I keep my tension in my upper back and shoulders. I also don’t have great posture, have never had great posture, if I had a dollar for every time I was told to stand up straight…

The last couple of weeks my back has been particular bad. I spent a little too much time laying on the couch, it puts my back at an awkward angle and doesn’t allow it too relax. I know this, but it’s comfortable in the moment and I’m a lazy man. So my back has been a complete mess. I haven’t found a good massage therapist where I live and the nearest good one I know of, is too far to travel to unfortunately.

So I’ve been doing what I normally do, stretching, flexing my back on a device I own and doing self massage using a tennis ball against the door. All of this helps, as well as staying off the couch. So my back was getting incrementally better. Of course my back hurt and that’s the time you see every chirp wheel, yoga routine and back stretching ad. I’ve also been inundated with ads for Shakti mats and I’ve had a friend recommend this to me as a way to help me get better sleep.

Now if you don’t know what a Shakti Mat is, technically it’s an acupressure mat, but when you take a look at them, they are in fact a minor torture device. I stuck my hand on one of the tines the second I unpacked it and it hurt like hell. They tell you with the mat that it will promote better circulation and relaxation in your back, that sounded great. They also tell you that the first forty seconds will be intense. So I initially laid on it with a t-shirt on but I could tell it was dulling the effect too much. So, I took my shirt off, and the first forty seconds is fucking intense! The swearing is required to truly represent the intensity. You do get used to it, during the first forty seconds that doesn’t seem possible. I expected not to last the recommended twenty minutes and set my phone alarm for six minutes. I made the alarm at six minutes and then extended out and did the full twenty minutes. You can’t move around, as soon as you do it sets you back to the first forty second feeling again.

They describe a range of changes you’ll go through as you lay on the mat, from pain to prickly, to your back feeling really hot, to relaxation. I didn’t expressly feel all those stages, but remarkably after a couple of minutes it actually is quite comfortable. So I’ve been tracking my progress.

Day 1 – Learned a lot the first day, needed to change around my set up a bit, but surprisingly it was relaxing. Although I’m doing it on my bed which is supposed to make it less intense.

Day 2 – The set up is now solid and I’ve added listening to a twenty minute sleep meditation on YouTube, not sure how much it’s helping my back muscles in addition to my normal routine, but it’s definitely a good way to relax and get back into meditating each night.

Day 3 – It felt a bit routine tonight, didn’t change the set up at all and I say routine, once the initial period passed. Laying down on the mat honestly doesn’t get any easier and getting up off of the mat is just as painful but happily briefly so.

Day 4 – Skipped the mat tonight, totally exhausted when I went to bed.

Day 5 – I’m enjoying the 20 minute guided sleep meditation I added to the practice, both as a timer and as a way to help keep me focused on my breath, it’s very relaxing.

Day 6 – Same as day 5, tried a different sleep meditation tonight, not as good, will go back to the one I’ve been using.

Day 7 – Stayed up way too late, really tired, skipped the mat tonight.

Seven day update, I can say that there is some benefit for sure in terms of sleep. I’m actually falling a sleep more quickly and feel like I’m sleeping more deeply. Still up two to three times a night but that’s more of a prostate/blood sugar issue.

Day 8 – Decided to up my game a little, have put the mat down on my meditation rug, directly on the floor and laid down on it tonight. Definitely much more intense, had I started on the floor I’m not sure I would have lasted the full 20 minutes early on. The initial intensity and yes, read that as pain, was higher, to the point I actively felt my body tensing against it and had to force my shoulders and legs to relax. Once the first minute or so had passed however, it was a very similar experience. What has shown up after is that I can feel the effects of the pressure much longer after getting off the mat. But damn, I need to learn how to levitate off the mat, getting off, after finally feeling good and relaxed sucks.

Day 9 – 11 Quick trip to New York so I wasn’t using the mat.

Day 12 – Was a little worried about returning to the mat after a few days off, but except for the first minute, it was sailing through my breathing and meditation as always.

Day 13 – Honestly it’s getting to be a bit routine, other than the first minute and getting off the mat which still and I think will always suck.

Day 14 – In addition to the mat each night I do self massage against a door using a tennis ball. I do this primarily to work on the muscles around my shoulder blades which are always tight for me. My old massage therapist and I used to jokingly call them my angel wing knots, teasing that this is the base where I lost my angel wings. This is of course, up for debate. What I’ve noticed is that these knots have been consistently smaller and less tight than normal. I have to feel that the shakti mat has had something to do with this.

So my recommendation is that if you’re having tension issues with your back, the shakti mat is worth a try. Of course I also believe the benefits both to my back and sleep are related to both the mat and the twenty minute meditation that goes with it as there are well-documented benefits to consistent meditation.

So my friends, lay down on a bed of a nails, it makes for happier nights, you know, except for the first and last minute. ~ Rev Kane

1955: Mike Costello, otherwise known as Blondini or the White Yogi, lying on a bed of nails whilst balancing a woman on his chest. (Photo by Reg Coote/BIPs/Getty Images)
Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Happy Surprise

Posted on June 3, 2024 by Michael Kane

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us. ~ Boris Pasternak

A Happy Surprise

Mostly because big brother lives 3500 miles away, my mother rarely has her three children together at any one time. Last weekend my brother, sister-in-law and three children decided to take the train up from NYC to see my mom. My sister who lives locally was going to join them for lunch in the town I grew up in. I was included on all of the group texts between everyone including my aunt, Mother and my father. Within the group text my brother happened to screen shot the train his family was taking upstate. This planted a seed of an idea in my head. The seed began to grow and realizing my parents and aunt are all in their eighties, who knows if this group will ever be together again. So the seed of an idea bloomed into a full plan.

I booked a flight east on Saturday, booked a room in Time Square, and bought a ticket for the same train my brother’s family would be taking the next morning. I was in a room in Manhattan when I made my weekly call to my mother, I was laughing as she was asking me about the weather in San Francisco and what I was up to for the day. I even liked a post made by my family’s bakery that I could smell the baking from here, here of course was the next borough over, not across the country.

A giant Memorial Day hot dog in Time Square

So Sunday morning I headed down to Penn Station to ambush my brother’s family. But as the boarding call was made I hadn’t found them so I needed to board the train. Sitting on the train I figured I’d text my brother once the train was rolling and find them then. At about this time I see my brother coming down the car carrying my littlest niece. I leaned into the aisle, “can I help you sir?” The look on his face was amazing, it was somewhere between recognition and confusion. I was wearing a mask and pulled it aside and watched his and my niece’s eyes go wide and he asked, “what are you doing here?” It was a wonderful surprised and I sat with my littlest niece and littlest nephew on the two-hour train ride. My niece never stopped talking. I loved it, but man can that kid talk.

Arriving in my old hometown, Hudson, NY I waited and exited the train from a different exit than my brother’s family. Coming toward the station a couple of minutes behind them, I suddenly heard my sister exclaim, “Oh my god, it’s Uncle Mike!” Everyone was incredibly shocked, I enjoyed the disbelief on their faces as people said hello and hugged me.

We even brought in my aunt the Mother Superior

We spent the day walking the city, including walking back through the old hood where I grew up. I played tour guide for my brother’s family and then fourteen of us had lunch together, followed by ice cream. Wrapped the day by walking my brother’s family back to the train. I spent the night in town and caught breakfast with some of the family the next morning before boarding my own train back to Penn Station.

My brother and I in front of the house we grew up in, I hate how I look in this photo

It was a whirlwind tour, three hotels, two 6AM flights, two Amtrak rides, two Long Island Railroad rides and a couple of JFK Airtrain rides all over three days. An upgrade made one leg business class and the other first class so at least the flights were comfortable.

All in all it was a very happy surprise, and of course, there was a lot of pizza.

Surprises are wonderful, I’ve always felt people don’t create enough surprises, but they make for happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Cost of Saying Yes on Your Happiness

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Michael Kane

The Cost of Saying Yes on Your Happiness

I’ve been writing this blog for fourteen years now. Over that time I’ve talked about so many aspects of happiness. Some of the things I’ve talked about are on the positive and easy side, even if the act itself isn’t that easy. But things like the basics, getting enough sleep, eating right, exercising and having a safe environment take work but don’t cost much.

There are harder things that we’ve discussed over the years. Things like making major life changes because you’re on the wrong path, fighting addiction and working a recovery program. Perhaps the hardest thing that we have talked about is cutting people out of your life who constantly drain you of your happiness. It’s hard when these people are “friends”, but so much harder when these people are family, particularly when your culture teaches you that you are eternally obligated to your family. Sometimes the cost of happiness can not just be be high, but too high.

The Paulo Coehlo quote I used as this weeks image really hit me because of something that recently happened at work. Our district has a very interesting human resources policy, that policy says that if the work is at the same level, you can be given an unlimited amount of additional work at that level and you are entitled to no additional pay. In fact, often as a dean in charge of a division, our district will assign a second full division to a dean’s responsibility for up to a year. During the pandemic I was given an additional full assignment for fourteen months with no additional compensation, hell, without even a thank you.

Given that the average number of hours a dean works in our district is about 50 hours a week, this means that essentially we are being assigned the equivalent of 100 hours of week with no additional pay. Now, even if you account for some kind of economy of scale, and if you say naively that dean’s only work their normal schedule of 37.5 hours per week, discounting the second job by thirty percent, we are still being asked to work 60 hours a week for 37.5 hours of pay. Our jobs are incredibly stressful, we are the prototypical middle managers with all of the responsibility and almost no authority. Our job is intense people management, I have a ridiculous number of people who are direct reports, in my current position, over seventy. Stress levels amongst my colleagues are insanely high.

Recently, due in large part to our college not doing any kind of transition planning, I was asked to take another division. This was the moment that Paulo Coehlo’s quote came to me. I literally do not have the right to refuse this additional assignment. So I took another path and told my boss that I would take it on, but I would not work more than my contracted 37.5 hours per week, and whatever didn’t get done, didn’t get done. It was then my boss backed off to suggest I’d only have to cover half the job, I reiterated my position and was told they would think about it and get back to me.

Here’s the reality and the lesson for tonight. If the cost of anything is your happiness or peace, it’s not worth it. Taking this extra position is a benefit for the college. I have more knowledge about the work than anyone else on campus, plus the district would be getting two jobs done for one salary, a savings in salary and benefits of over $300K per annum. So effectively a $25K per month savings, of which they are not willing to compensate me a penny. Of course, if I were to fully engage in both jobs, it would mean several months of me working 70 – 80 hours per week. This of course would mean a huge negative impact on my health. Working that much and adding a ton of extra stress to my life means I’ll end up eating worse, exercising less, both of which will impact my sleep. The cumulative impact of this on my particular health means higher blood pressure which impacts my aortic aneurysm, it makes it harder to manage my blood sugar, both quite frankly that lead me to an earlier death. And this doesn’t even address the potential mental health impacts of the additional stress, and less downtime. This reality makes it easy for me to take the position I took.

But often, people are in a position where the impacts are not so clear and obvious, but still as severe. They just don’t see the impacts because they are further down the road and less immediate. But other impacts can include less time with family and friends, could even negatively impact the size of your social circle and number of social interactions. All of which negatively impact your happiness.

So the question we need to ask, when people are asking us for something, favors, time, or more work, is whether or not the cost in time in our precious life and the cost to our peace and/or happiness, is worth what is being asked of us. If it’s not, then we all need to do a better job of learning how to say no and prioritizing our peace and happiness over acquiescing to the needs and desires of others. Learning to do this will bring you happier days my friends, I promise you it will. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rev Kane Reminders: Where to find me

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Michael Kane
happiness nepal
Rev Kane making friends in Nepal

Everyone has a right to their own opinion about me, and that’s fine. I’m just going to keep being myself and living my life. That’s all I can do. ~ Dan Bilzerian

Rev Kane Reminders: Where to find me

Hello friends.

Periodically I like to drop a post to remind everyone of where my writings can be found, where you can buy my books and any other relevant info I have to share.

Social Media

Twitter: @ministryofhappy

Instagram: @michael_rev_kane

Threads: @michael_rev_kane

Blogs

Ministry of Happiness – weekly blog since 2010 reflecting on life, life’s challenges and how we can live a happier life. Site also features a page with my pizza place reviews.

Higher Ed Mentor – blog that I don’t write regularly enough on around the topics of being a higher education administrator. Next year this will also be the home site for my consulting business where I will be offering coaching and mentoring services for higher education professionals.

Alien Bluebook – a site I developed for fun to get some experience working with Artificial Intelligence, posts about everything related to aliens, UAP/UFOs with a side order of Bigfoot just for fun.

Books

Appalachian Trail Happiness – a non-fiction text about my time on the Appalachian Trail.

Athena’s Addict – a book of poetry, every poem about one woman.

Otherness – A book of poetry centered around the feeling of not fitting in.

Posted in Random Happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Renew your commitment to self-care

Posted on May 19, 2024 by Michael Kane
meditation

Forgiveness isn’t just the absence of anger. I think it’s also the presence of self-love, when you actually begin to value yourself. ~ Tara Westover

Renew your commitment to self-care

I was fortunate last week to be asked to present on an Association of California Community College Administrators (ACCCA) professional webinar on self –care.  My co-presenter was Nan Ho and I think we complimented each other well in the seminar.

The seminar was focused around the idea of how people can practice self-care as well as strategies for creating a better work/life balance.  It was well attended and well received, I think you’ll enjoy it.

The link below takes you to the seminar page, scroll down to Renew your commitment to self-care, and put in the passcode below at the video site to access and play the video, and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

ACCCA Webinars

Renew your commitment to self-care

b9$*KDem

Posted in happiness resources, personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The first step leads to Happiness

Posted on May 12, 2024 by Michael Kane

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. ~ Laozi

In this blog I have talked about many facets of happiness. Whether those are making sure that you are physically fit and well, or that you are finding time for self-care. I’ve also talked about how important your mental health is to your happiness and doing whatever it takes to make sure that your mental health is intact. At almost any given time we all are working on some facet of our happiness. As I’ve discussed recently my happiness is dependent right now on handling the transition to the next chapter of my life. Of course, while also maintaining happiness in the moment. As the Taoist say, live like you’ll die tomorrow and learn like you’ll live a thousand years.

I don’t think I’m too awful unique in that I procrastinate, especially when something big is coming. People procrastinate in different ways. Some start things and then put off completing them, but I’m of a different type, my procrastination comes at the beginning of things. Once I take the first step I’m great, but it’s taking that first step where I seem to have the most hesitancy. Every time I think about taking the first step, my mind goes back to my first day on the Appalachian Trail. Of course by time I’d made it to the trail head in Georgia I had already taken many steps. Prepping for a 2000 mile, six month hike takes a lot of planning, months of planning in fact. By the time you set foot on the trail, you’ve had to make sure you’ve taken care of six months of bills, that you have all of your gear and maps. You’ve already set up your transportation to the trail and most people set up a number of mail drops that will be sent to various parts of the trail across multiple states. There are so many details that you’ve already dealt with that the first step on the trail is almost anticlimactic. But the reality of things is that it’s not anticlimactic at all.

My first steps on the Appalachian Trail were far from anticlimactic, they are seared into my head, as clear a memory as I possess. What wasn’t lost on me that day, and I want to talk about tonight is the implications of that first step. On the trail that day, I was caught up in the fact that I had never done a multi-day hike in my entire life and I was starting maybe the longest, hardest hike on Earth. It wasn’t lost on me that I was alone, at that moment I didn’t know a single soul on the trail. I was nervous about my skill level, the weight on my back and even where I would sleep that first night. It was nerve-wracking and thrilling and it led to one of the best experiences of my life.

And that’s what often follows times of high anxiety before starting something or making a transition in life. This anxiety puts me in neutral, it makes me procrastinate and keeps me from taking that first step. Happily for me, I’ve been in this position many times and I know that once I take that step, once I get things rolling, that momentum will carry me forward and almost always, good things are on the horizon. It is that confidence that allows me to move forward, but if it’s your first time, it’s belief or faith in something that you have to have to make that first step. So before you make that next big move, identify what you believe in. What I hope you have faith in the most is yourself, if you believe in yourself then you can know that taking the first step will lead to better things and happier days.

It feels like in the last week I really took that first step on my next transition. In the last week I’ve made a lot of plans, I’ve started several needed projects and have scheduled others. It feels good and has greatly improved my mood, nothing better for me than having plans in motion, progressing on the path to becoming a nomad again. As I may have mentioned here before, in March/April of 2025, shortly after my retirement, I’ll be heading back to the Appalachian Trail, I’ve got some unfinished business with the trail. And honestly, need the time and the miles to walk off the last five years of an unfortunate job. So here’s to taking the first step towards happier days. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in Appalachian Trail (AT) Happiness, personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Celebrate for No Reason!

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Michael Kane

The most beautiful things are not associated with money; they are memories and moments. If you don’t celebrate those, they can pass you by. – Alek Wek

I’ve gone through a few months of really being in neutral. Not depressed but just no extra energy, I’ve been doing everything I need to, going to work, working out, cooking, cleaning etc… But I just haven’t had the energy for anything extra, not mentally or physically. So I’ve been stuck about the final plans for the actual date of my 60th birthday, I haven’t been writing beyond the minimal work of getting this blog out each week and just doing nothing else. The upside, I’ve caught up on a lot of streaming shows, but have spent far too much time on the couch.

I spent some time recently at a conference, it was great to see old colleagues and have the type of interactions that make you feel like you have some worth to folks, something I don’t get on my own campus very often. This trip seems to have kickstarted things, a good friend called and we’ve made plans for my actual birthday, today I made some arrangements for another trip I’m planning. I also had my quarterly blood test today.

One thing I’ve been doing lately has been to look for small things to celebrate. I’ve also been celebrating in smaller ways to make sure I don’t go overboard on cokes or pizza. I’ve been doing a bit better on my blood sugar issues lately. But finding time to do these small celebrations, really just doing little things I really enjoy has helped my mood.

This afternoon, after my blood work I decided that today should be one of those days. So after swinging back into the office to get some necessary things done, I did my favorite thing at work and went over to the child development center to see my little friends. I popped in just at the end of nap time, so the munchkins were at full speed in no time. I was attacked with imaginary spider webs, by monsters and even by one skeleton-pirate-robot. At one point I yelled save me and one little girl came running over with a little sign she made for me to use to scare away the monsters, it was adorable.

After leaving my friends I went to the grocery store and picked up the ingredients to make chicken parmigiana and raviolis for dinner and to really make it a celebration a tiny container of ice cream and bottle of Sioux City Sarsaparilla, just enough for a single root beer float. I’ve finished dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, put my lunch together for tomorrow and turned on a big foot documentary, all in all a pleasant evening.

It’s important friends to find the time and the ways to do these little positive things for yourself. Call it self-care or maintaining balance. Personally, I like the idea of them being tiny little celebrations of happiness, for no other reason than celebrating you’re alive. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Happiness is going to the movies

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Michael Kane

Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out. ~ Martin Scorsese

Happiness is going to the movies

I love movies and more than that I love going to the movies. I’m fortunate to have been born in the mid-sixties which meant that as a teenager I was lucky enough to see some really amazing movies in the theater. I went to a lot of movies as a teen, there wasn’t much legal to do in my hometown for teenagers. So I saw Jaws on the big screen, all of the first three Star Wars movies, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET and Alien. The trailer for Alien on the big screen was an experience that gave me goosebumps. The trailer gave little information and yet no trailer has ever made me want to see a movie more, in case you’ve never seen it, you can find it here.

Maybe my favorite movie to ever see in a theater was the original Blade Runner. Saw it on a summer night, with my best friend in a historic old movie theater that has unfortunately since burned down. There have always been what I call big screen movies, movies like the Lord of the Rings films that were epic, large landscape films that just hit harder on the big screen. Probably the most recent example would be Dune.

Over time however, I’ve gone to the movies less and less. It started with VCRs and just got worse over time until it became horrid with cell phones. People have become so used to watching movies at home that they’ve lost consideration for the other people in theaters. They talk constantly, answer their phones or text through the movie, thoroughly ruining the theater experience. And I have little tolerance for it, it’s a situation that often leads me to react in less than polite ways. As such, I only go to big screen movies at the theater and always after they’ve been out for a couple of weeks and usually to a weekday matinee just to avoid people.

Then the pandemic hit and going to the movies was just out. So today, for the first time in five years I decided to skip out on an a late afternoon meeting and go to the movies. I went to see Civil War, it’s really been hyped up, it’s been out a while and is still in matinees. It was ok, but it was really fun to be in a theater, with a bag of popcorn, and a coke.

I’m not a film snob, I can equally appreciate and most times prefer a fun movie like The Big Lebowski over watching a classic like Citizen Kane. I’m more than happy to enjoy a movie, not spend my time analyzing it, looking for the director/writer’s motivation or bigger social message. But at times, a movie is so damn good that I do get a bit film snobby. Tonight will certainly be one of those nights as recently I saw what may be the best movie I’ve ever seen.

The film is directed by Jonathan Glazer, who directed a film I really don’t like, Under the Skin and one I like, Sexy Beast. And Lukasz Zal is the cinematographer, known for nothing you are likely familiar with in theaters. There are definitely spoilers ahead, I don’t think they’ll ruin the movie for you, but my best advice is stop now, go watch the movie.

The Zone of Interest is a masterpiece. It’s a Holocaust film, but not like any you’ve ever seen before. There have been some amazing an impactful films made about the Holocaust. Schindler’s List is spectacular, Life is Beautiful, and I love The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

There are a number of things that make this movie so amazing. The most powerful thing about this film is the lack of violence, blood, or visual horror. All of the horror in this film happens off screen at the periphery of the film. There are a visual and audio indicators, bits of conversation and a few direct scenes that make it clear where you are and what is happening, and that is the genius. This film on the surface is a film about a family and a dad’s job. And honestly if you didn’t pay a ton of attention you could take this as just that, but it’s not, it’s so much more powerful than that. The subtleties build up in small and powerful ways until the true horror of the reality slips into your brain and hits you with the full impact.

Another thing that was so incredible are the night scenes. The scenes were shot using thermal imagery. The scenes are a stark contrast to the rest of the bright daylight scenes throughout the film. These scenes relay a particularly poignant story from the period and one that turns out to be true and amazing. The thermal shots which I’m assuming computer enhanced are absolutely amazing and incredibly sharp, even though few in number, they are powerful as hell.

I loved this movie, I could teach a film class on just this movie alone. I need to re-watch it this weekend, I know early on I absolutely missed some of the subtleties and I want to re-watch it so that I can catch what I missed. See this movie, it’s wonderfully done, deeply thoughtful and moving and watching a really amazing film always makes me happy.

Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in Happiness is Art, movies, personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Getting older is interesting

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Michael Kane

Getting older ain’t for cowards, this getting older is a lot to go through. ~ John Mellencamp (Don’t need this body)

Getting older is interesting

The quote tonight comes from a John Mellencamp album, Life, Death, Love and Freedom. I’ve always been a John Mellencamp fan, have always found his songwriting to really feel like notes from blue-collar America. However, the album above I find to be his most personal and best songwriting. The album really sounds like a guy who is getting older and looking around at his life and where he’s been. There’s a great line on the album, all I’ve got here is a rear view mirror. As a writer of poetry, I always appreciate when poets and songwriters find really interesting ways to say simple things, the rear view mirror line is such an amazing way of saying at this point in life, I’m only looking back.

Over my life I’ve been pretty immune to the impact of birthday numbers. Turing 30 didn’t bother me, even if my mother did send me a dozen dead roses for my birthday that year. When I turned 40 I was so excited I did a year full of celebrations. It was a hell of a year, my first Burning Man and my 50th state among the celebrations. I was equally happy to turn 50 and really enjoyed my celebrations that year as well. It was the year that I hiked the Appalachian Trail and wrote my book, Appalachian Trail Happiness, I celebrated my birthday in a trail town just over the Mason-Dixon line.

However, turning 60 for me seems to be a bit different. Maybe it’s that life expectancy for men in America is only 75. Maybe it’s having lost some friends over the last couple of years, some even younger than me. Maybe it has something to do with all of the change that is about to happen in my life. You see I will turn 60 in August, I’ll likely be semi-retiring about five months later. The plan is then to move all of my things to the East Coast. Shortly thereafter to start my second attempt at thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail at best, doing the thousand miles of trail I didn’t the first time at worst. So this once again means that 2025 will be another year of being homeless.

Now please understand, being homeless is one of those nervous/excited situations for me. I’m a nomad, it’s in my bloody DNA. Rubber tramping for a few months then hitting the trail for up to six months is me living my best life. But getting it all together, not knowing where I’ll be sleeping for the two months in between, setting up all of the logistics and then of course a few things have changed since I hit the trail in 2014. The biggest being that since then I’ve been diagnosed as a Type 2 Diabetic and two heart conditions. Not to mention I’ll be ten years older, of course I’m also 25 pounds lighter and hopefully will be thirty to thirty-five pounds later when I hit the trail.

The trepidation and excitement the first time I hit the trail will not be the same this time. This time around I’ve experienced months on the trail before. The feeling will be more about how will things compare, will I make the same connections, will I get hurt again. Will I be able to connect with the new generation of hikers on the trail?

So turning 60 this time has so much baggage attached to it, mostly because of all the change that’s coming with it. And getting older in general is interesting. Time flies by in your mind, you don’t realize how long it’s been since you’ve done things you did when you were younger. Then you go to do something and you find your body is just not capable. This is one of the reasons I started running a couple of years ago. I realized I hadn’t actually run in years and felt like that was something I should be able to do. One of the bigger shocks was grabbing a foul ball from practice at the college. So I decided to throw it back onto the field. I played baseball my whole life including in college and so when I threw the ball, expecting it to land over the bullpen and into left field, I was shocked to watch it drop into the bullpen, a good 20 yards short of where I intended. It’s a small thing, but it hit me pretty hard. It makes sense, I probably hadn’t thrown a baseball in twenty years. But in my mind, I’d thrown one just yesterday.

So many things change with your body. I find that I’m beginning to have that saggy old person skin. My arms are beginning to resemble my grandfathers, as my old Tai Chi instructor used to describe them, steel wrapped in cotton. There’s muscle there, but it’s wrapped it too much skin. Hair grows everywhere as you age, one day you look in the mirror and you realize you’re turning into a bloody hobbit. Now if I can live a 131 years like Bilbo Baggins I might be ok with that, you know minus the evil ring. The one great present of getting older is the ability to injure yourself simply by sleeping. Go to bed fine, wake up with some new mysterious, leg, back or knee injury. One of the things I’ve found interesting is there is a bit of nostalgia that seems to come with aging as well. I’ve made the mistake of giving into this a few times. You reach out to someone from a past part of your life, only to realize once you did that nothing is the same. You see, no matter how consistent you’ve remained in your personality and values over time, you’re just not the same person you were back then and neither are they. I’ve come to realize that these dips into the nostalgia pool live you feeling more empty in the end. So it’s best not to jump in the pool.

In the end, it’s a privilege to be aging. I’ve known far too many people over my lifetime who did not get the chance. One of the early ones that always hits me when I think about him, is a kid named David March. He died of brain cancer when we were teenagers and it has always seemed so horrible. He was maybe the nicest kid I ever knew, an early lesson that life is not fair and that no one is guaranteed tomorrow.

So I’m happy to be here, maybe not Mr. Happy Go Lucky (to stick with the Mellencamp theme). But I’m doing well, I’ve already lived a decade longer than my maternal grandfather. I’ve tried hard to live life to the fullest and hell, if I’m on Hobbit time I’m barely middle-aged. Have a happy day my friends, and stay out of Mordor. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Happiness, Loneliness and Connection

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Michael Kane

Loneliness is different than isolation and solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have. In the gap, we experience loneliness. It’s distinct from the objective state of isolation, which is determined by the number of people around you. ~ Vivek Murthy

Happiness, Loneliness and Connection

Many studies on happiness have come to the same conclusion, connection is the key to real happiness and a lack of those types of deep connections leads to loneliness. What most studies show these days is that while people highly value friendships, researchers also report that in America people are increasingly having fewer and fewer close friends.

Lately I’m really feeling this trend impacting me personally. I have some great friends, one I even credit with saving my sanity if not my life by being there for me at one of the lowest points of my life. The problem I face is two-fold, first is related to a negative consequence of being the nomad that I am. I’ve made incredible friends in different places and chapters in my life. But often I geographically move on which means I have a lot of physical distance between me and those good friends. Secondly, as you get older your life gets more complicated and of course as they get older it’s the same. People have partners, children, jobs, businesses they are running. Increasingly people as they get older have both responsibilities of taking care of children as well as older parents. All of these things eat up your life and often it’s hard to carve out time to connect with people we care about. It’s of course easier if they are down the road or across town. It’s easier to co-mingle your responsibilities with your friend time if you’re at least in the same area code.

So the simple fact of my life is that what I am dealing with right now is a connection gap in my life. I still have people who I am deeply connected to, it’s evident in the way we connect when we have that chance. These are people, who when you meet up with them, it feels like no time has gone by and time goes by too quickly. These are the people who when they show up on your caller ID, you always pick up.

One of the things I enjoy the most in these close relationships are the deep conversations we have. I’m someone who is a deep thinker and I like, hell I crave the opportunity to have these type of conversations. Particularly with people who you don’t have to be guarded with because they know you really are inside. This is what is missing given my current reality. I’m on the precipice of huge decisions, I’m retiring from my job, moving across the country, finding a new place to live. As you can imagine there are a million decisions I’m making and I’m missing the opportunity to run these down with people that matter to me, people who’s opinions and ideas I respect.

Given all of our life realities right now, our contacts are a quick email, message or text, or a like on social media or a quick response to post. I don’t fault any of them for that, as I stated above, we all have complicated and busy lives and even live in different time zones for an added complication. But this doesn’t erase my need for connection, nor the impact not having it has on my level of happiness and my mood.

And what I’m describing to you is becoming common for a lot of aging people in our society. Often, due to divorce or the death of a partner, more and more people are finding themselves on their own for the first time. They are becoming isolated from previous social connections, and are finding with our social media focused society that connections are increasingly virtual, text message and meme driven. Even phone calls are becoming something people just don’t do.

We all need to find ways to connect, and not just at a surface level. It’s not easy, how do you make new friends as a single, senior citizen. The best route is through organizations, volunteering with events, basically finding ways to connect with something you enjoy, that can allow you to make new social connections. And that sounds great, but the actuality of doing it can be quite difficult. And as social connections get harder, and virtual connections get easier, it’s often just to easier to sit at home and scroll on your phone.

As I move into the next chapter of my life, one of the big considerations for me, as I will need to work for insurance purposes for another five years, is working at or being near a four-year university. Through the cultural and sporting events a college offers, I see a way of being involved with others and hopefully making new connections and avoiding the social isolation that can literally be deadly as we grow older.

So my message tonight, we all have these connections, our lives get busy and we don’t maintain them the way we should, so after you read this, drop an email a real email or better yet make a phone call or even make plans to get together. We’ve all lost people we were close to because we didn’t maintain those relationships, they’re important, don’t lose another one. Keep those people close and you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment