Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. ~ Dalai Lama
Three Questions, December 15, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
I was running errands and after dinner and there was a bright full moon in the sky poking through a hole in fluffy rows of clouds. It bathed the the national veteran’s cemetery in a really eerily beautiful blue light.
What did I learn today?
It’s a happy but small thing, I learned today that a few other teams lost in addition to my favorite team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, but because the other teams lost the Steelers have clinched a spot in the playoffs.
What made me happy today?
What made me happy today was getting the majority of my Christmas shopping finished, getting gifts boxed and bagged and ready for shipping and distribution tomorrow.
The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others. ~ Robert Baden-Powell
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I experienced today?
I was watching the University of Tennessee basketball team, I follow them. They are currently ranked number one in the country and were playing against Illinois in Illinois. It was a wild game, extremely close and with just a few seconds left a player got the ball, dribbled the length of the court, went up for a lay up, switched ball hands in mid-air and banked in a game winning lay up for a one point victory with no time left on the clock. It was an absolutely beautiful play.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned a bit about Parkinson’s Disease symptoms. A family member has the disease and is starting to deal with some things, so I thought it was time to start getting a bit more knowledgeable about symptoms and disease progression.
What made me happy today?
What made me happy today was finishing up some of my Christmas shopping For my littlest niece and nephews I’m determined every year to make sure they get their presents before Christmas morning. This means getting presents from California to New York in time for Christmas. This year, with everything going on around my heart condition I’ve been really behind. So tonight I’ll be wrapping and boxing to ship out tomorrow.
Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.~ Hosea Ballou
Three Questions, December 13, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
The most beautiful thing I encountered today was an image of Watkins Glen State Park. There’s an image I keep encountering of one of the gorges at sunset, waterfall tumbling off of the rocks, a really, really beautiful place.
What did I learn today?
Often when I have paperwork to do I listen to podcasts, one I really like is called the Rest is History. So today I started a six part story on WWI, the Great War. I learned some truly disturbing things about how Kaiser Wilhelm grew up. Turns out his arm had been seriously injured as a child. To help heal it, they would plunge his arm into the fresh killed corpse of a wild hare. His parents also used to stretch his head in a kind of reverse vice. Finally, he continually had pus oozing out of his ear until his early 30’s. Is anyone shocked this dude turns out to be one of the villains of the first world war?
What made me happy today?
It’s been a long week at work, in addition to a ton of work, there was also a whole lot of peopling every day this week. As I wrapped up work at six on this rainy, cold Friday I just really wanted a hot bowl of soup. So I stopped at the grocery store and at home made a pot of tortellini soup for dinner, it really hit the spot and made me happy the work week was over.
Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are. ~ Henry Van Dyke
Three Questions, December 12, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
I was picking up dinner, I decided to be lazy tonight. As I was walking by a cafe, there were three little girls, they looked to be between four and six years old. They had taken over an entire booth in the cafe with their dolls and their many, many little accessories and they were having a blast.
What did I learn today?
I learned at their graduation that one of my Esthetic Program students had been awarded her state license today. That means that on the same day she graduated, she also became licensed, that’s so amazing. It means she was incredibly organized about taking her exam and immediately passed. This student did a full program and got licensed in 10 months with no student debt. This is what we’re about in career education at the community college.
What made me happy today?
This is a very peculiar thing to me I think. I believe a lot of people have the same things with nuns in full penguin garb, but my aunt’s a nun so I’ve seen nuns in fall gear doing all manner of things. But there is something completely hilarious to me about seeing Buddhist monks doing ordinary modern things. A monk on a cell phone cracks me up. I don’t mean it to be disrespectful. My brother and several friends are Buddhist, I respect that believe system and philosophy of life.
Today I saw a monk squashing boxes while doing his recycling and it made me laugh and smile.
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. ~ Omar Khayyam
Three Questions, December 11, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
The most beautiful think I encountered today is a common one for me. I’m a sunset junky and today as the sun dropped we got a beautiful sunset. The sun was setting and visible through the building on top of the hill on our campus, clouds highlighted in lovely creamsicle blue, a color I’ve named myself.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned that one of my people has a part-time gig with a domestic robot startup. Their job is currently to work with and train the robot on appropriate domestic tasks. I’m very excited. I grew up a big scify fan in the 60’s and 70’s. There was always a house robot! As a kid I always dreamed that some day I’d have my own robot butler. Soon it will come true and I’ve got an inside connection.
What made me happy today?
Today, on a very long day of doing evaluations two things made me happy. The first was being able to confirm two of my people have passed their probationary period and are now permanent employees. Second and most deliciously, the homemade chocolate chip cookies one of my faculty brought in.
You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. ~ Tom Brokaw
Three Questions, December 10, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Today was two of our graduations and the most beautiful thing I encountered today were those graduations and a mom who was sporting a newly made t-shirt. The t-shirt said, I am the proud mom of a freakin awesome barber.
What did I learn today?
Not so much learning but being reminded of the weakness of being a high level introvert. When you have no choice but to people for hours at a time, it tears you to pieces mentally. This whole week will be a full week of this, 7 hours of evaluation meetings tomorrow.
What made me happy today?
What made me happy today was students. The students in our Cosmetology and Barbering Programs graduating. Watching them walk the stage full of pride and excitement. Then secondly students in our Event Management class. There final presentation was on setting up for a wedding. I popped in after they were final and had their final night dinner presentation. I had the opportunity to sit and tell stories with the students, a couple who were international students from Peru and El Salvador. We exchanged travel and art stories and had a really wonderful conversation. And even though it was a horribly long day for an introvert, I had to people for like seven straight hours, this particular small group interaction was a really wonderful way to end the day.
The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us. ~ Ashley Montagu
Three Questions, December 9, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful think I experienced today?
The most beautiful thing I experienced today was the look, smell and taste of the homemade lasagna I pulled out of the oven for dinner.
What did I learn today?
I learned a lot today, today was showcase day. The day when students in our Barbering, Cosmetology and Esthetics programs display their talents for family, school folks and employers. It’s the culminating day of their one year program. So every year, I learn a lot from them on this day, probably the coolest thing today though was a finger wave technique one of the students showed me.
What made me happy today?
What made me happy today was getting to play with one of my little friends. One of my faculty have a small daughter who is two. We refer to her as the Predator, from the scify movie. It originally started as a joke due to her ultrasound image but has turned out to be a bit prophetic. She’s absolutely wild and for the first time the other day she called me by my name to everyone’s surprise. She came to visit today and we spent time doing races in the hall and chasing and scaring each other. Then she shut me down so she could go watch the Grinch.
Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. ~ Guillaume Appolinaire
Three Questions, December 8, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Today on my walk, I came a cross a huge bush that was in full bloom. Bright, reddish-pink flowers covering the bush and shinning incredibly in the sun, truly beautiful.
What did I learn today?
What I learned today is that it’s been 44 years today since the murder of John Lennon. I was in high school at the time and a big Beatles fan. They were the only band whose albums I owned (I wasn’t the coolest teen) and Lennon’s death hit me and a lot of my friends hard. A group of us, mostly from the advanced math class decided we wanted the impact recognized. We selected a couple of representatives and sent them to the principal’s office to request the school flag be put at half mast. The principal refused.and this really pissed us off. So we staged a walkout, about 30 of us. We were out about a period when the principal came out to the area we were hanging out by the flag. He told us he understood that we were impacted but if we didn’t get our asses back to class we’d be suspended for a week. Given that we were all college bound and had never been in trouble (that didn’t include me) and mostly because we all know we’d suffer hell from our parents for getting detention, we caved and returned to class. It was a sad time, John Lennon had so much potential remaining, I looked forward to decades more of his music but it wasn’t to be, still makes me sad.
What made me happy today?
I am a big NFL fan, I’ve been a Pittsburgh Steelers fan since 1973. Today the Steelers beat the Cleveland Browns, a team they lost to a couple of weeks ago and it was an important win. While it’s a minor thing, it made me happy. It followed on the heels of the Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team beating their first ranked team of the year yesterday, so all in all a good weekend for a sports fan.
Fearless means trusting your instincts and clarity of thought. Once you have made up your mind, don’t be scared of what if. ~ Rav Shastri
Happiness is Clarity
It’s been a long three weeks or so, and if you’re a regular reader you already know that. This is all tied to my multiple heart conditions and open heart surgery. I was diagnosed with two heart conditions about eight years ago. I have an aneurysm as well as an aortic valve issue, and as of last week found out that there is in fact a second aneurysm on my aortic arch. I have an annual assessment each October. This year I got some troubling results that showed my aortic valve had degraded since my last assessment. This seemed to indicate my surgery, which was always a when, not an if, was likely coming sooner than later. So I started to mentally prepare for that outcome. I met with my cardiologist and in fact it looked like surgery would be a year or two off, possibly even longer. I was feeling comfortable with that decision and my cardiologist recommended a CT scan to verify what we were seeing.
Unfortunately the CT didn’t verify what we were seeing but showed more issues. So then I was referred to a cardiac surgeon for a second opinion. Of course surgeons, like hammers have a specific function. To hammers, everything looks like a nail and surgeons want to do surgery. So once again I assumed surgery was likely back on. After meeting with my surgeon this week that in fact is the case. We’ve made the decision to do the surgery in August for a number of reasons, it’s a date I actually selected and one that the surgeon was comfortable with and made sense given all of the factors both medical and related to my life that we discussed.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say there is a certain amount of anxiety around the procedure. I’d be nuts not to be nervous about having my heart stopped for a couple of hours and then restarted. It also didn’t help that an hour after I made the decision someone told me that a mutual acquaintance had recently had open heart surgery and ended up in a coma, they’re fine now. It was really the wrong day for me to hear that. Within the last year I’ve also had an old friend die from complications of having this exact surgery, so yes, there is a fair amount of stress surrounding all of it.
But more than that there is clarity. I don’t work well with major uncertainty in my life, I’m a planner. Now that I have a decision and a generalized date I can plan around it and in fact have made most of the plans related to all of it. Certainty makes me happy, so this weekend had been a lazy easy weekend of watching football and eating good food. Decided to take a couple of days off and relax before I get back on schedule and start working toward my surgery date.
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
The most beautiful thing I saw today was what I got to watch outside my living room window on the deck. I have a hummingbird feeder and while taking it easy today I got to lay on my couch and watch the ongoing battles between the hummingbirds being territorial around my feeder.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned something very specific in regards to pan roasting vegetables. I’ve never done it before and I have some green tomatoes, the last remnants of this years garden. I didn’t want to make fried green tomatoes so I’ve decided to roast the green tomatoes and decided to roast some other vegetables with them. I’ll test it all out tomorrow.
What made me happy today?
In a sense what made me happy today was nothing. It was a nothing kind of a day, after my long day yesterday, and the stress of the last three weeks related to my health, today I needed a break. So what made me happy today was the lack of any schedule or commitments, but just a lazy day watching football and eating good food.
