Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. ~ Vincent Van Gogh
Impact of Small and Ordinary Happiness
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately has been inspired by my recent experience with people during my heart surgery recovery. I am not someone who has a lot of faith in humanity. I’ve talked a lot about this in regards to trail angels and hikertrash on the Appalachian Trail. My hike on the AT was one of the few experiences that really gave me faith in humanity. In general, and lately watching the political situation in America, I have very little faith in humanity.
The one place that humanity shows up, is during the big things. So people generally ignore each other, can be rude to each other and incredible entitled and self-centered until the disaster hits. We see this all of the time, in LA recently with the fires last year, the hurricane in Western North Carolina, always after an earthquake people rally around their neighbors and community. It’s the same with people, people will treat you like shit most of the time, but when someone has cancer, or gets injured or undergoes heart surgery, people rally. Honestly this is really sad to me.
People always complain that the world is cruel and unkind and daily they feel run down by the way people treat them. So the message I want to get out tonight is that we can all make this better. Simply by the small and ordinary acts of kindness and happiness. If we would all just take the moment needed to be nicer and kinder, the accumulation of those small acts could lead to a much larger thing, a kinder and a happier world. So you’re assignment, should you choose to accept it, do five small things every day that are kind and happiness creating gestures. These are small things, holding a door open for someone even if a person isn’t close behind you, letting someone into a traffic lane, giving a random small gift to someone, buy someone a cup of coffee or a muffin, or even just make an effort to say something kind to someone that you wouldn’t ordinarily say. If we all do this, if we all make this effort, we can all have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves. ~ Viktor E Frankl
Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: 90 Days
First a comment about the author of tonight’s quote, Viktor E. Frankl, his book, Man’s Search for Meaning is one of the greatest books ever written, it is a book I actually think everyone should read. The book reminds me of the story of the orange from a post I wrote, possibly maybe my favorite post, Remember the Sweet Things. Something else I recommend everyone should read and listen to.
On May 7th I had open heart surgery, as part of the recovery process I was put on a three month medical leave, that leave has ended and it’s back to work on Monday. I’m actually less excited about returning to work than I was to undergo the surgery. While going to work has little chance of actually killing me, it will kill my soul and that may be worse. The problem with my job is that it’s 90% people management and I work at a place where accountability has never been a priority, or hell, even a reality, particularly for faculty. As such, a lot of the people I manage are extremely entitled and selfish individuals. They honestly don’t seem to care about the emotional impact or stress they cause on anyone else, they are only concerned with one thing, what they want in the moment. As such, my job is incredibly stressful, I’ll also be returning to a brand new boss and a brand new president. Happily, so far I’ve heard good things about both of them.
So Viktor E. Frankl’s quote really resonates in this situation. First off, I can change the situation, but not immediately. So the challenge facing me this Monday, is to change myself in terms of the role, which means reducing my stress. This means that in order to preserve my own sanity and keep my stress in check during my continuing recovery, I need to approach things differently. I’ve always tried to find solutions that met multiple interests, that effort increases complexity and makes things more stressful, usually for me. So I need to simplify and operate on the highest level value in my job, and only that level, what’s best for students. In doing so, it will almost certainly mean I will have to be much harder on my faculty, but at the end of the day, when it’s what’s best for students it’s infinitely defensible. It will mean that people will like me less, but that’s never been a huge concern and leads to the second piece, I can change the situation. As such I’ve started a full job search, primarily on the East Coast where I hope to be, in the next few years, fully retired.
I have to admit rising levels of stress this week as this deadline has approached, my blood pressure has even increased to the point of going back on one of my medicines. But I have also made an effort this week to grab those last little bits of happiness before going back to work. I’ll be doing some posts over the next week or so talking about these, but I’ve spent some time in San Francisco, I went to a Giants/Pirates game, my littlest sister came into town, I had a three pizza day, went to the Asian Art Museum and the Cal Academy of Sciences. I’ve also done a ton of cooking, I made my first ever Beef Wellington and it came out really well. I’ve even just made a pot of gumbo for my work lunches this next week. I also got cleared for everything by my physical therapist, did my first chest workouts with weights and even did a nine mile walk.
The recovery from my surgery went way better than I had hoped it could have, I was ahead of schedule the whole time and had none of the major set backs or complications most people have. I had a lot of anxiety going into this, one person I know after the surgery ended up in a coma for a time, my best friend growing up died from the surgery, another friend had some other complications. Happily I avoided all of those things. There were some really scary moments, some extremely difficult mental challenges, a whole lot of fear, I kept almost all of that to myself, except for the night it was really bad and I had some crazy symptoms that lead me to calling 911, getting my first ever ambulance trip and a couple of hours in the emergency room. Obviously, everything turned out ok and it seems to have been just a fluke event not really related to my surgery.
The biggest things over the last three months have been my connections and relationships with people. Most of the people I expected to show up did, a few surprisingly let me down, but in general people were great. I had twenty different people who visited, came over, did grocery and pharmacy runs, moved my car for me, gave me rides, helped me move things around my apartment, hung out in the first few days while I showered and provided great company. You know, up until the point where the raging introvert that I am just had too many people around and had to really reduce my interactions. But I’m incredibly grateful for the support and caring they provided. I was surprised by the level of support, happy about it, and have thank you gifts for all of them.
So, not sure there’s a point tonight other than the quote by Frankl, I think that’s the lesson I hope people will pull from this post. And seriously, read his book, it’s truly magnificent, maybe keep a positive thought for me this week and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams. ~ Oprah Winfrey
A Happy Week
So it’s week twelve since my open heart surgery, Thursday will officially be a month and next Monday I return to hell, I mean work. I am not looking forward at all to returning to work, to the drama, the incompetence and just plain managing folks who don’t do their job or care about students. The good news, they’re a small part of the overall faculty and staff, the bad news, is their noise and the stress and work they cause far outsizes their small numbers. More on this below.
So I’m really enjoying my last days before I go back to work. This past week I attended the Pirates and Giants game with a couple of friends. Partially as a thank you to one who really was there for me during my time off, also to check off a tiny bucket list item, sitting on the first row at a major league game. The picture above is from my seat at the game. Even more exciting, as a Pirate fan I’ve probably seen ten live games in the last fifteen years and they’ve never won, but they won this one in extra innings. One of my friends treated us all to a great dinner after the game, so a great day, great weather, good company and good food.
My baby sister was in town this week with her husband and my nephew who is about to go to college. So I had dinner with them in the city Friday night. Really wonderful to have the chance to catch up and check-in with my nephew before he takes his next big step in life, and the dude has gotten tall!
I’ve also been doing a lot of cooking. I made homemade tomato sauce, homemade pesto, my first ever beef wellington and a something like a strombolli with the left over pastry dough from the wellington. It was all good but I was especially excited about the wellington, something I love, rarely get to eat and was always a bit intimidated to try and make at home, it came out really well.
Today I had my cardiac rehab physical therapy appointment and it went really well. I’ve been cleared for everything, wearing a backpack, working out, fully stretching and pushing my level of exercise. So I’m really excited, this really clears the path for me to start working out again and fully get my strength back.
Finally, I’m moving on to my next steps. I’ve fully engaged the job search, posted out about it on LinkedIn and even have a couple of conversations about positions coming up this week as well as having a few applications out. So hopefully, I’ll soon be moving on and finally get to leave a job that I have not been happy in for some time.
Finally, my head this week has been thoroughly on the folks who were here for me during this time. Both in person and in spirit, I have greatly appreciated the support and have learned a lot about the people in my orbit, some bad, but mostly good.
So today, eating my Italian pastry creation, munching on homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, getting good news and doing my first resistance workout has made this for a happy day, at the end of a very happy week. Hope you had a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical. ~ Yogi Berra
Happy Day
Today was a really wonderful day, as my time on leave is winding down, trying to do a few last things to enjoy my remaining time off. So today, a couple of us went to the Giants and Pirates game in San Francisco. Checking off a minor bucket list item, seats in row one, right on the field.
Being a Pirate fan is a tough gig these days, I’ve been a Pirate fan since I saw Roberto Clemente steal a home run away from the Mets at Shea Stadium in 1971. But it’s been over forty years since the Pirates have been back to the world series and most years they have a losing record. Currently, they are 17 games under .500. So I didn’t have a lot of hope they would win today and in particular because over the last 20 years I’ve caught live Pirate games seven or eight times. Every single time, including when I’ve flown to Pittsburgh for the game, they have lost.
But going to a major league game is not so much about winning or losing. It’s about a nice day in the sun, hanging out with good people and eating stadium food. So today, we had pretty much perfect weather, a really close game and all the standards, hot dogs, popcorn, cokes, etc….
There was even a cute little two year-old dude who came and sat next to us for a bit, it was his first game. It was awesome, he was chanting for his favorite player when he came to bat and even got to see him close up when he ran down the first baseline, he was crazy excited. Finally, the ball dude (what he was actually called) gave him a ball. Heck of a first game and I’m betting a lifetime Giants fan in the making.
The game went into extra innings and the Pirates actually won! A Pirate coach from the bay area came up into the stands to see some family after the game and we had a quick chat, super nice guy, even got half a selfie with him.
After the game one of the guys sprung for dinner at Hillstones and I had a really wonderful piece of Salmon, finally, ended the day with a lovely bowl of ice cream. Just overall a really nice day, good company, great conversation, the game and good food. Hope you had a happy day as well my friends. ~ Rev Kane
If you’re not the one cooking, stay out of the way and compliment the chef. ~ Michael Strahan
Happy Cooking
So the tiny patio garden is having a good Summer, surprising given it’s been the coldest, wettest Summer heree in like thirty years. My basil has been growing like gang busters and so a couple of weeks ago I cut it down and made pasta sauce with a lot of basil and garlic. It’s a long time family tradition that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago in my piece Happiness and Making Sauce. And the thing is, when you’ve got a lot of basil there are only two options, pasta sauce or pesto. I’m not a huge pesto fan, but I made pasta sauce and still have some in the freezer, so pesto it was.
Not being a huge pesto fan and being a Type 2 diabetic who rarely gets to eat pasta, I needed some way to use the pesto, and I settled on chicken pesto. So I spent the afternoon making pesto and then the chicken pesto in the image above. I thought I’d share the recipe and process tonight. Cooking makes me happy, like photography, it’s something I get really focused with and lost in and the time just slips by, and then of course I get to eat.
So, first a little bit about how I make a new thing for the first time. I go up online and scan several recipes to get an idea of how the dish should come together and then I kind of wing it from there.
The Pesto.
3 cups packed, basil
1/4 cup of virgin olive oil
2 cloves of garlic (probably too much for most folks, I love garlic, one is probably good)
1/2 cup walnuts (pine nuts are the traditional add, but I’m not a big fan, nor do I have any)
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese ( I actually used 3/4 cup, I like my pesto a little cheesy)
Some salt, pepper and a garam masala (just a couple shakes)
This is definitely a food processor kind of deal, load everything but the basil, chop it up by pulsing it and then add the basil and repeat until it’s well mixed together. If you want it creamier, add more olive oil. You could do this by hand, but it would be a ton of work and would be a bit chunkier I’m sure.
The Chicken Pesto
Chicken Cutlets – I used about five cutlets since this was a test mission. Also, while most people use chicken breasts, I used boneless skinless thighs, I just think they taste better and they’re cheaper.
Pesto
1 scallion
1/4 red pepper
Mozzarella Cheese
Parmesan Cheese
fresh basil leaves
sliced tomatoes
Use a casserole dish, oil the pan. Take the chicken and flatten it. By flatten the chicken it could mean a couple of things. I just flayed out the chick into thing flat slices, but particularly if you’re using chicken breasts you could flatten and tenderize them using a meat mallet. Place the chicken in the casserole dish, chop the red pepper and the scallion and scatter them across the chicken. Spoon the pesto onto the dish and spread it around so it covers all of the chicken. Cover with an equal amount of sliced Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Place in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 35 minutes. Pull out, place basil and tomato slices on top. I used golden cherry tomatoes from the garden, but any tomato should work. Place the dish back in the oven, shut off the heat and leave the door cracked open for about 5 minutes. You’re just trying to warm the tomatoes at this point, you could even place the basil leaves after this step. Then, let it cool a little and chow down. Happy eating my friends. ~ Rev Kane
I’m not sad about any of my life. It’s so unconventional. It doesn’t look anything like I thought it would. ~ Edie Falco
Moments of Happiness
In the last couple of years in the media there have been a lot of articles taking a different tack on happiness. It’s this idea that in fact pursuing happiness is making you unhappy. It’s the idea that people get so obsessed about being happy, that when they don’t achieve what they perceive as “happiness” then in fact they end up depressed. I really don’t like these articles, I think they miss some really obvious things.
The first thing they missed is that any obsession is almost certainly going to lead to unhappiness. Obsession by definition is going overboard, pushing further than you should, being overly concerned with something. Whether it’s obsessively, gambling, shopping or even obsessive romantic feelings these types of obsessions lead people to doing things that harm themselves. So an obsession with happiness is also very likely to be a bad thing.
The other issue that they fail to discuss in these articles is a discussion about how to define happiness. Part of the problem with searching for happiness, is most people don’t take the time to define what happiness will be for them. Society provides a definition, I call it “the script.” Society says that happiness is married, owning a house, having some kids, working till retirement then fishing a few years before you die. Honestly that has never seemed all that satisfying to me. And of course, happiness is a very individual thing. So for some people, “the script” might be the epitome of joy and happiness but my life and desires are much more unconventional.
So the first thing you need to do, if you’re pursuing happiness, is to define what that will look like for you. Because pursuing a goal, without knowing what that goal looks like is bound to lead to disappointment. So you need to know what that end point looks like. For me at this point in my life, it looks like a house, on a good chunk of land, someone to travel with and time with my nieces and nephews. An opportunity and time to do a lot of things I’ve never had time for and/or have wanted to do but not gotten around to doing. So painting, writing more, learning more about foraging and living a simpler, closer to the land life. Oh yeah and playing with some toys, a metal detector and a really good telescope and of course, a doing some Bigfoot expeditions. I’m working on getting there.
The other mistake I think people make, is thinking that happiness is a single destination. Like many of the things we pursue in life, our happiness goal will change as things change in our lives. Hell, at one point in my life happiness simply looked like being sober, at another time being out of debt, at some points just being with a person I loved. So the endpoint/goal will change over time, the pursuit of happiness doesn’t ever end, it morphs and changes over time. This does not make it some Sysiphean task that is a never ending exercise in hell. So what does it mean?
For me it’s two things, we pursue our end goal of happiness at all times, in reasonable ways when possible and hope to be living as close to that endpoint as much as possible. But equally importantly, we must learn to do two things that are related. First, we need to find joy and happiness in smaller and simpler things and we need to take the time to appreciate and enjoy them. Whether that’s something small and wonderful like walking over a hill to an area full of flowers, laying on a picnic table and watching clouds, or just a really good dessert, we need to be thoroughly present and enjoy those moments of happiness. Not all of them will be small, hundreds of them for me are tied to my little brother. His birth was a joyous day, and not just because the ice storm meant school was canceled for the day, I had always wanted a brother and I was getting one. We were inseparable when he was little, we wrestled and talked and listened to music together. We ran around outside and played like little kids, which he was, I was fifteen years older. But those early years of his life were filled with insane levels of happiness with him. We need to recognize when we’re in those times and truly understand and realize the joy we’re experiencing.
So my friends, define happiness, chase it, but not obsessively. And along the way take time to notice the small bits of happiness you experience and be present for them. Do this, and I promise you more happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
San Francisco is a mad city – inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty. ~ Rudyard Kipling
A Walking Day in San Francisco
Spent a lovely day walking in San Francisco today. It was a full test of being back to normal, a six mile walk, even if I did avoid the biggest hills in the city. I also rewarded the longest walk since my surgery eleven weeks ago with two pizza stops.
It was a nice walk up from the Civic Center/UN Plaza, up through Hayes Valley, over Russian Hill via Polk to Ghirardelli Square where I took some time to just sit by the bay for a time.
Then I rolled up to Pier 39 and hit Amici’s for my second pizza stop of the day. And finally walked back up the Embarcadero and hit back to the BART Station and home. I love walking in the city, you never know what you’ll see, today I watch a golden retriever go nuts because it encountered a robot dog. Here’s a little set of photos from the walk today.
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ~ Douglas Adams
A Taste of Normality
Today I started week eleven since my surgery, my initial healing period and end of medical leave is the beginning of week thirteen, so we’re getting near the end of my initial healing period. By this point I’m supposed to be fully mobile, walking a couple of miles a day, driving and basically doing everything except doing any lifting over ten pounds and very little with my arms outside the core of my body. I’m doing a bit better than that, I’ve achieved all of that and I’m walking four to five miles a day.
So this week I decided to run a bit of normalcy test as well as take a minor vacation. So I’ve come to Reno for a few days apparently to lose money gambling and eat good food. This was a good test, a four hour drive in the car, sleeping flat in a bed and generally living normally. It’s gone well, the car ride went well, I’ve slept ok and generally it feels like a normal trip to Reno. I also got to lay all of my NFL season bets.
I got some good news today, I will be going off of my blood thinners on August seventh, that also means I get to come off another medication that I’ve been taking in conjunction with the Warfarin. So, six less pills to take every day. I also got my blood test results back and all of my blood metrics have come back to normal. I had my last blood draw as well so normal life is coming at me at high speed. This is something that brings mixed feelings, first, very happy to be getting back to normal and unfortunately it means going back to work soon.
I’d hoped to get in a little vacation but there still are some appointments coming up and it just hasn’t worked out timing wise so I’ll have to settle for some great seats, row one, right on the field, for the Giants and Pirates next week with a couple of friends.
The last big thing for me is that I have my first physical therapy appointment on August fourth so I can start working on getting my upper body strength back. Then I work on flying. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about expectations. I’ve come to realize that a lot of the unhappiness that I’ve experienced in my life has been related to my own expectations. You see, I’m someone who has always believed that you should give what you get. If someone is giving of their time for you, then you should we willing to give the same for them. I’ve always expected that if you care about someone, take care of them, give them physical and emotional support, you can expect the same. It’s that thinking that I have come to realize is wrong. Now, this is not a new intellectual realization to me, I have many times had what I call “the levels” discussions with friends about romantic relationships.
The levels conversation is a pretty simple and logical idea, in almost any romantic relationship one person is more invested than the other. There typically is someone who feels incredibly fortunate that the other person is willing to be with them. I think the relationships that work the best, are those times when both partners feel this way. When a person feels that they are lucky to have, and maybe even undeserving of the other person’s attention and affection, they will work harder to make the relationship work. They will also likely be more willing to forgive a lack of attention, affection or time out of fear that if they don’t, the other person might move on. When you’re on the other side of that, you come to realize, perhaps even subconsciously, that you don’t have to be as giving, as the other person will not move on. This can lead to a pattern of one person being more and more, and the other person being less and less invested in making an effort in the relationship. The partners are at different levels of commitment and desire to work in the relationship.
So, knowing this, you would think that I would have easily made the logical leap to understanding that non-romantic, friendships and family relationships would work the same way. Somehow, I believed that non-romantic relationships would be more equal. This is the realization that has really hit me during the last couple of months as I work through my recovery.
The expectation that others would return what I gave, often not being met, is something that has led to a lot of unhappiness for me in my life. So, there’s an easy solution right, just don’t expect anything from anyone and you’ll never be disappointed. This is a meme you’ll see on social media, and a discussion you’ll see in articles. If you have no expectations, you’ll have no disappointments, so have no expectations is their advice. The problem with this idea is that other people are trained by your actions. If you give of yourself, have no expectations, and nothing comes back in return and you’re not upset about this and there are no consequences to the other person, you’ve taught them how to treat you. They will learn that they can expect from you, but don’t need to give the same, or anything for that matter in return and they’ll still have the connection and relationship. And while having no expectations might remove your disappointment, it could also quickly make you a doormat, which is not ideal.
I’ll give a really tangible example of this. I had a person I was friends with in college, we’d spent a lot of time together and were pretty good friends. Once we graduated we stayed in touch, even saw each other from time to time. Mostly though, this was pre-email days, it was phone calls. So, every few months I’d call her up and we’d catch up and they were great conversations. But I started to notice a pattern, I was always the one who called. Finally I brought this up to her on a call and her attitude was, yeah, I’m terrible, I never call anyone but it’s ok because everybody calls me. We had all taught her exactly how to treat us. I was really offended by this attitude, and in fact, stopped calling her, and because I was the only one making the effort, we never spoke again. Not at all what I wanted, but if only one person is making the effort, is there actually a relationship?
So what’s the answer?
I think it’s a combination of two things, lowering your expectations to a lower level, but if that level isn’t met, then move on from the relationship. This has both benefits and problems. First, there is a benefit, having lower expectations you’re less often going to be disappointed and this should help prevent a negative impact to your happiness. Secondly however, humans have a tendency to want fairness, so when you lower your expectations, often like the example of my friend, you get less in return from people as there are fewer consequences to them. So you get less from them and are then often less willing to give to them, because it feels unfair. So while giving less satisfies your sense of fairness, it creates distance in the relationship and this can increase your feelings of loneliness and isolation. What I recommend is that you pay close attention to that cycle. If people aren’t willing to give you what is fair, what you need from the relationship, then you have a choice. Confront them with this information and see if you can build a better relationship or move on. But there’s a corollary to this in that there are people that do give back what they get from you. Dig deeper in and invest more in those relationships, as those are the deeper truer relationships in your life and the relationships likely to bring you greater satisfaction and happiness and are most worthy of your time.
A note on relationship contact frequency. Friendships can take on many forms, I have equally good friends who I hear from in radically different levels of frequency. Some I talk to weekly, others monthly, some only a couple of times a year. The way I gauge the depth of these relationships is by a simple question, if I really needed them, would they be here for me? This may mean either emotionally or physically. The reality is people have complicated lives, for me, most are at a large geographic distance away. So what you give and get, will look very different across different relationships.
One last thought on this topic, humans are by nature self-centered creatures. So while reading this you are naturally thinking about the relationships you have and how people respond to you, you’re thinking about who gives back what you give them and likely focusing on the relationships where you feel like you are giving more than what you give back. But we are all on both sides of this equation in our various relationships. So it’s important to think about those relationships where you’re the person who is not giving back what you get, the relationships where you are making someone else feel less valued. I think it’s important to be honest with yourself about these relationships. It’s important to make a decision, should you extricate from the relationship because it’s not important to you, or should you make a greater effort to bring those relationships into a more just balance?
So my friends, may your relationships be satisfying, balanced and bring you happier days. ~ Rev Kane
So there is one thing we have no control over and that is the march of time. We are all getting older all of the time and eventually we will all get old. It’s also coming faster than most of us are willing to admit. There is a meme on the net lately that I really like:
This meme explains a simple truth that I have always known. One of the reasons that I started my process of quitting every three years and traveling from six months to two years before working for another three years and then doing it again, was that I understood this and I wanted to do things that I wasn’t sure that I would be physically able to do if I waited until I retired, which at the point I started was looking like 65 or 70 at the earliest.
Recently, due to my open-heart surgery, I got a taste of what it’s like to be much older. For a couple of months, I wasn’t able to physically do, what I normally could do. Initially, I could only walk short distances, I couldn’t bend over, I could only sleep on my back, I had absolutely no upper body strength. It meant that I needed help with almost everything, couldn’t drive, couldn’t grocery shop or move anything around in my apartment. It was an incredibly humbling experience and it’s not over. The main injury from the surgery is that they cut my breastbone in half and so effectively I have a broken sternum. This means it will take six months before I’ll be fully back to speed. This has really made me think about getting old. And at sixty I’m not far off from being at an age where my limitations will start to add up.
We’ve all seen “old people” at the grocery store. Walking slowly and seeming fragile, having a hard time concentrating and paying at the register, asking that they only include an item or two in each bag. You know that they have no one at home to help them bring in the groceries, you feel sad for them. But that will be most of us eventually.
So there are two lessons in this my friends for your happiest life.
First, do the things that you want to do, don’t wait, there is a time coming where you might not be able to physically do them. Don’t fall prey to the idea that your fifties are middle age, they’re not, so don’t put things off until your fifties or sixties.
Second, move, exercise, strength train, don’t let your body get weak. While you can’t permanently put off aging and decline, you can definitely slow it down by being in better physical shape. And it’s never too late to get started, you can always get stronger and more flexible, can always improve your cardiovascular health. You can start small, any exercise, any training will make you better. I want you all to get to follow your dreams and be physically ready enough to do them. It will help you have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
The Ministry of Happiness 