The Ministry of Happiness

Happiness is Keeping to your Values

Posted on February 22, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness is Keeping to your Values

We don’t know where we’ll end up, but making moments matter – taking a step back to see something from a different vantage point and investing in your core values – can lead to a world of surprises. ~ Nina Tassler

An important part of being happy is knowing yourself. You have to know what’s important to you, what types of things make your happier, what types of things sabotage your happiness. Very often, as we examine these things, we start to get a good sense of our core values. By core values what I mean are those things that are most important to you. For many people a core value is connection to family. For many people, loyalty to their friends, being someone who gives back, being kind or religious are things that may be core values to them.

For me, one of my deepest core values is honesty. This means that I make a significant effort to be honest with people. Sure, we all tell the occasional white lie to spare someone’s feelings, or stay quiet rather than say something hurtful. However, I really try to do as little of that as possible. This makes me a bit too direct, a bit too honest for some people and it definitely means that people who know me, well, they don’t ask questions they really don’t want an honest answer to. Of course that has it’s upside as well, I am someone that people depend upon when they want truly honest feedback.

The thing about this value for me is that it’s something that’s very much a two-way street. I have an expectation that the people close to me will also be honest with me. When this doesn’t happen, when there are conflicting core values at work, it creates for disappointment, bad feelings and a loss of happiness.

So what’s the lesson in this brief discussion tonight? Well simply, it is that if you want to maximize your happiness, it helps to align yourself in life, to spend time with people who share your core values. While diversity in many things is a positive, in this particular instance, aligning with similar minded people can be a positive impact on your happiness and lead to happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged be happy, core values, happiness, happy, honesty, values | Leave a comment

Random Happiness: Happy Facts

Posted on February 21, 2021 by Michael Kane

Random Happiness: Happy Facts

Sea Otters hold hands when they sleep so that they don’t drift apart!

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Tonight a collection of links to random happy facts, things like every year hundreds of new trees are grown because squirrels forget where they hid their nuts! Check them out and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Sixty-four Mind Blowing Facts to Make You Feel Incredibly Happy

Sixty of the World’s Happiest Facts

Thirty of the Happiest Facts Ever, with pictures for each.

Fifteen Fact to Make you Smile, number one is the greatest one ever!

Twenty Surprising Facts about Happiness

Thirty-two Cool & Happy Facts

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged facts, fun, happiness, happy, life, nature | Leave a comment

Helen Keller, Happiness & Optimism

Posted on February 20, 2021 by Michael Kane

Helen Keller, Happiness & Optimism

You learn about Helen Keller in elementary school, you see the Miracle Worker at some point and you’re impressed. However, I never knew or retained much about what this amazing woman accomplished as an author and even as a political activist. So take a look and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Helen Keller should be your hero.

Here’s a piece from Hub pages discussing her unshakable optimism:

As a deaf-blind individual who prospered in a world that very much relies on sight and hearing, Helen retained her happiness by always placing stock in remaining an optimst. For many, optimism is simply remaining positive during a bad day, but for Helen, optimism was a way of life – a necessity. More importantly, Helen believed pessimism to be dangerous, never allowing herself to lose hope. “If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it,” Helen once wrote, “then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.”

Just after graduating from college at twenty-three, Helen wrote her second book, My Key of Life: Optimism. Released to widespread critical acclaim, the book was simply a guide to obtaining and retaining optimism and hope. Nearly overnight, Helen became a beacon for hope and overcoming indescribable odds.

Using this recognition, Helen began to travel the world, sharing her story and optimism with others. And for Helen, this was no small feat. Imagine a time speaking in front a large audience, now imagine you cannot hear yourself, or see your audience. This was just one small challenge in Helen’s life.

helen keller, optimism, happiness, quote

Helen Keller a true believer in happiness and optimism

After years of voice coaching, and tremendous concentration, Helen was able to speak. During one early lecture, however, Helen began to lose her composure and lost control over the tone of her voice. Realizing this, Helen ran crying off stage. Yet, Helen did not let this event, unthinkable to many, stop her. Just moments later, she walked back on stage and continued her lecture. For the rest of her life, Helen gave thousands of lectures all over the world.

Throughout her life, Helen believed it was her lot in life – her “sacred duty” – to share her optimism with others. In her book on optimism, Helen wrote, “If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, – if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.”

Helen Keller truly lived a life of happiness and optimism. Here’s hoping her story has helped you have a happier day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Happiness and Dancing

Posted on February 19, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness and Dancing

Bliss Dancing

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Today let’s not talk about deep things, lets talk about happiness while dancing through simplicity, life can be all too complicated. Even our search for happiness can be complicated, we can over think things, read too many books, listen to too many people in blogs spouting off about happiness.

So today do something simple and easy to make you happy. Steal a few minutes and eat a cupcake or take a quiet moment and drink in the sunset. Turn up the music in the car and sing like crazy, or play air guitar at traffic lights or dance. If you can truly dance unbridled you can’t be sad, lost in the movement and the moment and the music nothing else can matter, a few minutes of unrestricted happiness can be yours. We all know this quote and we all know it because it states the simple truth we’re talking about today.

You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth
~ William W. Purkey

And as always, have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Happiness is the wisdom of dogs

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Happiness is Poetry: Sapphire

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness is Poetry: Sapphire

Tonight we return to the land of outlaw poetry and a really brilliant poet named Sapphire. Her stuff is raw and intense and amazing, but be warned her language and visuals are shocking and of an adult nature, so have a read and a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Originally posted March, 2019

Humpty Dumpty Heart

my heart leaks knowing
since you shot my sheets
with light,
lifting me out my skin
past sky.

i look for your tongue in light
& listen to tales of a new daughter
apartments, mortgages, wife;
knowing i was just a blurred night–
black, whited-out & lost.

Out the blue you call back the years
like a movie reel rewinding,
after six deaf years i hear
you want to come over.

the silence of blind rooms
goads me to balance
humpty dumpty like
one more time the weight of light.

& i would,
but for the bleeding yolk
that lies in cracked knowing–
once it’s eaten
it’s over.

*********************************

Wild Thing

And I´m running,
running wild,
running free,
like soldiers down
the beach,
like someone
just threw me
the ball.
My thighs pump
thru the air
like tires
rolling down
the highway
big & round
eating up the ground
of America
but I never been any
further than 42nd Street.
Below that is as
unfamiliar as my
father´s face,
foreign as the smell of
white girls´pussy,
white girls on the bus,
white girls on TV
My whole world is
black & brown & closed,
till I open it
with a rock,
christen it with
blood.
BOP BOP
the music
pops thru me
like electric shocks,
my sweat is a
river running
thru my liver
green with hate,
my veins bulge out
like tomorrow,
my dick is
the Empire State Building,
I eat your fear
like a chimpanzee
ow ow
ow whee
ow!
My sneakers glide off
the cement like
white dreams
looking out at the world
thru a cage of cabbage
& my mother´s fat,
hollering don´t do this
& don´t do that.
I scream against the restraint
of her big ass sitting on my face
drowning my dreams in sameness.
I´m scared to go
it hurts me to stay.
She sits cross-legged
in front the TV
telling me no
feeding me
clothing me
bathing me in her ugliness
high high in the sky
18th floor of the projects.
Her welfare check buys me $85 sneakers
but can´t buy me a father.
She makes cornbread from Jiffy box mix
buys me a coat
$400, leather like everybody else´s.
I wear the best, man!
14 karat gold chain
I take off before I go wildin´.
Fuck you nigger!
Nobody touches my gold!
My name is Leroy
L-E-R-O-Y
bold gold
I got the goods
that make the ladies
young & old
sign your name across my heart
I want you to be my baby
Rapper D
Rapper G
Rapper I
my name is lightning
across the sky
So what I can´t read
you spozed to teach me
you the teacher
I´m the ape
black ape
in white sneakers
hah hah
I rape
rape
rape
I do the wild thing
I do the wild thing
My teacher asks me
what would I do
if I had 6 month
to live.
I tell her I´d fuck her,
sell dope & do the wild thing.
My thighs are locomotives
hurling me thru the
underbrush of Central Park,
the jungle.
I either wanna be a cop
or the biggest dope dealer in Harlem
when I grow up.
I feel good!
It´s a man´s world,
my sound is king
I am the black man´s sound.
Get off my face whining bitch!
No, I didn´t go to school today
& I ain´t going tomorrow!
I like how the sky looks
when I´m running,
my clothes are new & shiny,
my tooth gleams gold.
I´m fast as a wolf
I need a rabbit,
the sky is falling
calling my name
Leroy Leroy.
I look up
blood bust
in my throat
it´s my homeboys
L.D., C.K. & Beanbutt!
Hey man what´s up!
I got the moon
in my throat,
I remember when
Christ sucked my dick
behind the pulpit,
I was 6 years old
he made me promise
not to tell no one.
I eat cornbread &
collard greens.
I only wear Adidas
I´m my own man,
they can wear New Balance or Nike
if they want,
I wear Adidas.
I´m L.D.
lover
mover
man with the money
all the girls know me.
I´m classified as mildly retarded
but I´m not
least I don´t think
I am.
Special Education classes
eat up my brain
like last week´s greens
rotting in plastic containers.
My mother never
throws away anything.
I could kill her
I could kill her
all those years
all those years
I sat
I sat in classes
for the mentally retarded
so she could get
the extra money welfare gives
for retarded kids.
So she could get
some money,
some motherfuckin´ money.
That bitch
that bitch
I could kill her
all the years
I sat next to kids
who shitted on themselves,
dreaming amid
rooms of dull eyes
that one day
my rhymes
would break open
the sky
& my name would
be written
across the marquee
at the Apollo
in bold gold
me bigger
than Run DMC
Rapper G
Rapper O
Rapper Me
„Let´s go!“ I scream.
My dick is a locomotive
my sister eats like a 50 ¢ hot dog.
I scream, „I said let´s go!“
„It´s 40 of us
a black wall of sin.
The god of our fathers
descends down & blesses us,
I say thank you Jesus.
Now let´s do the
wild thing.
I pop off the cement
like toast outta toaster
hot hard crumbling
running
running
the park is green
combat operation
lost soul
looking for Lt. Calley
Jim Jones
anybody who could direct
this spurt of semen
rising to the sky.
soldiers
flying thru
the rhythm
„Aw man!
nigger please
nigger
nigger
nigger.
I know
who I am.“
My soul sinks
to its knees &
howls under the
moon rising full,
„Let´s get a female jogger!“
I shout into the twilight
looking at the
middle-class thighs
pumping past me,
cadres of bitches
who deserve to die
for thinking they´re better
than me
You ain´t better than
nobody bitch.
The rock begs my hand
to hold it.
It says, „Come on man.“
T.W., Pit Bull, J.D. & me
grab the bitch
ugly big nose white bitch
but she´s beautiful cause she´s white
she´s beautiful cause she´s skinny
she´s beautiful couse she´s gonna die
cause her daddy´s gonna cry
Bitch!
I bring the rock down
on her head
sounds dull & flat
like the time I busted
the kitten´s head.
The blood is real & red
my dick rises.
I tear off her bra
feel her perfect pink breasts
like Brooke Shields
like bitches in Playboy
Shit! I come all over myself!
I bring the rock down
the sound has rhythm
hip hop ain´t gonna stop
till your face sees
what I see every day
walls of blood
walls of blood
she´s wriggeling like
a pig in the mud.
I never seen a pig
or a cow
´cept on TV.
Her nipples are like
hard strawberries
my mouth tastes
like pesticide.
I fart.
Yosef slams her
across the face with a pipe.
My dick won´t get
hard no more.
I bring the rock down
removing what she
looks like forever
ugly bitch
ugly bitch
I get up
blood on my hands
semen in my jeans
the sky is black
the trees are green
I feel good baby
I just did
the wild thing!

Posted in Happiness is Poetry | Tagged happiness, outlaw, outlaw poetry, poem, poetry, ramona lofton, sapphire | 6 Comments

Great Hikes & Treks

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Michael Kane

Great Hikes & Treks

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. ~Paul Dudley White

Shorter Hikes (Under 100 miles)

Rim to Rim Grand Canyon (United States)

Western Highland & Great Glenn Way (Scotland)
– I’ve done the Great Glenn portion of this, not challenging and very scenic

Tonquin Valley Trail (Alberta, Canada)

Mid-Level Hikes (100+ miles and/or major elevation)

Base Camp Mount Everest (Nepal) – I’ve personally done this trek with Kamzang, the photos are from the trek.

Sierra High Route (United States)

Inca Trail (Peru)

Petra Trail (Jordan)

Big Ones (Long Distance Mileage and/or Elevation)

Appalachian Trail (United States) – I did a thousand miles last summer, absolutely magnificent.

Pacific Coast Trail (United States)

Continental Divide Trail (United States)

Kungsleden, The King’s Trail (Sweden)

Snowman Trek (Bhutan)

Happiness Moments: Help I’m Drowning

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness Moments: Help I’m Drowning

Everyone smiles in the same language. ~ Author Unknown

So a little writing experiment for the blog. I’ve been wanting to find a way to do some free writing as practice. And I’ve been wanting to capture the moments in my life that have brought me true happiness. I need that little pick me up right now with everything going on in the world and no real chance to travel. So, some writing about happy moments in my life, hope they bring you a little happiness too.

At one point while living in Sacramento California I took a raft trip down the American River with some friends. Now to be clear this was more of a float than serious rafting trip and accompanying me were five of my friends including two couples. The one couple consisted of a friend of mine and his girlfriend from Germany. Now there was some drinking going on during this little trip and the girl from Germany didn’t drink so I thought it was important that I be able to call for help in German should I need her assistance. She patiently taught me the phrase,” help I’m drowning” in German, and laughed like hell when I repeated it. I assumed I was somehow butchering the accent, but we were communicating and I felt safer.

During this trip one of the most amazing things I ever saw happened. At one point while were playing around in waist deep water, the other woman with us on the trip was sitting on the edge of the raft drinking a cup of beer. The raft was bucked by her boyfriend so violently that she actually bounced up and did a full flip landing feet first standing in the river. That was not the amazing part, throughout the entire bounce, flip and landing she never spilled a single drop from her cup. It was truly beautiful.

Throughout the day I kept playing around and yelling in my butchered German, “help I’m drowning!” My friend’s girlfriend continued to laugh and laugh and then at the end of the day she came up to me and explained what was making her laugh so much. Apparently a slight mispronunciation on my part had changed the phrase from help I’m drowning, to the more appropriate, “help I’m drinking!” We all got a great laugh out of that and this story and that phrase has gotten me a lot of laughs from a lot of Germans I’ve met. So remember to laugh my friends, even if it is at yourself.

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged california, drinking, happiness, Happiness Moments, rafting, river, tubing, writing | Leave a comment

We all need a timeout

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Michael Kane

We all need a timeout

I have discovered the virtue of patience and I don’t quite believe that taking a break for good reason can be a risk. ~ Dia Mirza

It’s been a hell of a last twelve months, and as someone who manages people I have seen first hand what a year of the extra pressure that the pandemic has brought to us has done to people. I have supervisory responsibility for about sixty people. Which quite honestly has meant sixty different reactions to life in the pandemic. Some people melted down immediately, last April I reached out to ever employee just to check-in, some folks were really struggling and I did what I could. Summer seemed to mellow things out at some level, I think people getting outside had a lot to do with it. But since Christmas the pressure has really been building, people are tired of being under restrictions, the numbers for infections and deaths were rising quickly, the vaccines, which are a light at the end of the tunnel, have not been distributed quickly or efficiently enough, political turmoil has been on the rise. All of this leads to high levels of uncertainty and certainty is something that makes people feel safe. When people don’t feel safe they are like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof, and they act out in a variety of ways.

I am not immune to this effect. While I personally feel safe and have not been as negatively impacted by COVID as many people have, including those who I supervise it still impacts me. Being responsible for these people, responding to their reactions has made my job incredibly stressful. I’ve lost all of my emotional reserves and as such I’m certainly a bit shorter and snippier than normal. Being stressed out and on edge for a nomad has a simple, single answer — wander. But right now I can’t wander, I can barely even travel to do anything other than stay in a hotel room somewhere, at least not safely. So I’ve been considering wandering in the grander sense, I’ve been exploring new jobs and opportunities. This for me, in itself, is a form of stress relief, and taking action to wander has always been helpful for me. While change makes other people feel less certain about the world, oddly for me, it’s something that makes me feel more comfortable, the definition of a nomad I guess. But that’s the bigger picture, and while helpful to me personally, probably not helpful for those of you reading this post. So what would be helpful?

Take a timeout. Let’s start with what I’m doing. This is for me, a four-day weekend. This is one of the great benefits of working in education, we get a lot of holidays. So I decided that this four-day weekend is a giant time out for me. That means letting all of my responsibilities go for the next four days. Dealing with nothing that stresses me out in any way at all. So ignoring all email, reducing my social media contact, avoiding family and absolutely doing nothing related to work. And the flipside is to do things that make me happy. I’ve been jonesing for Mexican food so I went out and got some takeout from a local restaurant, it added an extra cheat day to my diet this week but it made me feel good. I went online and played the ponies, I’ve been doing some writing, I burned some CDs down to my new MP3 player, I’ve slept in for three straight days. Today I made a big pot of soup, had a lovely big Sunday morning breakfast and bought and read an honest to god paper copy of the NY Times. I even took two days off from working out. In essence, what it has been is a giant deep breath.

So my friends, how do you get a giant deep breath? What does it take for that to happen for you? First of course, it has to be planned, you’ve got to consciously make the effort to create the time. For those of you with families that can be tough, especially if time with family is exactly what you need a deep breath from at this point. If you’re fortunate enough to have an understanding partner, perhaps you can enlist their help in allowing each of you to take a turn getting your deep breath the way you need it. For some of you, that deep breath may mean taking a deep breath with your entire family. If that’s the case then create the space, camp out in the backyard or in your living room, turn off the phones and computers and just get yourself a day or two away from the world. While I was able to find a four-day weekend, a day or even an afternoon or evening might be enough for you. But I think right now my friends, it’s imperative for all of us to take a timeout in order to have happier days. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged COVID 19, relaxation, stress, take a break, time out, timeout, work, work life balance | Leave a comment

Holiday Happiness: Accept, Appreciate, Believe and Love Yourself

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Michael Kane

Holiday Happiness: Accept, Appreciate, Believe in and Love Yourself

Don’t forget to say positive things to yourself daily! You must love yourself internally to glow externally. ~ Hannah Bronfman

Originally Posted in December 2019

The holidays are a very stressful time for everyone and an exceptionally hard time for some. So, until the New Year I’ll be posting a Holiday Happiness post each day to try help folks out who are struggling. As always you can reach out to me at Happinesskane@aol.com for a kind word or someone to listen. ~ Rev Kane

During this time of year, those who get down on themselves often start to feel bad because of a sense of loneliness and disconnection. For me, the place that I grew up is the toughest place to be this time of year. In addition to plenty of painful memories, there is the cold, the dark and a feeling of isolation that winter at that point in the year creates in me. I seem to feel the blackness that comes in the night, the cold penetrates a little too deep.

No matter what seed starts the feeling, being depressed this time of year can lead you into the well, that place where you feel down and don’t seem to be able to get out of. Of course what spirals you down into the depths is that once you feel bad, you start piling on to yourself. You tell yourself that you’re not worth the connections, community and happiness other people have this time of year. You focus on your faults and inflate their relevance, you stop reminding yourself of all of the good qualities you possess. You start to assume that people don’t want you around, you decline invitations because you convince yourself that people are just being nice, or that it really won’t be fun.

As I’ve written about it before, this time of year it is particularly important to focus on the positive, even something as small as remembering to smile. You have to believe in yourself, you have to accept that you’re not perfect and be ok with that, you have to love yourself. Stay as positive as possible and the holidays will be past soon enough and by staying positive you CAN have happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in Holiday Happiness | Tagged acceptance, appreciation, be happy, believe in yourself, depression, Holiday Happiness, holidays, love, love yourself | 2 Comments

Happiness is Art – Monet

Posted on February 14, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness is Art – Monet

Tonight a quick tour through some really beautiful art, the paintings of Claude Monet, enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Posted in Happiness is Art | Tagged art, beauty, claude monet, france, happiness, impressionist, monet, paintings, water lilies | 3 Comments

The Ministry of Happiness

Happiness is Keeping to your Values

Happiness is Keeping to your Values

Random Happiness: Happy Facts

Random Happiness: Happy Facts

Helen Keller, Happiness & Optimism

Helen Keller, Happiness & Optimism

Other Happiness Posts You Might Enjoy!

Happiness and Dancing

Happiness and Dancing

Other Fun Posts!

Happiness is Poetry: Sapphire

Happiness is Poetry: Sapphire

Humpty Dumpty Heart

Wild Thing

Great Hikes & Treks

Great Hikes & Treks

Shorter Hikes (Under 100 miles)

Mid-Level Hikes (100+ miles and/or major elevation)

Big Ones (Long Distance Mileage and/or Elevation)

Other Posts You Might Enjoy!

Happiness Moments: Help I’m Drowning

Happiness Moments: Help I’m Drowning

We all need a timeout

We all need a timeout

Holiday Happiness: Accept, Appreciate, Believe and Love Yourself

Holiday Happiness: Accept, Appreciate, Believe in and Love Yourself

Happiness is Art – Monet

Happiness is Art – Monet

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