The Ministry of Happiness

Finding Happiness in Patience & Subtlety

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Michael Kane

Finding Happiness in Patience & Subtlety

Chinese character for patience

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. ~ Lao Tzu

Originally published February, 2019

Many years ago I started studying Tai Chi and Chi Qong with an instructor in Sacramento. It was a stressful time in my life and I started doing Tai Chi as a way of forcing myself out of the office and as a method of relaxation. I did well with learning the basic forms and movements of the style and the class did have the desired effect of helping me relax. The side benefit of studying Tai Chi was the beginning of starting to look at things from an Eastern perspective. There were two very important things that we addressed early on in our class, the first being pace. We discussed the impatience of Western society and in particular the United States. The first move we learned we practiced for two nights and the class was impatient, myself included, to move on to the next move. Our instructor laughed at us, when he was studying in China they practiced this same first move for two months before moving on to the second.

The second topic we studied was the idea of cultivating subtle energies and recognizing the subtle in our lives. This is another area in which our culture is very different from the East, our lives are not about the subtle in the United States. For me in particular this topic hits home, I’m not subtle, I hit life straight on and I don’t do it quietly or subtly. Maybe this is part of my heritage, my upbringing, hell maybe it’s genetic coming from Irish and Italian roots. Either way, noticing and cultivating the subtle is something I personally work on.

Finding Subtlety

In our life here in America we do not live subtly. Those of us in cities deal daily and constantly with a high level of noise and distraction, we move quickly from appointment to appointment, we eat fast food, we drive fast and we live fast. A local news station is currently advertising by using a woman who talks about not having thirty minutes for the news which is why she loves that they give all of the important news and weather in the first eight minutes. Really, we can’t spare thirty minutes a day to know what’s happening in the world?

Noticing and cultivating the subtle is not just simply about slowing down or smelling the roses it is about truly settling. Settling means coming to a full stop, like a quiet and calm pool of water where the water is so calm that all particles are allowed to sink to the bottom leaving the water clear and still. This is the meditation I practice at night, trying to bring peace and clarity to notice the subtle in my life.

We have talked a lot here at the Ministry of Happiness about the big things, the not so subtle things we can do to be happy. Today I ask you to consider settling to find peace and clarity so that you can see clearly, notice the subtle beauty in your life and find happiness. Have a great and happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

My COVID Times Diary – New World Road Trip

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Michael Kane

My COVID Times Diary – New World Road Trip

Originally published July 24, 2020

So, after 11 weeks of insane levels of work and then a couple at the normal insanity levels, I finally was able to take my first vacation days since returning from Mardi Gras at the end of February. I had originally planned a trip in March to Las Vegas, but as the coronavirus started to rage I cancelled the trip, which worked out as Vegas shut down on the week I would have been going. Given our new reality flying to Vegas didn’t seem like a great idea. I don’t like the idea of being on an aircraft particularly if they fill the middle seat, so I opted for a safer option, the good ole fashion road trip.

I decided to stay in Reno for a couple of days, including doing a day trip out to Virginia City to photograph the Silver Terrace Cemetery. I had tentatively planned on stopping at a beach in Lake Tahoe on the way home but plans changed. Finally I spent the last night in Sacramento and headed for home.

I decided to stay at the Silver Legacy, a place I’ve stayed many times before. The check-in procedure on paper seemed a bit daunting, reading the sign upon arrival confirmed the process I was expecting:

The process was supposed to be that you need to wear a mask, pull it down and show ID to verify your identity and then have your temperature taken. Once you’ve been verified you were to be given a wristband that verified you’d been through the checkpoint. So I arrived and as I walked up the security guard stepped out and handed me a wrist band. As I approached the desk I was still trying to put the wrist band on and the desk clerk says to me, “you don’t have to wear that.” So much for the daunting check-in process.

Other than that little glitch the precautions that were required seemed to be being carried out. No two machines next to each other were working:

There were hand sanitizer stations everywhere:

Any place that lines might occur there were the standard stand here stickers:

I definitely saw a little more frequent cleaning than normal, staff wiping down machines and railings. Being just after the Fourth of July holiday things were pretty quiet. But that also meant a lot of the restaurants weren’t open, there was no entertainment. So for meals I did local takeout and that worked fine except when I walked out to a taqueria across the street from the casino. On the way back I realized that they were controlling entry points as you could only re-enter through the valet or parking garage. It meant a bit of a walk but controlling entry with temperature checks would definitely work, however, as related above, I didn’t see any temperature checks occurring.

Inside the casino people were the way people are, most were wearing masks, some of course not covering their nose making the masks completely ineffective. There were also the people not wearing masks at all. In the bar areas this was expected, but in other areas people were also at times not wearing masks. All in all it felt generally safe, as safe as any indoor set up could be. I felt generally ok and spent some time playing video poker, in fact ended up winning a couple of hundred dollars. However, the game I most like participating in, craps was another reality. On the craps table everyone was wearing masks, and they were standing with an empty tables spot between them. I just didn’t feel comfortable knowing I’d likely be on a table in close proximity with 6-8 people for possibly an hour. Even with masks, and perhaps I was being overly cautious, it seemed to be a bit too risky.

Staying in hotel rooms felt fairly safe. Of course I brought a container of Clorox wipes with me. I wiped down every surface that I thought I would touch in the room, and the remote twice! In considering going to Vegas I had read some pieces on what they were doing in the hotels there. There were signs in the room about cleaning, the remote encased in plastic, little gift bags with paper masks and hand sanitizer. But Reno is the poor man’s version of Vegas, there was a piece of paper mentioning the cleaning and listing what was open, no freebies, not masks with marketing on them. There is no daily maid service without a request. The hotel in Roseville, was a little better set up at entrance, but the night clerk didn’t have a mask and was hanging out in the lobby with a friend also not wearing a mask. The morning clerk at check-out was also not wearing mask, that was a bit disconcerting.

In general the whole adventure was fine but a bit nerve wracking. I was happy to get away for a couple of days and even on the last night snagged a pizza at my favorite place in Roseville, Celestinos. In fact, I had one of the best pies I’ve ever had there this trip.

Now of course the we play the waiting game, for the next ten to fourteen days every cough, any little headache, any moment of not feeling well and I’ll wonder. But that’s the reality now in COVID times. ~ Michael Kane

Posted in Life in Covid Times | Tagged casino, coronavirus, COVID, covid life, covid times, gambling, pizza, reno, road trip, travel | Leave a comment

Happiness is Not Safety

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Michael Kane

Happiness is Not Safety

Originally posted April, 2019

The quote above has been flowing around the internet and possibly truer words have never been spoken. If you don’t move forward, take chances, risk yourself in some way, you stagnate. True, you revert to a place that is more predictable that is safer, but is that better, is that someplace you’ll truly be happier?

I say no, and I give you this example. Remember the first time you fell in love, remember that amazingly terrifying feeling of falling helplessly and loving every second and every breath you took during those moments. You never get there, you never feel that way without making a change, taking a step forward, a risky step at that. Yes, often that feeling was followed by the normal rollercoaster of love, but would you avoid the downside, trade that most amazing feelings, for being safe and never hurt but never knowing love. No matter the pain you’ve felt I don’t think you would.

Rev Kane relaxing in the arctic snow flurries

Too many times in life we opt for safety, security, predictability. We pass on a wonderful job opportunity because it means moving and uprooting our lives. We let our doubts work their evil on us and scare us with the idea we might not be good at the new gig. What we effectively do is let the current box we live in and the script that society has handed us define who and what we will be. Stop it! Scare yourself, you can never truly know how amazing you are, what you are capable of or how wonderful life can be until you step out onto the edge and try something new.

This idea is amazingly relevant for me right now. I just came off of a year of doing just this. When I told my human resource director at my last job what I was doing, that I was stepping away from work he was actually confused. “You won’t have health insurance, you know you won’t acrue any time towards your retirement?” Now these are idiotic statements and although I didn’t like him very much I can’t say he was a truly stupid man. What had happened was I had stepped out of the box and it was inconceivable to him and so he started quoting the things that our society has scripted for us, things that keep us safe, health care, retirement, blah, blah, blah. You know what’s not in that script, FUN! The script doesn’t talk about enjoying life, trying new things, exploring this amazing world and the greatest gift we’ve ever been given, our life.

By time I start working again sometime in the late spring or summer, I will have been off of work fifteen to eighteen months. Not only didn’t I die or ruin my life but I had an utterly amazing year. Now I know what some of you are thinking. Sure, you’re single, you make good money when you’re working, you don’t have kids, it’s easy for you. My reply is bullshit! You know plenty of single people, how many of them have ever left their scripted lives and just traveled for a year after the age of 30. We all have complications and responsibilities in life. All of these can be addressed if you are willing to take a chance, to give up the scripted safety for a bit.

There are whole websites, like Families on the Road, that cater to folks who have taken their kids out of school and hit the road for months or years at a time. What people think is that this sort of thing is half-assed and irresponsible, it’s just the opposite. In order to do what these people did, what I did, it takes a lot of planning. I planned for three years before I took this year off. It took that long to figure out the plan, how to pay for the time off, how to save and create the finances needed to cover the responsibilities and bills we all have whether we are working or not. Irresponsible, how could creating the coolest year in your kids whole childhood be considered irresponsible?

Life goes by so fast, it seems like a month ago I was at a parade for the US Bicentennial in 1976, college seems like last week, the birth of my fourteen year-old niece hours ago. Don’t let life slip by my friends. One of the greatest compliments I have ever given was by a co-worker in Tennessee, she looked at me and said, “my friend you are a sampler of life.” The fact that being that type of person is not normal is one of the saddest things I can think of, we get one shot, why the hell not make it the best ride possible.

I know it’s hard, I know it’s scary, beyond terrifying even. It’s as scary as climbing a thirty foot rock wall with a thirty-five pound pack on your back. I know that fear all too well, but what I’ve learned every time I’ve done something like this, is that it pays more dividends than you can possibly imagine. I love that so many of you who read my writings do so to come along for the ride. I’m happy you do, but what I want even more for you, is for you go for your own ride and take me along. I don’t want you just to virtually experience my happiness, I want you to create your own. You’re never too old, too fat, too bald, too small, too broke to do this, it just takes the desire to do it with a bit of planning. So be bold my friends, identify the step and take it, boldly, bravely and take the happiness you deserve and along the way, and always remember to have a good day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Happiness, it’s all about our attitude

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Michael Kane

Happiness, it’s all about our attitude

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. ~ Viktor E Frankl

Originally posted on July 12, 2020

These COVID times have been tough on all of us. I hope the reality has set in for all of us that the coronavirus is here with us for quite some time. It’s not too hard to believe that we will be in the situation that we are in for at least a year, it’s really not difficult to see this going on for the next two years. Take a minute and just let that sink in, wearing a mask when you go out, working from home or occasionally from the office, kids attending school online or part-time and many, many people getting sick and losing their lives will likely continue for the next couple of years.

So life has thrown us a pretty nasty curve but it’s up to us to make the most of this situation, as we do with anything in life. There’s a very specific reason I used the quote from Viktor Frankl tonight. He wrote perhaps the best book I’ve ever read and I first wrote about it in a post in 2014. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, recounts how while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, he found meaning and happiness in life. He makes a simple point, if he could find happiness there, even for a fleeting moment, than we should be able to find happiness in our own lives.

And yes, that’s exactly the point I’m making tonight. We are living in difficult times. Our world has been flipped upside down and everything is changing. Change is something that none of us find comfortable, so none of us are comfortable right now. But given all of that, it doesn’t mean that we have to be unhappy. Our happiness is tied to our attitude, I’ve written about this before. That has never been more true than it is right now. So the obvious question is, how do I adjust my attitude so that I can feel happier right now? This is what I want to address tonight.

Rarely does anything worthwhile in life come without some effort or work, this is no different. So let’s talk about the steps it takes to adjust your attitude during difficult times.

Accept reality – James Stockdale was a POW in the Vietnam War, he was tortured for years and he never broke. When asked about how this was possible he explained, and that explanation has come to be known as the Stockdale Paradox, popularized in the book, Good To Great. Stockdale said that the optimists had the hardest time in captivity. They thought, I’ll be free by Thanksgiving, so when that date came and went it crushed them. We’ve been doing the same thing with COVID, it will be over after we shelter in place, it will calm down when summer gets here and it gets hot. It’s July and taking off, those people who put stock in that optimistic view are struggling more than others. So what was Stockdale’s recipe, it starts with first accept your reality. Understand the reality of your situation. Right now, this virus is the real deal, it’s a real risk and killing people. Our lives are being permanently altered and it will be at least a year or two before our lives will get back to anything resembling normal. So accept that this is your situation. Wear a mask, wash your hands frequently and practice appropriate social distancing.
Plan your way to happiness – You have to really think about your new situation. This means assessing what’s really happening. Have you evaluated your workspace at home, if you’re working from home? Are you, as well as you are able, scheduling time to work, time to help your kids with their school work, family time and super importantly time for yourself to maintain your mental health. This is not a great time to wing it, it’s time to carefully plan out schedules, physical space and personal time. Yes, I get it, your three year-old doesn’t care about your schedule. But that’s not a reason not to plan, provide structure and if you have a partner, to share the load between the two of you as best you can. If you have a partner it’s also not time to be less communicative. You need to communicate your feelings and your needs.
Work the plan – planning is worthless if you don’t follow the plan. Set boundaries, stick to your planning and practice self-discipline. Hopefully within your plan you’ve included all of the necessities and that includes the three most important, eating, sleeping well and being active. Don’t let the stress of your current situation lead you to bad eating or drinking too much, make sure you are getting enough sleep and being active will help that. I’m someone who typically worked out five days a week. Several days a week weightlifting and doing some form of cardio every day. Well, gyms are closed and even if they weren’t right now, I wouldn’t feel safe going to them. So I’m working out at home with dumbbells. Today I ordered a workout bench and some heavier weights. Be aware, you can’t find dumbbells anywhere in a store right now and the soonest I could get online was a delivery date of August 20th.
Have discipline – the absolute hardest part of all of this is staying disciplined. It took me a good six or eight weeks to finally get my routine well planned and to get myself to stick with it. But since I finally got into that groove I’ve dropped a few pounds, my blood sugar levels are dropping and I’ve been sleeping better. My COVID dreams have even stopped, not promising that will happen for you, but it worked for me.
Stay positive – it’s hugely important to practice positivity and look for silver linings. Instead of focusing on how difficult it is with everyone being in the house, focus on how nice it is that you all get to eat dinner together. Take a deep breath before you react in frustration, find ways to do things for other people and be kind. Changing your focus will help change your attitude.
Finally, give yourself a break – I mean that in a couple of ways. First, you’re going to have times where you don’t keep to your schedule, where parts of what you are responsible for are going to fall apart a bit. You’re not going to be perfect, and especially in less than ideal times, that’s more than ok. So don’t hammer yourself. This is a rule from successful dieting, it’s not about being perfect, but giving yourself a break and starting again when you fail a little. The other way I mean give yourself a break is to literally get some downtime. I know a normal vacation is not really a possibility right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the relaxation you need. That can happen in a lot of ways. A few days free from all of your electronic devices and social media is one way. If you have the right situation, go camping in your yard. A small semi-local road trip can also be done. I’ve just returned from a three day road trip to Reno, Virginia City and Sacramento. Not a massive road trip or anything extremely exciting, but it was nice to get out my apartment for a couple of days, to eat the way I would like instead of the way I should and do a little socially distanced gambling. Better yet, I actually won some money! So get creative and do something that will work with you and your family.

What this all comes down to, is accepting your reality, staying positive and doing the things that will help you be happier. Yes, harder than it sounds but not impossible. A little positivity, some discipline and you can do it my friends. And like James Stockdale you can come out of the other side of all of this a better person. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in Life in Covid Times, personal happiness | Tagged attitude, be happy, coronavirus, finding happiness, happiness, happy, positivity, Viktor Frankl | Leave a comment

The Wisdom of Paulo Coehlo

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Michael Kane

The Wisdom of Paulo Coehlo

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act. ~ Paulo Coehlo

Originally posted October, 2019

Recently as I have been researching information for other pieces I have been encountering the words of Paulo Coehlo, author of The Alchemist, again and again. I looked up the book on Amazon and read something interesting about the author. From Wikipedia:

In 1986, Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, a turning point in his life. On the path, Coelho had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The Pilgrimage. In an interview, Coelho stated “[In 1986], I was very happy in the things I was doing. I was doing something that gave me food and water – to use the metaphor in “The Alchemist”, I was working, I had a person whom I loved, I had money, but I was not fulfilling my dream. My dream was, and still is, to be a writer.” Coelho would leave his lucrative career as a songwriter and pursue writing full-time.

Given both my upcoming 2200 mile hike of the Appalachian Trail and my own desire to be a writer, I can only hope for a similar spiritual awakening and similar success. So tonight some quotes and wisdom from Paulo Coehlo, and if by chance Paulo should read this, a message to him in his native tongue from my time in Brazil, Io tenho saudade para brasil. Have a read, enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

he two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people’s opinions.

When I’m dancing, I’m not thinking about anything. I am here. I am totally there. You know? And the feeling is a sensation of being away from myself. My soul dances with the angels, and my body dances with my wife.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Posted in Happiness is Art | Tagged applachian trail, happiness, life, paulo coehlo, philosophy, road of santiago de compostela, spirituality, the alchemist, the pilgrimage | 1 Comment

Happiness is being uninhibited

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Michael Kane

Happiness is being uninhibited

Originally posted 6/2018

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. ~ Denis Waitley

Tonight as the beginning of my grand adventure is a week away I have been reflecting on the changes I’m already seeing in myself. I’ll address the sense of minimalism in my next post, but tonight wanted to reflect on inhibition. In our lives we spend far too much time worrying about what others think of us, what we do, how we look, who we spend time with. I’m not an idiot of course I realize other’s perceptions of these things have implications, typically in the workplace and in our social circles. But in my time on this planet I have found the cost of be inhibition to be much higher than the price you pay for being uninhibited, more plainly put the price for being yourself.

I learned this lesson in the summer of 1987 while working with an Upward Bound Program at SUNY Plattsburgh. Since about the age of 9 I have been overweight, I’m actually in better shape now at 50 than I had been for most of my life. As such I’ve always been fairly self-conscious about my body particularly my gut. When I was younger I would swim with a shirt on, and the idea of shirts and skins basketball games was a nightmare. I remember clearly when I was first in college playing basketball and we were skins, after taking my shirt off a friend remarked, wow, didn’t realize how fat you were. Remarks like that don’t help your mindset or level of comfort even if they are innocent observations.

However it was with the band of misfits that were our Upward Bound students that I began to literally become more comfortable in my skin. As staff we did a great job of making them feel comfortable, of helping them be themselves and in return they relaxed and let their freak flags fly. One particular afternoon after swimming, walking back shirtless from the pool someone had some heavy metal playing on their boom box outside the dorm. It was that afternoon that I got my first introduction to full-on head banging. As I stood there, shirtless, with a group students whipping our heads around to the music in what I could only conceive as an attempt to create whiplash, I felt completely at ease and comfortable in my skin.

Shoot ahead 25 years and I’m a very uninhibited person, I rarely fear making an ass of myself, of being looked upon as being different, I certainly dance to my own beat and the world be damned if it doesn’t approve. But I often think back to that moment in the summer sun and remember one of the first times I ever truly felt uninhibited and comfortable. I often reflect on how much I learned from students I was paid to teach and I smile.

So my friends tonight, tomorrow, as soon as possible, go let your freak flag fly even if it’s just a little bit, for a short amount of time. The more you do it, the more comfortable you become, the happier you will be, I promise! Have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged be happy, hapiness, inhibition, life, love yourself, Plattsburgh, true self, upward bound | 1 Comment

Happiness and Being Special

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Michael Kane

Happiness and Being Special

Originally posted 2014

A few nights ago I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Bill Clinton. This was the first time I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a former US President speak and I was fortunate to have good seats. The things I noticed about President Clinton were first, he has lost a lot of weight since he has left office, and second, Bill Clinton is a brilliant, brilliant man. He made a lot of interesting observations about politics, our current fiscal cliff situation and told some great stories. However there was one thing that he said that really hit home.

When asked a question about the most influential person in his life, Bill Clinton wandered through the answer the moderator wanted talking about several of the famous political figures in his life. However at the end of the answer, and with Clinton that takes a while, he got to a very important point. What President Clinton said was the one thing all successful people have in common, is that someone, at some point in their life, made them feel like they were the most special person in the world.

I thought about this for a time last night and it’s similar to another question that I have contemplated before in my life. Where does my confidence come from, what was it in my life that helped me overcome what weren’t the best starting circumstances. Well quite simply, for a time in my life I had a couple of people who made me feel like the most special little kid on Earth. When I was very young between ages 2 and 4 I had two grandparents who I called POW and Granny, who treated me like the sun rose and set on my command. Sure, they were spoiling me, I was their first grandchild. Unfortunately my grandfather would die shortly after my 5^th birthday but for a time these people put me on a pedestal. My Granny continued to make me feel this way for the rest of her life, so I owe them and especially her that debt and I told her so on more than one occasion.

So today my friends, think about someone who might have done this for you, thank them. If possible, pay this forward, find some young kid somewhere in your life. It doesn’t have to be your child, or a relative even, it doesn’t have to something magnanimous. Clinton told another story to illustrate this point, the story centered on three brothers in a family. One of the brothers became a medical doctor, his two brothers went to prison. When a study of these men was undertaken to figure out what factor made the difference between the three brothers, they found one thing. For the youngest brother, the doctor, there was a daily interaction he had that had no parallel in the other brother’s lives. Each day on the way to school, a guy who ran a local newsstand would stop him, and ask him what his plans for the day were. In the afternoon he’d stop him again, ask about his homework and check to see if it was done in the morning. He was not a relative, not really a proper friend even, but he was someone who made that young man feel that he, and what he was doing in school was important and that was enough. So make some young person feel important, you may be doing much, much more than you can imagine to make that person successful, happy and impacting the happiness of all of us.

Equally as importantly, have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Voices from the Past

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Michael Kane

Voices from the past

My POW and I in 1966

Originally posted Oct, 2018

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

My maternal grandfather and I had a special relationship right from the start, the advantage I think of being the first grandchild. As my late granny often said, “your diapers were the only ones he ever change, never touched his own kids, but you were special.” He doted on me, played with me and paid a huge amount of attention to me. Naturally, we became close, very close and one of the little games he used to play with me when I was a baby was to make a fist and go “pow” when his fist touched me and I would laugh. So as I started to speak I would say “pow” every time he came near and over time would come to call him Pow it became his family name. I would hang out with him in his workshop, he’d take me for walks and most famously we would drink together. Pow, with his mug of beer and me with a shot glass of milk. We would slam back a drink and then I would yell, “more beer Pow!” There is family famous a shot of the four year-old me and my Pow drinking at the kitchen table in my grandparents kitchen. They occupied the first two floors of the house and my parents, myself and little sister lived on the third floor.

Although I was only five years old when my grandfather passed away, I have some specific memories of my time with him. Once when I was in the hospital, I was frequently sick as a child, I remember waking up to find him and his best friend, my great uncle Joe sitting by my bedside. I remember vividly that they brought me a bag of cowboys and Indians, very exciting as the cowboys actually sat on the little plastic horses. I even remember sitting at the table with him drinking “beer” and at times over the years while growing up would from time to time mention details about him that would surprise my family that I remembered.

Several years after my paternal grandfather passed away I remembered some cassette tapes I had of recordings I had made of him and I talking when he was in his late 80’s. At Christmas one year I had the cassettes turned into CDs and made copies for members of my family. The effect was amazing, it made me realize something about remembering the dead. We tell stories, we have photographs so we remember what people did, we remember what they look like, but we most often don’t have any recordings of their voices, so we forget what they sounded like. The most frequent comment I got from family members was oh my god, I forgot about his laugh. He had a great rolling laugh.

My paternal grandfather

The success of that gift got me thinking about something I had remembered. My grandfather and great uncle Joe had traded audio tapes back in the early 60s, including exchanging messages with my uncle stationed in Vietnam. My great uncle had recently passed away and my granny was going to be with his wife, her sister, and help her go through his things and take care of the estate. I asked my granny to send me any tapes she might find, these were the old reel to reel recording tapes. She said she had found some and sent them to me. Unfortunately, these turned out to be old 16mm films, some innocuous, some quite racy.

A few years later my great aunt passed away and once again I asked my granny as she went to take care of the estate to look again. Once again I was told there were nothing and I gave up hope. When about a month later a box arrived, full of reel to reel tapes. The box was a random collection of blank tapes, club tapes of comedy acts and commercial comedy tapes of people like Bill Cosby. And of course, the gold, the mailed tapes between family members including between my grandfather and my great uncle.

I sorted through the tapes and with no reel to reel player available I sent the tapes to be converted to CD by a company. When I received the CDs I was excited to click through and listed to the files. It was awesome to hear the voices of my grandfather, gone for 30 years, to hear my late, great uncle Joe and even my granny when she was much younger. Then the bigger shocker, on a tape from my grandfather to my great uncle Joe I hear him yell, “Michael, get over here.” Then there it was, the voice of little three year-old little me, saying hello to my uncle Joe. It was a difficult and wonderful moment, a moment, I had no memory of, but a moment when I was so young, so pure, so loved. I could hear the love between me and my POW, so many years in the past. It brought tears to my eyes, like it does now, it shows the absolute power of voices from the past. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged blog, death, family, happiness, memories, memory, remember, the past | 3 Comments

Yes you can, be happy!

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Michael Kane

Yes you can, be happy!

Originally published 12/2018

Each fresh peak ascended teaches something. ~ Sir Martin Convay

As I wrote about last week I’ve been struggling a bit lately. I’m someone, like a lot of you, whose mood sometimes just tanks. When I was younger this would lead to some pretty serious depression. It was part of the impetus for the start of the Ministry of Happiness, once I’d done some research on how to be happier, I needed a way to share it with others and the blog was born.

Over the years I’ve learned a lot of techniques to help myself when this happens. You start with the basics, you eat right, exercise, get the right amount of sleep. For me writing also helps, unfortunately over the last couple of weeks I have been wholly uninspired on that front. You look for any stressors and if they can be dealt with you do that. If they can’t be dealt with, than you don’t have control over them and you have to let them go as best you can. So over the last couple of the weeks I’ve been working on all of this and my mood still hadn’t elevated at all.

At least until yesterday.

Over the last few years writing this blog I’ve really come to believe that happiness only comes through action. Sure, most of the time the basics will keep you level and bring you up if your mood dips. But to get happier or to recover from the bigger dips you have to take action. Sometimes that action relates to a specific problem in your life, but often, there isn’t a clear problem that’s effecting your mood. Many times it’s a bunch of the small things, what I like to call death by paper cuts. Lots of small wounds that bleed your mood, this has been what the last few weeks has felt like.

When I do talks about my book Appalachian Trail Happiness and my time on the Appalachian Trail I relate a very specific message from the wrap up section of the book. That message is Yes you can! Specifically what that message means is yes you can take action. Yes you can go on adventures. The expectation isn’t that you do some of the things I do, although you can! You don’t have to go to Nepal and hike in the Himalayas, or travel to Canada and photograph Polar Bears or hike the Appalachian Trial. What you can do, is do something. You can go for a walk on a local park trail, want to ramp it up, go at night! I assure you there are lots of hikes, art galleries and a whole list of adventures within an hour of your house, all you have to do is look for them.

As a hiker, and someone gearing up to backpack Havasu Falls in four weeks, I decided this weekend to go for a hike. The Pacific Crest Trail crosses Walker Pass about 20 miles from my house and so this Saturday I decided to go out and do a few hours on the trail. Heading north out of the pass is a good walk, it’s basically an uphill run with a solid elevation gain of about a thousand feet over 3-4 miles. So a nice three-hour out and back hike gives you an eight mile hike up over 5000 feet. Nice training for the 10 miles I’ll do into and out of Havasu Falls.

Havasu Falls

One of the things that I’ve been experiencing lately is feeling completely scattered, like I’m moving in a million directions at once. Hiking is a beautiful cure for that situation, at least while you’re on the trail. Hiking brings focus and mindfulness when you’re on the trail. You have to be in the moment or you find yourself face down on the ground. And although you’re focused on your steps, it allows just enough to space for your brain to go deep on one thing at a time. Hiking let’s me take some deep dives, get some perspective and see things in ways I don’t in everyday life. It helps me declutter my brain, throw away some of the things I shouldn’t be worrying about and put my focus in the right place. That’s what Saturday did for me, it was a beautiful sunny day, windy and a little chilly but once I was climbing it felt good. I ran into a family hiking, I always love seeing munchkin hikers on the trail. One little girl was particularly adorable with her Dora the Explorer backpack and tiny trekking poles.

I took a little break to eat up on one of the saddles I crossed and ate looking over a couple of valleys with snow in the upper elevations. On the trail, even for a day the world gets calm and simpler and I can’t help but feel good. The beauty of this feeling is that it extends past the time on the trail. I head into a new workweek in a better place than I’ve been over the last couple of weeks and my training plan includes being back in the mountains this weekend and each of the weekends leading up to my trip in April.

Shots from Walker Pass this weekend on the PCT

So if you’re in the same place my friends, yes, you can do the same thing I did. Maybe not in the same way, but a little adventure, a little nature and hopefully you’ll have a happier day. ~ Rev Kane

My COVID Times Diary – Silver Lining

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Michael Kane

My COVID Times Diary – Silver Lining

Behind every silver lining, there’s a cloud. ~ Glenn Gould

originally posted 7/7/2020

So I’ll be honest, I’ve really hated all the advertising during the pandemic. All of the ads from companies telling us how they are with us, how they care. The donations they are making are good, but honestly billion dollar companies giving a couple of million dollars doesn’t impress me, I’m happy they’re doing it but it doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy about them. I’ve appreciated the really honest ones, Lays did an ad that basically said, this all sucks but eating chips makes you feel better. I bought a bag that night. One ad that I saw, and honestly I forget what for, had one teen talking about how his family has been eating dinner together every night.

So it got me thinking, there are very, very few things that have no positive attributes. So what are the silver linings of the pandemic? The first and a snarky answer is that in many ways it’s an introverts paradise. I was talking with another introvert a couple of weeks ago about how it’s nice that people are avoiding us, normally that’s our job. But on a more serious note, for the last twenty years we have been hearing about the promise of the paperless office. The fact is, we’ve had the technology to do this for years, but people are resistant to change, and don’t trust technology. So they keep backup hard files, create paper copies that they then scan into PDFs instead of just creating PDFs in the first place. Offices have refused to take electronic signatures, demanding wet signatures on hard copies. Well, with all of us working from home and no longer able to walk paper copies around offices and campuses, we’ve had to make the move. It has certainly been painful, people don’t have the type of technical know how we think they do, mostly because we haven’t made them get proficient. But now we’re there and I’m happy as hell about it, once we get people up to proficiency and they get into the routine and rhythm of it all, things will be much better.

For me personally at home, working from home, I’m able to be much healthier. This situation has allowed me to routinely practice intermittent fasting. Which means me for me, fasting for 16 hours a day, and eating in an eight hour window. Without drive times or gyms, I’ve been working out at home and it’s been easier to get into a routine and be far more consistent. Without treadmill access I started running in March, something I truly hate, but is necessary for me to get my cardio levels up and keep my blood pressure down. Since we’ve started this work at home experiment I’ve lost five pounds and dropped my very bad glucose levels down 70 points. So this work at home thing is actually good for me.

I put a request out to friends tonight on Facebook to see what other silver linings they are seeing. Their answers were interesting and all over the place. There were some of the bigger things environmental improvement, more awareness of issues. Some not so big things as well, catching up on Netflix shows, organizing houses and closets, learning how to cook or cook new things. Some of the expected things showed up including time with family, eating dinner together and time to play with kids. Lots of discussion of new skills or picking up old habits, learning a new language.

The two that I thought were the most significant involved connection and pace of life. People talked about connecting to family across the country via Zoom, I actually got to watch my niece’s high school graduation via Zoom. One friend said that a group of college friends had reconnected over a Zoom book club and were in better touch than they had been for years. A number of people talked about slowing down, seeing life at a slower pace, something I’ve advocated for on this blog in several posts.

So, even in the middle of a terrible pandemic, just in America over 125,000 people have died, millions who have been ill, there are still silver linings. Hope you have found a few for yourself. ~ Michael ‘Rev’ Kane

Posted in Life in Covid Times | Tagged coronavirus, covid life, covid times, covid-19, family, pandemic, silver linings | Leave a comment

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