Today, nothing more complicated than a bunch of really pretty pictures from nature, none of my own work today just a tour across the web, enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Sitting in my apartment on a beautiful Sunday, did a small celebration of my birthday (which is tomorrow) by going to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. Checked out the Warhol exhibit which was nice, didn’t of course compare with visiting the Warhol exhibit in Pittsburgh a few years ago, but they did a good job. I especially dug the silver cloud room, basically air filled mylar pillows that a bunch of toddlers were going nuts with and having fun.
Really dug some of the exhibits at MOMA, more in my next post. I think this painting might have been my favorite.
Funny what passes for a celebration as you get older. It’s my birthday weekend and I’ve done such radical things as buy a rear wiper blade for my car, make a pizza, I did have some cake and ice cream. But I’m not so concerned with a big celebration for my 55th birthday especially being fresh off of a year of travel. Although there is a twinge of why aren’t I on a craps table trying to throw hard 10s! But that fear of missing out is small, as I wrote a few weeks ago I’m really happy right now. So after a very long and hectic week at work, a nice quiet weekend was in order.
Many of my most recent birthdays have been celebrated in Reno, as I prepared to go into Burning Man. A burner friend called me today, she was driving down highway 80 watching burners head east for the playa. We had both recently talked about being good with not attending this year, but we both admitted a twinge of desire seeing people heading for the playa today. Not quite fear of missing out, more a twinge of nostalgia, we’ve both spent many years on the playa and need a break from it, but that doesn’t mean we don’t miss our dusty playground.
The Phoenix Art Installation at Burning Man
My favorite art piece from Burning Man
An American Flag at the Temple at Burning Man
The Man Burns
Dawn at Burning Man
No great wisdom tonight, Burning Man was one of those bucket item lists in my life. I went, loved it, and went seven more times. I may go again someday. The lesson to take from this is that you should satisfy your desires. I have so many good memories from Burning Man, which is what brings that twinge of nostalgia.
Finally, and again a fuller post soon, my third book Athena’s Addict has been published, literally today, on Amazon and I’m really excited about it. A book of poetry focusing on love, madness, passion and a broken heart. I hope you’ll check it out and as always, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will ~ Martin Luther King
So tonight friends I want to talk about understanding, but I want to start with misunderstanding. In the last couple of weeks I’ve had two situations in which people have made assumptions about me that were completely unfounded and then acted on their assumptions in a way which was detrimental to me. I really find these situations to be frustrating, I don’t think there is anything as exasperating as being misunderstood. It is one of the reasons that I myself am so blunt, open and honest with people, it is the hope that I’ll be understood and not put other people into the situation I recently found myself in. Tonight I would ask you friends to slow your roll a bit, take time to listen to others and really try to understand what other people are saying, take the time to compare their actions to your conclusions so that you don’t find yourself acting on predetermined assumptions. This is a skill called empathetic listening.
So tonight to help with that hope, a piece I found on-line about empathetic listening, I hope it helps and helps you have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements. And finally, there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation ~ Dalai Lama
Today I want to bring you some resources on happiness and simplicity. Simplicity is one of those elusive goals that can really bring us true happiness, have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must realize their imperfections. ~ John Piper
Originally posted in 2017
Tonight’s post is about two things redemption and acceptance. Perhaps however from a perspective from which you’re not used to thinking about these two things. You see tonight I want to talk about redeeming and accepting ourselves. Let’s face it folks, we’re all screwed up!
Admit it, I just did in front of the entire world-wide web, life is a complicated exercise. We were born to parents who had no manual, no guidebook, perhaps some family and friendly advice by people who themselves had or were in the process of screwing up their own children. I don’t necessary lay a lot of blame on parents. Very few of them screwed up their kids on purpose. For the most part it was their lack of understanding of who they were that led to the issues they created. If you’re a parent, give yourself a break right now, take a moment of peace. I promise you at some future holiday dinner their will be a discussion, an argument, or an explosion of emotion where you are blamed for ruining some aspect of one of your children’s lives. Buck up, you chose to have kids and it comes with the territory, you blamed your parents, they’re going to, or already have, blamed you.
You know what they say, admitting you have a problem is the first step. So you’re screwed up, suck it up buttercup, we all are screwed up as well. However what happens in life is that you have a decision to make. There is a very significant fork in the road and it leads to two places. The first fork leads to self-loathing, victimhood and unhappiness. The second fork leads to acceptance, redemption and eventually happiness. YOU get to make that choice no matter how screwed up you are right now.
We all had rough childhoods, sure there’s a degree here. Some of you were born into abject poverty, or drug addicted parents. Some of you were beaten or worse. Many of us dealt with psychological abuse, where we told we were no good, useless, less than. More of you than we would like to admit grew up having to be someone you were not. Some of you suffered because you weren’t allowed to have designer clothes or backpack in Europe for a gap year. Something I had to learn at one point was the degree of insult is not able to be compared between folks.
If you were beaten down physically or psychologically it doesn’t seem to be on the same level of someone who didn’t get to go skiing in Aspen with their friends. What matters is how it was received and felt. I know for those of us who had really hard times this is a difficult concept for us to accept. But we can’t invalidate what others went through just because we perceive our pain as worse or more valid, pain is pain my friends and its severity is in the eye of the beholder.
The real issue is how we dealt with our pain. My choice was denial and self-destruction. I spent my late teens tuning out and spiraling out of control. My tools of choice were drugs and alcohol, but many of you picked isolation, violence, crime, risky sexual behaviors. Some of you were truly savants who played across the whole spectrum of self-destruction. No matter what you believe in spiritually, if you went down these paths you feel like a sinner.
Now, you can take your past, the folks and things that screwed you up, your destructive behavior and you can wallow in it, become a victim and live an unhappy life. That’s a choice my friends and I know at this point a lot of people stopped reading. How dare you blame me for what was done to me, I’m not. I’m saying that in order to find happiness, if that is what you want, that you have to take responsibility for your life. You can my friend and you can be happy, it starts with forgiveness and acceptance.
Forgiveness prevents their behavior from destroying your heart, not sure I could ever have said it better than that. To move forward you have to let go of the past and you can’t do that if you are constantly thinking about it, getting angry or sad. But how do you do that? First let me offer a resource, a really nice piece entitled, Letting Go of Past Hurts. It has some solid and straightforward advice. What I can talk about is what I have done to get where I am at this point in my life.
Right now, I want to go back to the quote I used at the top of this piece. Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must recognize their imperfections. I would add and be ok with them. Perfection is a goal that won’t be attained it’s just a way for us to say succinctly, I want to move forward. My pain in my life was very much directed at my childhood. My relationship with my father was absolute and total shit. I grew up with a single mom who was trying her best, but little money, working full-time and raising two kids, well inevitably there were gaps. The neighborhood I grew up in was tough, I saw and experienced things I shouldn’t have, at least not at the ages I did. I got out of their as soon as I could at 18. But you bring your problems with you, as much as you want and may even be able to legitimately blame people and surroundings at the end of the day it’s in your head and heart where the real battle lies.
The anger and disappointment I carried with me is what allowed me to let myself slide into escapism and self-destruction. I hit rock bottom and made a conscious decision not to die, to do something better with my life. It was a momentous decision in my life but instant bliss did not follow. I curbed the symptoms but the underlying anger and disappointment remained undealt with for a long time. Through my late twenties and early thirties, even though I had what on the surface was a good life, I was dealing with extreme bouts of depression and wholly felt unsatisfied with myself. It took the dissolution of a relationship and nearly my mind as a result before I found a suitable outlet, my writing. It was through my writing that I found ways to express my anger, burn off the negative energy. At first what that did was level out the dips a bit, then it came to nearly eliminate them. Now, when I feel myself starting to dip I can almost always write my way out of sliding downward.
Creating the Ministry of Happiness helped as well, it provided an outlet to further explore the concept of happiness and practical ways to live happier. In many ways the culmination of that growth has been the last, absolute amazing year I’ve had. My path isn’t the only one my friends. But I think the general idea has to be the same for most of us trying to take that responsible fork in the road.
You have to admit and understand your pain and where your problems lay. Not just oh yeah I have problems, but understanding them. For me, anger at my father, difficulty being open with people (obviously that’s changed), having trouble trusting others.
You have to take responsibility for your own shit. You have to believe you are the one who is responsible for your happiness and commit to actively doing something about it.
You have to actually do something. It’s easy to think about all of this, acknowledge what has to happen then sit down on the couch and watch and episode of the Big Bang Theory. What are you actually doing to move forward.
You have to have patience. This all takes time, instantaneous bliss may exist but I’ve never seen it. This process is like yard work, you have to keep at it or it all can dissolve into chaos.
You have to forgive and accept yourself, hell ultimately you have to come to love yourself. You can dislike parts of yourself, I’m overweight, I need to lose another 20 pounds but that’s just part of me. You can dislike parts of yourself or your life but love who you are as a person, this is really important. You have to become your own best cheerleader and reduce the negative thoughts in your head.
Finally, you have to have fun. You have to enjoy life, find out what your passions are and engage in them as often as possible.
You can do this my friends and you have help. There are likely people who are around you who can help, if not, reach out, I’m here and I’m happy to help. The goal at the end of the day is for all of us to have happy days. ~ Rev Kane
Our Best Happiness Posts of 2015
My favorite Appalachian Trail Photos of 2015
Happiness is a Powerball Jackpot
Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. ~ Oprah Winfrey
So tonight’s post came from an idea that I had the other day, I was thinking about Christmas. I don’t like Christmas but the one element of Christmas that I dig is gift giving. I really try to give great gifts, to think about the person and get them something they might not expect but that they will really like. I also like getting great gifts and surprises from people, I’m too often not surprised in life. So getting surprised or getting a really great gift makes me really happy.
Unfortunately I have a lot of folks in my life who would just rather I give them a list. Hey, that’s who they are, I’ve stopped trying to hope that’s not how things would work. So, I’ve been trying recently to be a kinder, gentler human and find easier and softer ways to confront the things in my life I’m not happy with. I was having a conversation with a friend and was lamenting that it shouldn’t be that hard to find me a gift I would like without checking with me first. I think there are some really easy things to know about me and I started listing these off, and that’s when I got the idea to make a list of those things to share with those folks. As I was thinking about writing this list I realized that the list was in itself a list of my passions.
It was a revelation, because I think about this idea often, the idea of how to identify your passion in life. I have over thought the problem it seems, it’s as simple as considering what things get your pulse racing a bit. For example, getting a Pittsburgh Steeler jersey from a friend was a great gift. I love watching the NFL and cheering for the Steelers, it’s a passion of mine. Now that doesn’t translate into the type of passion that leads to finding a perfect job but it does lead to ways to make me happy. This year I tapped into that by going to my first Steeler game in Heinz Field in Pittsburgh for a Steeler game.
So if like me you’re trying to really lock on to your passions in life, try making a list of the things that would make really great gifts. Here’s what my list looks like:
Anything related to the Pittsburgh Steelers or Pirates.
Day of the Dead related items.
Full albums, yes albums, not single songs or greatest hits compilations from groups like the Doors, the Beatles, Credence Clearwater Revival, the Police or Howlin Wolf.
Hiking, Kayaking, cycling or Photography gear but even better gift cards to REI or Amazon so I can buy my own. Understanding why you’re buying me a gift card instead of just buying one is what makes it a good gift.
Books related to the same things above as well as books related to happiness, positivity, travel or science fiction.
Poetry by poets who would be considered outlaw poets. So no classics (Yeats, Shakespeare, Dickinson) but more modern poetry. Not love poems unless they are in a Pablo Neruda book or collection. My tastes run toward the harder edge of life, Bukowski, Warsan Shire, Doug Draime, Sapphire but I’m always willing to check out newer poets on the scene like Ashe Vernon. A tip, if I featured them in a Ministry of Happiness Poetry post they are probably someone I like.
I love pizza, if you live near me and know where I get pizza, a gift certificate, or even better yet, a surprise pizza, half pepperoni & mushroom, half cheese with a Coke is the ticket.
Heirloom species vegetable seeds for my gardens are a great gift, a co-worker once brought me tomato seeds from his family’s garden in Sicily, great gift.
The list got me thinking about things that I wish people could buy me either because they are not things you can buy; time working with students, time to lay in a hammock and watch the sky, opportunities for learning (although I guess someone could buy me a cooking or other type of class). Other things would be too expensive to ask for, the funds to go to Thailand or on a photo safari in Africa, a week in Bora Bora in one of those floating hotel.
What this list does for me is identify that the things that I’m passionate about include writing, music, art, poetry, gardening, traveling, learning and photography. I obviously enjoy being outside either being physical, cycling, kayaking, hiking or taking photos.
I also have a passion for working with students, learning and educating, something I know about myself is that I like solving problems and creating things.
So the point of this piece is not really for me to get better gifts, if that is a side benefit then who am I to complain. But hopefully this piece does two things. First, it gets you thinking about, and gives you a way to start, to identify your own passions in life. Secondly, it gets you thinking about the same things in others around you. The impact you have by surprising someone with a gift, no matter how small, that feeds or attaches to their passions is a powerful act of kindness and caring. We should all do more of that, it makes the people we care about happy, but being kind makes us feel better as well, and gives us happy days my friends ~ Rev Kane
Happiness Resources: Positivity, Kindness & Gratitude
Though lovers be lost, love shall not ~ Dylan Thomas
Tonight my friends a tour through one of the more famous poets, Dylan Thomas. His name often comes up on the lists of poets that my favorite poets have read, or recommend, so give his work a look and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
First his most famous poem.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
************************************************
My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.
I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.
********************************
Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glowworms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.
A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.
Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.
Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter’s robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.
Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.
**********************************************
A saint about to fall,
The stained flats of heaven hit and razed
To the kissed kite hems of his shawl,
On the last street wave praised
The unwinding, song by rock,
Of the woven wall
Of his father’s house in the sands,
The vanishing of the musical ship-work and the chucked bells,
The wound-down cough of the blood-counting clock
Behind a face of hands,
On the angelic etna of the last whirring featherlands,
Wind-heeled foot in the hole of a fireball,
Hymned his shrivelling flock,
On the last rick’s tip by spilled wine-wells
Sang heaven hungry and the quick
Cut Christbread spitting vinegar and all
The mazes of his praise and envious tongue were worked in flames and shells.
Glory cracked like a flea.
The sun-leaved holy candlewoods
Drivelled down to one singeing tree
With a stub of black buds,
The sweet, fish-gilled boats bringing blood
Lurched through a scuttled sea
With a hold of leeches and straws,
Heaven fell with his fall and one crocked bell beat the left air.
O wake in me in my house in the mud
Of the crotch of the squawking shores,
Flicked from the carbolic city puzzle in a bed of sores
The scudding base of the familiar sky,
The lofty roots of the clouds.
From an odd room in a split house stare,
Milk in your mouth, at the sour floods
That bury the sweet street slowly, see
The skull of the earth is barbed with a war of burning brains and hair.
Strike in the time-bomb town,
Raise the live rafters of the eardrum,
Throw your fear a parcel of stone
Through the dark asylum,
Lapped among herods wail
As their blade marches in
That the eyes are already murdered,
The stocked heart is forced, and agony has another mouth to feed.
O wake to see, after a noble fall,
The old mud hatch again, the horrid
Woe drip from the dishrag hands and the pressed sponge of the forehead,
The breath draw back like a bolt through white oil
And a stranger enter like iron.
Cry joy that hits witchlike midwife second
Bullies into rough seas you so gentle
And makes with a flick of the thumb and sun
A thundering bullring of your silent and girl-circled island.
So recently I wrote a post talking about the fact that I feel happier than I ever have and it’s a great place to be in life. After taking some time to enjoy that realization I’ve turned to questions of what’s next?
Well if you have been reading this blog or know me personally you know at least part of the question of what’s next, involves where to next? That question I already have answered, in the short-term my next adventure will be playing guide for a couple of friends in New Orleans at Mardi Gras in February. I love New Orleans and love Mardi Gras, specifically I love Mardi Gras parades. So I’m looking forward to five days in the Crescent City, eating, walking and photographing my way across one of the best cities in America.
I’m hoping my next big adventure will be a trip in December 2020, I’m planning on taking a trip to Antarctica. A flight to Chili and a cruise to my sixth continent, hoping to do a trip where I can actually spend one night actually camping on the continent of Antarctica.
But, the question that I haven’t answered is what’s next? I have started a new and good job, I’m six or seven years from retirement but that’s a little too far out to be my only goal. And we all know that setting and achieving goals help us stay happy. So what’s my next life goal? I have some things in mind, some work goals, several books that I’m interested in writing, and I think I can do all those things. I’m about to finish my third book so I’ll have the space to work on my fourth. There are health goals that I need to achieve, I haven’t been very good about my diet over the last year. I need to lose another twenty pounds.
What I’m looking now for is impact, I think when you hit a certain age and you see that there are certainly less years coming than have gone, you look to make an impact. Generally in these posts I try to provide answers, examples of what you can do, but you know, sometimes it’s really important to take a little time to just focus on the question.
So tonight friends, ask yourself a question, something that you need to answer, something that might lead to improving your happiness. Feel free to share those questions out in the comments and as always, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Happiness is Poetry: Warsan Shire
My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude. ~ Warsan Shire
Warsan Shire
I love her stuff so much I figured I’d giver her a second day, enjoy my friends and have a happy day ~ Rev Kane
Snow
My father was a drunk. He married my mother
the month he came back from Russia
with whiskey in his blood.
On their wedding night he whispered
into her ears about jet planes and snow.
He said the word in Russian;
My mother blinked back tears and spread her palms
across his shoulder blades like the wings
of a plane. Later, breathless, he laid his head
on her thigh and touched her,
brought back two fingers glistening,
showed her from her own body
what the color of snow was closest to.
Happiness is Poetry: Ashe Vernon
Are you noticed, valued and loved?
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved ~ George Sand
So ideas for posts come from lots of different places. Today, as I was doing my daily Twitter posts, I came across this question, “Are you noticed, are you valued, are you loved?” When I read that quote that it really hit me how important those questions are and how much the answers really impact on a person’s happiness.
I know personally for me that those questions are hard ones to ask around the people in my life. Well, not so much the questions, as the answers. There are people in my life I really care about, people I would say love me, but they don’t notice or value me. I think most of our acquaintances in life notice us, and value us to a degree but they don’t love us.
When I really sat down to think about it tonight, there are very few people in my life that I can say notice, value AND love me. Hopefully you’ll fare a little better than I did when you take that inventory. But how many really isn’t important, I think what’s really important is that you have someone in your life that in fact notices, values and loves you. Even more important than that my friends, have you told that person/those people how much that means to you? And who do you notice, value and love as well?
The hardest thing for me in answering these questions for me tonight is that recently I’ve lost someone who was a giant affirmative on all three questions, and for me as well. Happily, she’d been telling me this my whole life and I made sure as often as possible to tell her the same. That knowledge eases the loss a bit, but don’t wait my friends, if you have people who make you happy, let them know, it’s always later than you think and you don’t want that regret hanging over you. Stay positive, be open and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
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