#2 “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.” – Anne Frank.
I have always believed that we adults can often learn more life lessons from children (and from dogs!) than we can from other adults, and after recently re-reading “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank, this theory has only strengthened. As I am sure all of you know, Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl living in the Netherlands, who was a victim of the Holocaust, and whose diary has not only become one of the world’s most widely read books but is also one of the most moving and inspirational pieces of literature I have ever read. And despite the circumstances under which the diary was written, and the atrocities that Anne witnessed during her time in hiding and later in a concentration camp, she believed in the general decency of humanity. She believed that “people are truly good at heart.”It is easy to become cynical about the state of humanity, particularly living in a big city where the local morning news usually starts with a report about a shooting or stabbing, a thwarted terrorist attack, or some other violent crime. In a city where people bump into you on the sidewalk without a glance or an “I’m sorry.” In a city where you can jog by a fellow runner and say “Hello!” and get nothing back but a blank stare or a grimace. And, after a year during which I experienced several instances of unkind treatment and unfortunate circumstance, it would be easy to become pessimistic and jaded about the quality of man’s spirit. But one of the most important lessons I have learned this year is that generally, the genesis for people’s meanness, rudeness, nastiness, or general unpleasantness, lies not in their inherent bad character but rather in their deep-seeded pain and unhappiness. It lies in years of being discriminated against, in a childhood filled with abuse or a childhood void of a parent’s love. It lies in losing a job, getting a divorce, being touched by suicide, not getting enough sleep, getting stuck in the notorious DC rush hour traffic, or even just having a bad hair day. And once you accept and understand this reality, it becomes easy to release your own hatred and pessimism and bad thoughts towards others and to instead exhibit the compassion and empathy that can bring peace to your own heart – as I believe it did to Anne’s – and hopefully peace to the hearts of those who are so confused and unsatisfied with life that they take it out on others. Once you accept and understand this reality, it becomes easy to look for the good in people, because as my favorite President (Abraham Lincoln, of course!) once said, “[i] you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.”
There is a wonderful line in the 2010 hit movie Eat, Pray, Love (incidentally, one of my all-time, favorite books, but more about that in 2011 (can you say gratuitous plug?)), in which the main character – Liz Gilbert – is speaking with her close friend Richard about her difficulty in letting go of past relationships and past loves. And Richard advises Liz to “[s]end [them] light and love every time you think of [them] and then drop it.” And as I look back on all of those people – known and unknown – who have caused me pain, both intentionally and unintentionally, over the past year and over the past years, I think about the pain they must have been feeling themselves in order to act this way. And I send all of them light and love and move forward with peace in my own heart, wishing them the same.
Namaste.
#1 “The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” – Benjamin Franklin
What makes you happy?
Isn’t that the million dollar question we are all on a continuous quest to answer? Partially inspired by the writing of this blog and partially due to the roller coaster that life’s path continues to take me on, I have spent a good bit of time since May contemplating my answer to that very question. As humans, we sometimes seem to be better at getting what we think we want than knowing what we really want in the first place. Happiness, or more accurately what makes us happy, can be so mysterious and misunderstood, so fleeting and mesmerizing, and so darn tricky. And so we spend our lives on a journey to reach the elusive state known as happiness, and if we’re lucky enough to think we’ve arrived there, we spend the rest of the time trying to figure out whether we have really reached our destination or whether we’re actually just on a very convincing and deceptive detour. “There are two things to aim at in life,” said Logan Pearsall Smith in “Afterthoughts,” “first, to get what you want; and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”
Deep.
This fall, I had the opportunity to listen to a book on CD during my various long-distance car trips (because everyone knows I hate driving and these distractions get me through the agony). The book, Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard researcher and professor of psychology Daniel Gilbert, analyzes the biology and psychology of the human brain, and how the science of the mind impacts our ability to experience happiness in our lives. A truly riveting read (or listen) that I highly recommend, although it will likely leave you with more nagging questions than enlightened answers about what it means to find happiness and contentment in your life. In the book, Mr. Gilbert’s discussion focuses on the complexity of the mind – both in terms of its capacity to remember past experiences and emotions and its ability to predict future events and reactions to them. Apparently, the post hoc view of our lives and feelings is pretty skewed – inevitably colored by our mind’s propensity to reinvent the past and create its own reality. Have you ever been in a less-than-perfect relationship that you later idealized after its demise? You spent days or weeks or even months pining over the person who often made you feel upset or self-conscious or inferior when you dated? After the break-up, your brain massaged the actual course of events, creating a version of reality that included mostly, if not exclusively, good times and wonderful experiences, and oh, made you question how you will ever live without the person who, weeks before, you were considering dumping yourself?
At least I hear that happens…
Our minds have a phenomenal ability to romanticize, fantasize, idealize, and rationalize the past in ways that change our remembrances of prior experiences, and hence, our emotional reactions to them. When it comes to predicting our futures, our imagination is bound by the confines of what we know from our present and our past. As a result, we anticipate future happenings and feelings based on how we remember past happenings and feelings. Which we largely remember inaccurately. Which may explain why we mispredict what will make us happy in the future. And so we choose the wrong careers, the wrong spouses, the wrong cities, or the wrong pair of 4-inch heels that we should have known would kill our feet from past bad experiences but that we bought anyway.
At least I hear that happens…
But what does all of this have to do with anything, anyway? What does it have to do with the lessons I have learned about life in the past 7+ months? Well, basically, the #1 lesson I have learned since I completed the Half Ironman on May 8th is…drumroll, please…that I have a lot to learn about myself. About what and who has made me happy in the past, about what and who makes me happy in the present, and about what and who will make me happy in the future. And if “[u]nhappiness is not knowing what we want and then killing ourselves to get it,” as Don Herold suggests, then finding out what makes me happy is step one in my journey towards happiness.
Some of you may be familiar with the book The Happiness Project, which details the author’s year-long quest to find happiness by testing “the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture.” Because of the lessons I have learned in 2010, I will begin my own “happiness project" in 2011, or, as I choose to call it, my self-improvement project, with my successes and failures memorialized in this blog. An experiment in which I will focus on different areas for improvement in my life, in an attempt to become a better person, and in so doing, hopefully reach that nirvanic state of mind that is free from craving, anger, or other affliction that one might also call…happiness. What I have learned since the Half Ironman, through all of the ups and downs of the past months, is that pleasure is fleeting, and happiness is a journey. Tomorrow - 1/1/11 - I will begin the next stage of that journey.
If you have made it to my end of these months of babbling about life’s lessons, I thank you for your readership. I have thoroughly enjoyed reflecting on my post-Half Ironman life with you, and I greatly appreciate all of your kind and thoughtful e-mails and comments on these reflections. I hope you continue checking in as I continue my journey through space and time. And perhaps, just perhaps, a little something that I write or ponder will help impact your life in a positive way. Perhaps it will even make you a little happier. And me happier as a result.
Whatever that means.
To each of you, I send you light and love on this last day of 2010. Have a happy and safe New Year's Eve!
Until next time…
