Living Happiness

At 8:00 this morning I find that all of the words I wanted to say, that were flying around my head one hour ago and forcing me to rise from my nice warm bed, have all flown away and left me alone in my jammies with a cup of tea and only a faint recollection of what I had wanted to say that was so profoundly important. How did that happen?

I am writing today what will be the first, I’m sure, in a series of blogs about anger because anger is the “not-so-pretty” side of me I deal with most. Over the years, Anger has mostly been my nemesis–a mortal enemy completely at odds with all of the good I try to do with my life. As a child, you see, I learned that Anger is a passion you give into and then worry about the consequences of later. I was not taught how to deal with Anger appropriately. It was either violently repressed or vented in the most explosive way. There was no in-between.

You can imagine what life was like for me in college. It was a rude awakening to discover that my accepted “mood swings” at home had no place in the lives of my roommates or in the apartment we shared. This behavior simply wasn’t acceptable. I learned, but I learned the hard way. Even now, when people ask me about regrets and if I have any, I usually shake off the question and say, “Well, no. My life is what it is because of this, that, and the other,” which is mostly true. But I do regret and do wish I could have done differently that time in my life. I still live with its ghosts. And now, thanks to Facebook, I am haunted by them sometimes more than I want to be.

The bright side, I guess, of that dark period is that it truly was an awakening. A rude awakening, but an awakening. And in the 13 years since my graduation from university, I have spent a great deal of time, energy, and money on learning how to deal with Anger, banish Anger, and, finally, make friends with Anger — mostly in that order. I would like to think that I have been (mostly) successful, but Anger is still a constant in my life and, because of that, is probably going to be one of the more permanent fixtures in my blogs.

My most recent approach to Anger has been to make friends with it, to understand it and its role in my life. The way I do this, really, is quite simplistic — I think of it as a person. A part of me, yes, but a person. So … when Anger arrives, rather than banish myself from the room and let it have free reign, fight it, or (worse yet) deny that it’s there, I’ve started talking to it like it’s an old friend which (let’s face it) is kind of true. Anger’s been around in my life for a while. It probably knows quite a bit about what makes me tick.

Lately what this has meant is a lot of heart-to-hearts with Anger. And it begins with me saying some like this: “Why are you so angry?” I listen to the response, and then proceed from there a bit like Socrates until I get down to the nitty gritty of what’s going on. Then I try to reason with Anger, point out different perspectives, offer alternatives, provide solutions, much like a good friend giving good advice to another friend. You are probably not surprised that this works in both curbing my anger and allowing me to enlist it towards my good rather than my detriment. You may not be surprised. But it still shocks the pants off me (but in a good way)!

Anyway, I share all this with you because I have noticed a pattern in my life of the things that tend to summon Anger to the forefront, and there are three common motifs or “summoners” if you will:

1. I feel forgotten, neglected, overlooked
2. I feel that something that has occurred/is occurring is unjust
3. I am displeased that something has not gone the way I want it to

When I can isolate one of these summoners, I can usually think of a solution to my problem. If I discover for instance that Anger feels forgotten or overlooked, I can ask her why she feels that way and get to the root of whether this is a real or perceived slight. And I can also usually determine if this is because someone/something has overlooked her, or because (maybe, just maybe) Anger hasn’t spoken up for herself. There are quite a few times where the issue is really the latter, and that’s when I say, “Okay, then. There’s your solution. Speak up for yourself!”

But the point I’m getting at here is not so much to dissect the ins and outs of me and my anger patterns but to share a more recent discovery than that. For, in looking at these three patterns, what I see is an overriding element that unites them all: I become Angry when my reality isn’t the reality I’m confronted with. And that’s what leads me to comment on Stacked Life.

A friend of mine and an emerging artist, Gina Pruette, has recently completed the Block Series, a series of paintings that derive their theme from the simple play objects–blocks, balls, cylinders–that her young daughter uses to constructs towers, bridges, or whatever else seizes her imagination at play.

What I like about Gina’s portraits and the theme she chose for her study is the elemental truths they harbor at their root. My favorite of these is Tower Arch.

When I had my mini-epiphany about Anger, I realized that (in a lot of ways) I am like Gina’s daughter, Stella, taking the construction blocks and balls of my life and trying to arrange them in some sort of methodical (perhaps even meaningful) way. I like boxes the most. I like things that easily fit into or onto something else. I like things that can fit inside other things nicely, with no needs for adjustments. I don’t do well with balls.

Like Stella when her “tower” falls down, I become distraught when the order I am trying to impose on my world doesn’t take. Why can’t things stay together the way I’ve put them together? What’s wrong with my construction?

I think that perhaps a lot of us live our lives continuing the play that we began at Stella’s age, only with bigger and less tangible blocks and cylinders and arches. We try to construct meaning for our lives from these pieces (jobs, families, friendships, hobbies, ideologies, religion), and we become Angry when they do not remain fixed, or when the pieces don’t fit, and they crumble around us.

When this happens, some of us give up. The game is no longer fun. We see that this exercise is futile. We cease to engage.

But some of us do not give up. Instead, we start back again from square one and begin rearranging the blocks, hoping to remember what didn’t work last time so that maybe, just maybe, this time we can “get it right.”

What I like about Gina’s Tower Arch is it’s precariousness. Order has been imposed but the tower is leaning dangerously. Is it about to fall? Or will it stand, a child-like tribute to the most famous of leaning towers in Pisa?

Perhaps what matters, though, is not whether it stands. Perhaps what is more important is that it was constructed to begin with. A child managed to create a sense of order in his world, to arrange the pieces together in a way that was pleasing, and to (I am guessing here) enjoy the finished masterpiece. Isn’t this the most we can ask for in our own lives?

So, when I find myself becoming angry now, I will think of Stella’s blocks and Gina’s portraits. Things have not gone my way, that’s true. But I can still start arranging the blocks again, putting the pieces together, and hoping for the desired end (equipped with the knowledge of all that has come before).

I have a suspicion that the ultimate joy derived from this activity is the activity itself.

Thank you, Gina, for your paintings and letting me comment on them.

Om Shanti.
Namaste.
Peace be with you.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I kept the commandments, of which there were many. Not just the 10 main ones we all know of, but a whole bunch of other ones, too, including:

« Thou shalt not beg off a party just to stay home and read a book — even if it is more fun than three hours of small talk with people you don’t even like.

« Thou shalt not not go to the gym, or your ass will pay for it later.

« Thou shalt not say what you really think but, instead, what will get you in the least amount of trouble.

« Thou shalt do your best in everything because to do less than that is unthinkable, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And on and on.

I grew up on a strict diet of Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Nots, primarily owing to the fact that I grew up in a strict religious home of both the evangelical and pentecostal persuasion. Guilt was, of course, the side-dish that came with everything.

The Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not meal on which I frequently dined did not limit itself to the Basic 10–first and foremost of the food groups. It also expanded outward into other codes of conduct: job, dress, dating, boys, socializing, dealing with your elders, dealing with yourself, housekeeping, etc. I walked around most of the time with a list of “Have To’s” in my head: I have to do this, I must do that, I can’t not do that. Needless to say, I also walked around most of the time miserable. Somewhere I was always forgetting a rule. Or blatantly ignoring it and then suffering the pangs of “Oh, no! What will happen now?” thoughts. It was all very healthy, I assure you.

Fortunately for me, one day I met someone who had the gall to say to me, “No, you don’t have to!”

“What?! Me not have to do something?!” I answered back, “What do you mean?”

The person galling me was my therapist, and what she went on to say made a lot of sense. Very few of us have to do all of the things that we say we have to do. Are there things that it’s a good idea to do? Yes. Are there things that it’s better for us to do than others? Yes. Are there things that might produce more desirable outcomes than others? Yes. But are these things that we have to do? No.

This got me thinking. And I realized that, when I got right down to it, there were very few things in my life that really had to be done. Of these were essentially the ones that would keep me alive:

« Eat

« Drink water

« Sleep

The rest was all fluff, really. And even the eating, drinking water, and sleeping tasks were things I could choose not to do. At great detriment to myself, of course, but I could in fact choose not to do them.

And this was when I had my epiphany. Most of these “commandment” lives we lead deprive of us of two things:

1. Our sense of free will

2. Our sense of ourselves

When we are given a list of Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots, life is easier. More miserable maybe, but easier. It takes the guesswork out of decision making: “What is it you’re asking me to do? Oh, yes. That’s right. That’s on my Thou Shalt list. Sure, yep, I can go along with that.”

It also deadens us to knowing what we really want. The question, “What do I want to do?” has no place in the lexicon of Commandment-ville. It’s not about what I want to do, it’s about what I have to do, whether I like it or not. But … who says?

And this is where we get down to brass tacks. After my conversation with my therapist (actually, after many conversations with my therapist) and more mulling over my epiphany, I realized that there’s nothing innately “wrong” with these commandments themselves as long as the conclusions they present are conclusions I myself can reach in my own life. That is to say, if I begin to question my drive to do or not to do something and can come to my own understanding that, “Yes, Chania Girl, eating is in your best interest today,” then by all means I embrace it. But the point is, I know why I am embracing whatever it is I’m embracing. And … I don’t make it a commandment. I look at it instead as taking some good advice.

A lot of my decisions used to be based on guilt and the “have to” world of Commandment-ville. These decisions were, therefore, based primarily in fear–fear of what would happen if I did or didn’t do this or that.

When I had my epiphany, I realized that there was a better place to operate from–a place of love.

Now when I am confronted with decisions and must contemplate what route to take, I ask myself: “What do I really want to do?” If the answer is hard for me to reach, I rephrase the question: “What would I most regret not doing?” I usually find that I can then make a clear decision, based in love. And no guilt or fear is involved at all.

I am not saying these things to disparage “the rules” we live by. By I do believe that what is important is not the rules themselves but the spirit behind them. Sadly, most of us spend our lives obeying (or disobeying) rules with no thought as to why, and living lives propelled by fear and anxiety rather than love, forgiveness, and acceptance.

This is why you will never find on my page a 10 Commandments For Loving Yourself or a 15 Rules to Live By To Create a Happier You.

Your journey is uniquely yours. It is a journey of honoring yourself and making choices that benefit you. It is a journey that can be made in love. If you choose for it to be.

Om shanti.

Namaste.