How to Get Happy and Stuff

File under: things my momma tried to tell me but I had to learn for myself.

In the last week, a couple of male friends have made it perfectly clear by their actions that they’ve got absolutely no idea how to be happy. One of them has probably never known, and the other one has obviously forgotten. And because I care about both of them, I just want to shake them and make them understand. The endlessly frustrating thing about unhappy people is that they are usually convinced the one thing that actually will make them happy couldn’t possibly be the right answer.

I can’t say I blame them entirely, because it’s not obvious. In fact, it’s downright counterintuitive. If you’re unhappy, the most logical answer is to try and rearrange your environment such that it will make you happy. Don’t have enough stuff? Get more. Kids a pain in the butt? Leave ‘em for someone else to deal with. Wife doesn’t appreciate you? Manipulate her until she gives you what you want. If manipulating her doesn’t work, you can always find someone else (preferably someone younger). It’s a common sense and potentially pragmatic solution. Problem is – doesn’t work.

Turns out the new wife isn’t perfect either (shocker) and being in a relationship is just as hard as it was before. Or, alternately, it turns out being alone is, well, extremely lonely. The pain in the butt kids are still difficult every other weekend, and now you’ve got a whole lot less of the day to day joys you didn’t appreciate before. At least you’ve got an awesome LCD TV. The soft glow of Sportscenter on endless loop might even make that Hungry-man dinner look like the picture on the box, you pathetic jackalope.

Happiness is a funny thing. It’s one of the things in life you can’t get by going after it head-on. You can only get it by sneaking up on it. Maybe that’s why so many men can’t seem to catch it. We’re much better at attacking problems straight ahead than we are at coming around the corner at them. Happiness is elusive. For example, only very strong moments of happiness can withstand the question “Am I happy right now?” It’s as if happiness is shy and drawing attention to it makes it want to hide. You just can’t get happy by trying. So what’s a guy to do?

Into this impossible situation steps the Christian paradox: whoever tries to save his own life loses it, and whoever is willing to lose his life saves it. By attempting to arrange everything and everyone in your life so that they are what you want them to be, you alienate them and make yourself unlovable. Your happiness lies not in molding others to your self-serving vision of how things ought to be, but in giving yourself to others so completely that it scares you.

When he was around here a while back, Jesus said

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

To paraphrase: If you want maximum happiness, do what I say: love each other enough to put up with crying babies, crabby bosses, bankruptcies, lactose intolerance, cottage cheese thighs, receding hairlines, and an unfair division of household chores. Put somebody else’s desires before your own. In fact, love each other enough to die for each other. When you do that, happiness will find you.

So here’s my message to all the genius guys out there bailing on their families: You. Right there. Yeah, you. You’re a pathetic Neanderthal who can’t figure out that attacking a wooly mammoth heads up with your big club might not be the best way to go. You might want to think about trying dig one of those spikey pits and covering it with leaves or something. Use your brain. You can’t build a life the same way you build a house. You want to build a house, you cut some boards and hammer ‘em together. You don’t like something about the house, you tear it down and do it again. You want to build a life, you’re gonna have to accept the fact that you’re not in charge the same way you are when you build a house. You don’t just make everything go where you want it to go. If something or someone doesn’t fit right, you can’t just bang on it harder. Relationships are messy and inefficient. You gotta let people be who they are, and you gotta decide that they’re valuable anyway. You’re gonna have to love somebody and you’re gonna have to accept that you’re not getting your way most of the time. That’s it. That’s life. Suck it up. Be a man. Figure it out.

Mt Ellinor

Bottom Feeders

A couple of idiots broke into my office over the weekend. That's the door I go in and out of everyday. My cubicle is the closest one to this door. They rummaged around in my stuff, but didn't find anything worth taking. Some coworkers lost personal items. The action was captured by the poorly named "security" cameras.

Come to think of it, bottom feeders actually perform a necessary function, so these two are somewhere well below bottom feeders.

Watch the three-part video here.

My Pilot, The Salesman

You know what worries me about flying? Okay, that's not really a fair question, because literally everything worries me about flying: the wheels-up noise, the turbulence, the cranky movie monitor, the fat guy walking to the back of the plane, everything.

But you know what really worries me about flying? When you get close to your destination, and the pilot starts talking on the intercom, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. We're just about to begin our decent into Seattle. Local time is 7:43 PM, weather conditions are partly cloudy and 55 degrees, and winds are 10-15 knots out of the southwest. As I prepare to take your life in my hands and attempt to wrestle this lumbering hippopotamus back to the ground with anything resembling a controlled descent, I'd really appreciate your help with something. Your flight attendants will be coming through the cabin with credit card applications, and I'm really hoping that each and every one of you 112 passengers will think long and hard about filling one out. See, they pay us 10 bucks for every one of those bad boys. Now, I know what you're thinking, 'Don't pilots make pretty good money?' and yeah, I guess we do. But times are hard on everyone these days and booze and cheap women cost a lot more than they used to. Plus I'm in to Vinnie the thumb removal specialist for 10 large, and I wouldn't be real good at landing an airplane without my thumbs, now would I? If I don't at least think I've got a chance of paying this thing off, I might just decide that life isn't worth living. I know you good people wouldn't want to see that happen, so just take the application, put pen to paper, and let's all get home to our families, 'k'? Besides, the cards have a really cool picture of an airplane on them. So just sit back, relax, and enjoy the landing. We know you have many options when choosing an airline, and we appreciate you choosing ours."

DST Probably Costs You Money

Go ahead and call me a whiner, but I still hate Daylight Saving(s) Time. There are two main arguments in favor of DST: it saves money and we get more summer light in the evening after work.

A couple of UCSB researchers (maybe grad students?) put together this little analysis of the first argument. They compared energy usage differences between parts of the great state of Indiana, some parts of which observe DST ("the stupid parts") and other parts don't ("the smart parts"). After doing some calculations slightly more complicated than my monthly budget they came to the shocking conclusion that "contrary to the policy’s intent—DST results is an overall increase in residential electricity demand. Estimates of the overall increase in consumption range from 1 to 4 percent." Roughly translated that means, "DST is a crazed meth addict that has been stealing your kids' milk money and shooting it into his tourniquet-pinched arm." I, like all reasonable people, am against meth addicts stealing my kids milk money. I don't know who originally thought up this whole shenanigan, but whoever he is, he owes me some money.

Okay, so DST doesn't save any money, but what about the increased daylight hours after work thing? I have to admit, I find the last hour of daylight kind of magical. If the whole rest of the country is really sold on this, then I say fine, let's do it. In fact, let's do it all the time. Let's not switch back in the winter. We could just embrace this DST thing year-round. We'll spring the clocks forward one year and collectively forget to switch 'em back. If we need more light after work in the summer, then why not in the winter too?

War in Iraq, mortgage crisis, health insurance, blah, blah, blah. I haven't heard any of the presidential candidates addressing DST-gate yet, but its early so I'm hopeful. If I get the chance to ask a debate question via YouTube, this is so going to be it. The time is now. People are looking for something different, a new direction. Can you smell it people? That's change in the air.

The $40 Tomato

I really wanted to grow a few plants this summer. I started early. I bought little peat pellet seed starter thingys. I bought seeds. I planted seeds. I watered seeds. I tried to give them light, but it was still in short supply in April and May. I cleared bark off the soil. I amended the soil. I fertilized the soil. When the slugs appeared in mass to try and devour my seedlings, I defended my territory by means of chemical warfare.

I have exactly one red tomato.

I hope it's good.

You Get What You Pay For

Look closely. These four socks came out of a single package - a brand new, unopened, plastic bag containing six sets of socks. Purchased at...

Goodwill.

They saw me coming.