What to Do When the World is Ending

If I knew the world would end this week, I’d propose to someone special.  If they said no, I’d keep proposing until somebody said yes.  I’d quit my job, then travel cross country seeing all of the people that I miss and all of the places I haven’t made it to yet.  If there’s still time after the U.S.A. I’d plunge down into Central America.  I’d try to speak Spanish again.  I’d sky dive.  I’d go streaking.  I’d drive really fast.  I’d do all the things that are often dismissed for being too risky or too time consuming or too expensive.  They are this way when you have time, but when that luxury is taken, other luxuries become available—the luxury of not needing to plan ahead.

If I knew it was all ending, I’d still write.  I’d still sing.  I’d still hike through the woods on sunny days and go for jogs on rainy ones.  I’d drink more coffee and less beer because I want to be alert for oblivion.  I’d still try to be friendly and helpful to all people.  I’d still read, though I might choose shorter works.  I’d keep doing all the things I already love because true love doesn’t change even when everything else does. 

And if a week passed and we were all still here—if two weeks, three weeks, a year go by and the world turns out to not be finished after all—I don’t think I’d be disappointed.  I wouldn’t be regretful.  The world would be intact, as would I, and those two facts alone are worth celebrating.  Plus there’d be pictures and memories: me in freefall, me in a sombrero, me hugging my best friend, us pushing my car to a service station, someone saying yes, someone saying thank you. Yep, I think things would be just fine.  I’d smile and pay my speeding tickets, then see about getting my job back.  I mean, hey, I only quit because the world was ending.  Surely they’d understand. 

But even if they didn’t, I’d be okay.  Because I’d still have skills and drive and integrity and the support of my loved ones.  And time.  Lots and lots of time. Yeah, if handled the right way, the end of the world is a win-win situation.

“But wait a minute!” you might say.  “You left out all the bad stuff that’ll happen.  If the world’s ending, people will go crazy.  They’ll throw off their inhibitions and start doing all this bad stuff because they know they won’t have to suffer the consequences, at least not for very long.   They’ll riot, rape, steal, and destroy.  They’ll destroy everything because it’s all going down anyway.  How will you do all that stuff you want to do when things are so dangerous?”  But that is not the world we live in.  I reject the idea of a world where everyone is just one step away from being a sociopath. 

Sure, some people might make that choice. But what if we don’t?  What if we choose not to reach for weapons?   What if those who were holding weapons put them down?  What if the time before the world ends is the most peaceful in human history?  Is it such a crazy thing to ask?  To just let go of conflict and enjoy the last week of existence?  And if this is a crazy thing to ask, what does that say about us? Are we so full of hate that we can’t wait a week for our enemies to die along with us?  They have to go now?  If this is our mindset, then we are deserving of destruction. 

This piece seems to have taken a turn towards the negative.  Things usually do when the world is ending.  Watch any disaster movie.  But the question I’m putting forth is: Why does it have to be that way?  The world is what we make of it.  That’s true now, and it’ll be true at the end.  So let’s make something good. 

She Really Did Mean To

Penelope Hunt really did mean to paint when she got home from school that day.  On the way home she had purchased three new canvases and eight fresh bottles of paint and her head was so chock full of ideas that it was almost too much for her to keep focused on the road because man, what her teacher had said was so inspiring and made her want to inspire others so that they too could feel the way that she felt!  But when she got home, Tommy called her to go out and he was the first boy she ever let touch her and he was very popular and handsome and he had a scholarship to a good school so she didn’t want to let him down because he was what her mother called “a keeper” and given that her father had run away on them, a keeper sounded like a pretty good thing so she went out with Tommy and ended up staying at his place really late so that when she got home she just collapsed into bed and slept for like twelve hours.      

            When Penelope woke up the next day she had a 103 degree fever, nausea and a headache, so she spent pretty much the whole weekend laying in bed watching the TV her brother moved into her room for her and vomiting into a bucket telling her mother to please not cook her any food because it only made it worse.  By Monday she felt good enough to go to school and a good thing too because it was finals week and she was so close to graduating with a perfect GPA and now was no time to mess it up on account of some silly illness.  So she hit the books hard, both in school and out of school, eating and studying simultaneously, only stopping occasionally to sleep or go to the bathroom or talk on the phone with Tommy, and not painting because she had turned in her final for art already so that she could focus on the harder classes, and it paid off too because she aced all her finals and graduated at the top of her class.  So then it was time to focus on writing her valedictorian speech and on preparing for the summer marketing internship her uncle got her which started a week after graduation, and soon enough graduation happened and her speech went great and she was invited to all the popular kids’ graduation parties, then she started her internship which was challenging yet rewarding and in July she lost her virginity to Tommy and was very convinced she was in love with him but then he dumped her in August and she spent much of that month on the couch watching TV and thinking of excuses to keep from having to go to work.

            Then it was August 20 and it was time to go away to college which was new and exciting enough to pull Penelope at least partially out of her slump and get back to her usual overachieving ways so she packed up, got in the van with her mother and brother, and drove the three hours it took to get to what would become her new hometown.  She brought along her clothes, her computer, three towels, two sets of bed linens, a hygiene kit, a set of dishes and utensils, the textbooks she was able to locate on EBay, a backpack, a case of Ramen noodles, her iPod, and two framed photos (one of her best friends at prom and one of her family from their last vacation), but because dorm rooms are small and Penelope had an unknown roommate on whom she wanted to make a good impression by not infringing upon her side of the room—because of this the three still-blank canvases and the unopened bottles of paint were left behind.  

            She started as an undecided major but her internship experience and her roommate Clara’s own interest in the field influenced her to major in marketing which she did and committed to and was great at, completing the four year program in three and a half years, landing a solid job afterward, and moving in with her then-boyfriend Donald whom she eventually married and stayed with.  And in all this time there were many occasions where Penelope experienced a desire to create art, but it wasn’t until she was pregnant with her first child that she felt that same rush of inspiration she had felt way back in her last weeks of high school.           

            It happened when they were deciding how to decorate the nursery and she had the idea of painting each wall herself with a scene from a famous children’s story.  She spent weeks drawing up sketches, buying the necessary supplies, and talking to experienced painters about the specific considerations for such an endeavor.  But right when she was ready to begin painting, somewhere in the middle of the third trimester, she went into early labor and gave birth to a tiny but healthy baby boy whom she loved dearly and named Adam, and the exhaustion that only new mothers know combined with a particular knowledge of the psychological effects of exposure to certain colors and the worry that paint fumes would be dangerous to her premature baby, Penelope decided to just put up some blue wallpaper instead because wallpaper doesn’t generate fumes and because blue is supposed to be soothing.

            It’s been said that once you have kids, your life is no longer yours; it must be devoted to them.  This was true for Penelope.  She did have her own life, but she also ended up having four kids, for whom and with whom there was always something else to be done all through their early years into their teenage years and college careers, all the way through to when they started having their own kids, her grandchildren, one of which is me and it wasn’t until she got the shakes real bad and was diagnosed with the disease (four months the doctor gave her) that she again felt that intense inspiration to make art that would change people.  

            I was still a kid and she was living in our guest bedroom at this point when one day, a week or so after the diagnosis, two men arrived carrying an enormous wall-sized canvas.  “Upstairs, please!  First door on the right!” she told them.  When they had left, she sat us all down and told us that she was going into her room to paint and that no one under any circumstances should disturb her.  She then had me carry several jugs of water and a giant box of granola up to her room.  These I sat next to her table where already gathered were several sketching pencils, two stacks of paper, and a plethora of paints and brushes.  She then kissed me on my cheek and gently pushed me out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind her.  Over the next week I caught sight of grandma only three times as she crept from her room to the bathroom and back, but on the 7^th day I literally bumped into her as she turned the corner of the hallway.  She was startled, and dropped several of the sketches she had been carrying, which I then picked up and handed back, admiring her work as I did so.  When I handed her the pile, she promptly walked downstairs and threw every last sketch into a lit fireplace.  “I am finished,” she said.

            Penelope never re-entered that room and it remained locked for the rest of her life, two months as it turned out, which was spent mostly on our living room couch.  When she passed, she left a note telling us all that she loved us and that the key was in her left pocket.  At this point we were all pretty broken up and hoping for some inspiration, so we hastened to her room to behold what she had done with her week of laboring on that canvas.  What we found was not a detailed illustration of her life or a portrait of her closest friends and family.  Nor was there some trite maxim scrawled out in big bold letters.  None of the scenes from the childhood stories she had so long ago sketched out made it on.  There were no epic battles, loving embraces, abstract allegories, or beautiful landscapes.      

            No, what we discovered was eighty square feet of white canvas.  It was blank… or almost blank.  After closer inspection I discovered, way down in the bottom right corner where the author’s signature would be, an inscription. It read: Try Harder.

           

            My family argued for a while about exactly what this meant and about what we should do with this giant canvas, our grandma’s artistic legacy, which was taking up an entire wall of our guest room.  I don’t really remember what all they talked about as I was still fairly young and a lot of it went right over my head.  But back when I was picking grandma’s sketches off the floor for her, I actually hid one when she wasn’t looking, and I still have it to this day.  It’s quite good.    

I'm in Love with a Place

I love walking on wet, quiet nights
With my hands in my jacket pockets
When the lights are reflected in puddles--

That just around the corner
Is a place I've never been,
That the person coming toward me
Is someone I've not seen before,
To whom I could be anyone--

That I know where to go
To find the best dance floor,
The perfect grass for sunbathing,
The juiciest burger ever,
The best sunset vantage point,
Or a room full of smiling faces
(All while avoiding traffic on the way).

Despite everything that can and does go wrong,
In the end, we fall in love with places
Where we're always finding something new,
Yet we feel that we belong.

2012 Reading List

Last year a friend of mine challenged herself to read 40 books in 12 months, which got me to thinking about my own rate of literature consumption.  I've read a ton of books, but just how quickly do I read?  So I decided to start keeping track of everything.  I now know how many books I read per year, and I also have a record of everything I read for the purposes of being able to make recommendations.  This year I read 34 books; I probably could have made it to 40, but I didn't feel like reading a single word for the entire month of August and there were about 10 books I began but had no desire to finish.  Below is the list of all the books I did finish in the order I read them starting in January of 2012 and ending in December.  Included is a brief description/review of each for those of you looking for something new to try.

1) Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk: The plot involves a foreign exchange student from an undisclosed country coming to America with a secret and destructive mission to accomplish while here.  But the style is what's really compelling.  The main character narrates the story like a series of mission briefs.  The language is very abrupt because of the mission brief style and hilarious because of the unknown foreign nature of the speaker as well as his unique upbringing which causes him to consider every situation from a tactical standpoint.  If you've never read Palahniuk, he covers some disturbing, sometimes repulsive stuff.  But if you can handle that, he is a great writer.  I've read three of his books and found this one to be the best of those because it's funny, compelling, and has some good satire.
2) Nemesis by Phillip Roth: This story follows a guy who is in the prime of his life when a Polio epidemic strikes his neighborhood (this was before there was a vaccine).  It seems to comment on how easy it is for a man to fall from grace, whether it be of his own doing or out of his control.  In this case, the Polio was out of his control, but he let it ruin his life more than it needed to.  It was a quick read, but I found it mostly depressing. 
3) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon:  This is fiction but it covers a large span of the careers of the two main characters, so it comes off somewhat like a biography.  It follows Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay as they team up to enter and change the comic book business.  With any story like this, there is the rising from humble roots, the high point of success, the fall, and then some redemption.  It's a fairly compelling story and you also get to learn a lot about the comic book business.
4) Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman: This one became a surprise favorite of mine.  It's a collection of short shorts in imagined alternate worlds where time functions differently.  I wrote a post about it in February.  To read it, go here: Einstein's Dreams
5) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: Everyone and their mother has been reading these books, and there's a reason; they are super interesting and exciting.  I read all three of them in a week or two.  In a post-revolutionary world where the revolution failed, the government now punishes the 12 revolting districts by making them each sacrifice two children a year in a televised fight to the death.  The plot is exciting, the character development is decent, and there's some social commentary on poverty, power, and class.
6) Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins:  The sequel to the Hunger Games.  Since it's the 75th annual Hunger Games event, it's time for an all-star game.  Every competitor is someone who has won in a past year.  It'll be easier to survive because our heroine now has experience, but it'll be harder to survive because everyone else does too.
7) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins: The finale of the Hunger Games trilogy.  The revolution is on.  The districts have had it with their government and it's time for another rebellion. I found this one to be the most gruesome and depressing of the three.  The more rebellious the people become, the harsher measures the government takes against them.  Note here that in this book, as well as the other two, the ending is kind of a downer.
8) Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom: A nonfiction memoir featuring Albom's relationships with two very different pastors.  One he has known for much of his life; this pastor is getting old and asks Albom to write his eulogy.  The other is young reformed drug dealer and convict who preaches in a church with a giant hole in the roof.  In his conversations with these men, Albom engages some of the key questions/struggles in both faith and life.
9) The BFG by Roald Dahl: BFG stands for the Big Friendly Giant who kidnaps a girl and takes her to his home in a land filled with bigger meaner giants.  They eat gross pickles and consume fizzy lifting drinks, then hatch a plan to help the queen of England capture all the other giants. 
10) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Considered by many to be Dostoevsky's masterpiece, it is the story of an estranged family consisting of a father and three sons.  The first third or so of the story concerns their relationship.  The second third concerns the strange events surrounding the father's murder.  The last third is the aftermath of the murder including the trial.  There are several allegorical aspects of the story where certain characters and events represent certain aspects of Russia and its place in the world.  I'm not an expert on that, but one thing I've noticed in Russian Lit is that there are certain archetypical characters seen over and over again.  In this story the three sons are Dmitri, Ivan, and Alexei.  Dmitri is the brash man of action who gets himself in over his head.  Ivan is the thinking man who is internally troubled and outwardly inhibited (at times), and Alexei is the young innocent ray of hope.  Dostoevsky intended this story as part 1 of a larger work, but it stands well enough on its own.  My favorite parts are theses passages when one character will start expounding on their worldview for pages on end without cease because there are some really brilliant ideas in these moments.
11) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Steven Chbosky: This is both the best book I've read and the best movie I've seen this year.  It features Charlie, a high school freshman with a troubled past and no real friends as he tries to survive his first year of high school.  He does manage to make some friends and starts learning what relationships are all about.  As a plot summary, it sounds really bland and corny, but the plot isn't what makes the book.  It's the character development and the very real connections and struggles that occur between the characters.  Every one of the major questions we face in adolescence is addressed in some way.  Where do I belong?  Why do people choose to be in relationships with assholes?  What do I do next?  How do I manage all the pain that I feel and see?  I've yet to hear of someone reading this book and not liking it.
12) The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1 by M.T. Anderson: A tale of a boy who was born into slavery and raised by scientists in a lifelong experiment aimed at determining whether there is a difference in innate ability and intellect between the white and black races if you control outside factors.  I always find it fascinating to have a child narrator because you get to see his unique perspective on a situation, but through context clues you also find out things that the child-narrator doesn't know or understand.  There is good discussion here about things like race, ethics, necessary evils, power, equality, and identity.  A very unique book. 
13) The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 2 by M.T. Anderson: This is the terrible sequel to the above.  Octavian is free now (sort of) and finds himself fighting (sort of) in the Revolutionary War.  There are still some interesting discussions, like how even though Octavian attains relative freedom, he still has to follow orders, he gets treated like crap, and his living conditions actually worsen.  But mostly all the characters just sit around on a ship and do nothing. 
14) Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon: A collection of very short stories that all feature quirky observations and ironic occurrences.  Some of my favorites include: A high school rivalry escalates to the point where mascots get murdered and coaches get kidnapped then ransomed back just before the game.  A poor man finds $20 three times in a row and treats himself to an expensive meal each time, but because of taxes and tip ends up spending his own money unnecessarily.  A bunch of little kids in a play can't grasp the concept of having two identities at once, so everyone gets confused calling kids by their real names on stage and their character names off stage.
15) Lord of the Flies by William Golding:  A bunch of boys get stranded on an island without adults and try to re-create civilization but are unable to communicate (some characters are ineffective at it, some are domineering, and some are unkind, so they end up devolving and turning violently on one another.  A somewhat disturbing look at how much effort and teamwork are necessary to produce positive changes and how easily things can go south.
16) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: A very strange satirical tale of airmen and their commanders in the Air Force during WW2.  The men find themselves being constantly manipulated into flying more missions, so they find themselves manipulating to spend some time in the hospital instead of on active duty.  One character manipulates things so that he ends up controlling all of the supply routes.  There is a lot of manipulation, a lot of confusion, a lot of absurd occurrences.  Ultimately, the story is about people trying to maintain some semblance of control in a situation where they have very little control.  It's so odd that it's compelling, but the plot doesn't move forward in a straight line.  It kind of cycles around on itself again and again which makes for some slow going at times.  But this style does mimic what might be going on in the characters' minds.  They don't know what will happen to them next, but many times they end up stuck and having to do some terrible thing they already did, and we as readers find ourselves similarly in the realm of the unknown.
17) Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk: An aging porn star is trying to break the record for serial fornication on film.  The story is told from the perspectives of three of the men waiting for it to be their turn with her.  It sounds unique and interesting, and in some ways is; however while in other books by Palahniuk I found the disturbing imagery and topics to be useful in creating meaningful messages, in this book they're just kind of gross and off-putting for the sake of shock value.  Each character has motivation, but none of the characters is developed all that much.  Mostly the story is a lot of skin and bodily fluids; it is about sex, but it will not turn you on.
18) Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut:  This story features the invented religion of Bokononism, which I wrote a post about here: Bokononism.  It also features the invention of Ice 9 which instantly freezes any liquid it touches.  Mostly the story serves as a way to discuss the merits and drawbacks of the concept of religion in a safe setting by not using a religion that anyone actually practices.
19) The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist: Despite this book's length, I tore through it once the plot got underway (which it does pretty quickly).  Three different characters (a noble-woman, a doctor, and an assassin) all stumble upon a strange conspiracy involving masquerade balls, glass books, blue dust, facial burns, mind control, and political manipulation.  The deeper into the book you get, the deeper the conspiracy becomes and the more thrilling the plot.  There are certain unbelievable moments (the characters all escape near-death situations a ridiculous number of times), but who cares?  It's super fun to read.
20) Self-Help by Lorrie Moore: A collection of short stories featuring women going through personal struggles which feel very real.  It is well-written and a pretty quick read.
21) The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot.  If you like doing close readings, this book is excellent.  Each work is so dense and full of meanings to pull apart.  My favorites are "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "What the Thunder Said," "Ash Wednesday," "Choruses from 'The Rock'," and "The Cocktail Party."  It would seem also, I learned from this book, that the musical Cats is based on some of Eliot's poems.
22) Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace: This guy is an amazing writer, and this book is a collection of essays, reviews, and memoirs on a variety of topics, some of which don't sound interesting, but all of which Wallace makes interesting.  My favorite parts were "Up Simba" in which Wallace spent time on the McCain campaign trail, and "Authority and American Usage," which discusses American English as a language.  Both topics sound like a snooze-fest to most people, but I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of knowledge and the compelling style of language.
23) Divergent by Victoria Roth: This is a distopian novel in which a city is divided into 5 factions based on the core values of knowledge, altruism, courage, honesty, and peace.  You live with your parents in their faction until you turn 16, and then you are given the opportunity to choose your own faction.  Most people stay where they grew up.  A few don't.  This is the story of one who doesn't.  It is in some ways a distopian novel and in some ways a coming of age tale.
24) Insurgent by Victoria Roth: The sequel to the above (ultimately it is supposed to be a trilogy) in which factions are warring.  Lines are drawn.  Sides are taken.  In the first novel, we only get an in-depth look at the altruism and courage factions.  This novel shows us all factions including the faction-less which is basically a homeless army of outcasts.
25) Just After Sunset by Stephen King: A very good collection of short stories.  In each one, the main character starts out by having to cope with a very real and relatable human struggle.  Then inevitably each character is thrust into a surreal or fantastic circumstance that further emphasizes said struggle.  I wrote an earlier blog about this here: Just After Sunset
26) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:  "It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times."  The two cities are London and Paris and it is the dawn of the French Revolution.  The story is very slow, but it is well-written.  It is the tale of a small family trying their best to live their life despite some significant outside circumstances.  The most compelling aspect of it is the portrayal of instances in which people with good intentions end up doing very bad things and people who have been more or less worthless their entire lives are able to step up and do amazing things.
27) Bossypants by Tina Fey: Autobiography/memoir by former SNL writer/star and present day 30 Rock producer/star.  A light, quick read whose humor ultimately didn't really do it for me.  Tina Fey's a smart lady, but I think her brand of humor differs from mine.
28) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A work of fiction that reads like a work of history.  It covers the birth, life, and death of a town through the eyes of 6 or so generations of one family.  It's very unique in style, plot, and characters, but it also reads very slow.  There are elements of magical realism (theoretically possible but ultimately absurd occurrences) that add to the story's intrigue.   
29) PostSecret by Frank Warren: Several years ago, Frank Warren distributed 3,000 post cards asking people to anonymously write down a secret, something they'd never told anyone, and mail it back to him.  The response was overwhelming to the point that he still receives post cards today.  This book is a collection of some of them.  With any given page turn you could laugh your heart out or cry your eyes out.  There's some pretty deep stuff.
30) The Happiness Project by Gretchen Reuben: Reuben commits herself to devoting an entire year to trying to be happier through very specific, timed resolutions and then writing about the experience.  My previous blog post dated November 30 is about this.
31) Hamlet by William Shakespeare: The Prince of Denmark struggles with the knowledge that his uncle murdered his father and that his mother then married his uncle.  Some great passages about mortality, relative greatness, inability to follow one's own advice, and the honor of struggle.
32) Found by Davy Rothbart: Similar to PostSecret, Rothbart asks people to mail him notes, drawings, tickets, photographs of interest that they find laying around in public.  The revelations aren't as deep, however, as these aren't internal secrets but things commonplace enough to be left out for someone else to find.  There are a lot of notes on the topics of love and hate.
33) Henry IV, Part 1 by William Shakespeare: Henry IV must handle a rebellion while his son Prince Harry goofs around in bars.  There are some good character foils which help show the value of balance; the extreme characters either die (in the case of the guy that's all about valor) or live deceitful somewhat loathsome existences (in the case of the guy all about self-preservation), but the balanced characters emerge victorious.
34) Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut:  A previously unpublished collection of mostly short stories and a couple other writings mostly centered around the world wars.  They came out just before Vonnegut's death.  They very rarely focus on the actual fighting of the war.  Instead they focus on three POW's exchanging recipes, or a furniture maker in an occupied city, or a spy who unwittingly outs himself.  They are very good.  I read many of them in one night.

Well that does it.  I hope you try a few of these books out, as most of them have significant value.  I'm going to go start my first book of the new year.

A Guide to Happiness (abbreviated version)

Are you happy? 

It seems like a simple question, but a lot goes into it.  Do you mean do I feel happy at the present moment?  Or am I happy with the way my life is going in the long term?  I think of happiness as an overall positive attitude which results from feeling grateful, satisfied, worthwhile, loved, challenged, driven, and inspired-- which means every aspect of your life plays a role in whether or not you are happy.  And the more you consider the concept, the more elusive the feeling can seem.  For instance, it is hard to feel both driven and satisfied.  To be driven is to have a goal you're working toward, to want something you do not yet have.  And to be satisfied is to be content with the way things are going; you feel good about what you already have.  Happiness seems to require a great deal of balance, optimism, and effort.

This month I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  In this book, Rubin documents a year in which she focused on actively making herself happier.  Each month she picked one aspect of her life to focus on; such aspects included energy, marriage, work, money, and mindfulness.  Then she set specific resolutions relating to each area.  On the subject of energy, for instance, her resolutions were to get to sleep earlier; exercise better; toss, restore, and organize (with regard to her cluttered material possessions); tackle a nagging task, and act more energetic.  All of these things are fairly commonsense; I think most people would agree that better exercise would give them more energy and make them feel happier.  And that's kind of how the book goes.  Most of the ideas in it are not new or surprising.  However, the book still manages to be impressive in that it has gathered all of these ideas in one place and then provided a living example of someone attempting to put them to work in her own life.   

Because Rubin's personal Happiness Project affected me, made me evaluate my own life, I have included, beginning in the following paragraph, a collection of the book's ideas and concepts I found most useful.  Perhaps you may find them useful as well.  Rubin did a ton of research for her book, so while some of the ideas are hers, many of them she is simply passing on.  That is what I, too, am doing.  Much of what is written below comes straight from her book, and some of it consists of my own elaborations.  I hope you find these ideas and reminders to be helpful in better enjoying and getting more out of your day-to-day life.

- "If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough." 
        - Meaning: You need to challenge yourself, strive for new and greater things.  If you never fail, then you must not be taking many risks, and if you take no risks, you're not really living, are you?  You are complacent.  You're existing.  You're merely getting by.  And then time passes and you'll have nothing to show for it.  When you take risks and challenge yourself, life is slower, more interesting, and memorable.

- Stay on top of simple things: keep things clean and organized.  If a task takes five minutes or less, don't put it off.  Just get it done.  For big tasks, just do a little bit each day and they become much more manageable.  If you do these things, many of the little nagging annoyances at the back of your brain go away.  Your self-esteem rises because you're being productive and you feel in control of your life.

- Exercise frequently.  Eat less at night.  You'll feel better and look better.  There is such a thing as a natural high.  It has all the positives of a substance-related high with none of the drawbacks.

- Behavior and attitude have a reciprocal influence.
          - Meaning: Each one influences the other.  Most people recognize that if we feel happy, we will act happy.  But the opposite is also true.  Our attitudes and feelings will also change to match our behaviors.  If you act happy, you start feeling happy.  The same is true for other emotions.  If you act negative (by being sarcastic and cynical, by complaining, etc.), you start to feel more negative inside.
          When someone has a problem, they tend to dwell and focus on it, some despairingly and others in a proactive way.  However, focusing on a problem can often make it worse.  If you focus on the fact that you feel angry, you end up finding more things to be angry about.  So while you shouldn't bottle up or ignore your problems entirely, self-distraction is actually a powerful method for lessening their severity and preventing them from ruining all the good things you've got or could have going on.

- Never expect praise or appreciation.  Do things because they make YOU feel good or right.  If someone else notices, that's a bonus.  But you if you make your happiness dependent upon something you can't control like what others say about you, you will often be let down.

- Don't ever dump your negative feelings all on one person.  Yes, it's important to share with people, to get release, to bond and feel like you're not alone.  But too much negativity will bring anyone down, and if you are its source, the person you're unloading on will like you less.  Avoid complaining in general.  If it is an important topic, frame the negativity as a discussion rather than a complaint.  And if it's not important, learn to just let it go.

- Show the people you love that you love them.  Everyone else is just as insecure as you are so it is always good for them to hear you acknowledge their value to you.  Give small gifts, do favors, give compliments, make grand gestures, go out of your way.  I sometimes find myself wishing someone would do this or that for me, just show up and surprise me in some awesome way.  But when this doesn't happen, I figure I can at least do that same thing for someone else.  And it has been proven that people often feel happiest when helping others.  E.g. Even better than the feeling of laughing is the feeling of having succeeded at making someone else laugh.

- Goal attainment does not make us as happy as we think it will.  It does make us happy, but soon enough that happiness wears off, and we find new goals.  Striving toward the goals, the process of getting there, makes us at least as happy, and that happiness lasts longer because the effort is drawn out over time.  In a word, growth is a major contributor to happiness.  Someone who is at the top of their game in one sport might actually have more fun playing something at which they are of average ability because there is room for growth.  We feel good when we are improving ourselves.     

- Ask for help, and not just from anybody.  Ask people who know the topic in question.  Most people will enthusiastically help if they think they have something valuable to offer.  They'll feel good because they are proving themselves useful.  You'll feel good because you're forming a social bond and learning to succeed at something that was difficult for you.

- Make sure your career is something you enjoy because you are going to spend an awful lot of your time doing it.  If you enjoy it, it can be a source of happiness rather than a burden combating your happiness.  Many people, I think, allow themselves to be trapped in jobs they hate because they need the money or the economy is bad, or the job is easy, or they need more education for the job they really want.  But no matter your circumstances, we live in a world that is becoming more and more globally integrated, which means there is an ever-increasing variety of opportunity and choice.  Make the extra effort to figure out what you want to do, and have the courage to pursue it.  Next to sleep, we spend more time working than doing anything else.  It makes no sense for something that's such a big part of our lives to be miserable.

- A lack of feeling bad is not enough to make you happy.  You must strive to find sources of feeling good.  This is true for two reasons.  The first is that life inevitably introduces problems and obstacles.  They will always be around, so you need to find positive things to balance them out.  Secondly, even if you do manage to remove all sources of bad feeling, that just leaves you with an absence of feeling, a numbness, which in some ways is worse.  You don't even feel alive because you don't feel anything.  No, you must strive toward positive sources of feeling.

- "When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis
         
- You miss out on a lot of good if you take yourself too seriously.

- You can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want.  Never be afraid to try something out.  But there just isn't enough time to do everything and some things just weren't meant for you.  Even if many other people find an activity valuable and satisfying, it won't make you happy if you don't find it valuable and satisfying.  Examples:
         - Things that contribute to my happiness that many people don't enjoy: singing, reading, writing, playing with kids, competition, church.
         - Things many people seem to enjoy and that I've tried to enjoy, but they just don't leave me satisfied: drinking, being a "player," watching sports.

- Connection makes us happy.  Every positive relationship contributes.  And if a lot of the people we're friends with are also friends with each other, i.e. when we have an interconnected social network, this contributes to happiness as well.  When this network is in place, each time you influence someone becomes that much more powerful because that influence may also affect several other people you know.

- Being a happy, optimistic, and cheerful person is not the "cool" thing to do.  People who act this way are often considered goofy and weird.  But who cares, if you're enjoying life more?  Plus, research shows that simply being around happy people makes other people happier.  Being around a negative person is tiring and unpleasant no matter how cool, worldly, or intelligent they appear to be. 

- Some people think, "How can I be happy with so much pain and suffering in the world?  Isn't that selfish?"
       - True, we should not be blind, deaf, or ignorant to the problems of the world.  We should acknowledge them, learn from them, and do something about them if possible.  However, there are many issues that are out of our direct control.  If you don't think you can do anything about a particular problem and you don't plan to try, then what is the point of allowing it to bring you down?  You worrying or ranting or crying or fearing is not helping anyone, and it's making your life less pleasant.  So why bother?  The time wasted being upset over something you can't control would be better used contributing positively to some area of life that you can control.  Doing something useful makes you feel worthwhile and therefore happier, and when you feel happy you have more drive, more energy, to continue reaching out and engaging the world in positive ways.  So in a way, both you and the world are better off if you have fewer worries.
       - The flip side of this is that if you have no worries it is easy to become complacent/self-satisfied and not reach out to the world at all.  The trick, as with many things, is to find a balance.  In this case it is a balance between knowing/caring about the world's issues and not letting them become personal issues.

- If you find yourself creatively blocked-off, try simply assigning yourself a production goal and forcing yourself to meet it without worrying about the outcome.  Give yourself permission to focus on quantity instead of quality for a little bit.  Write 1,000 words a day.  Write a poem a day.  Make a painting each day.  Come up with one idea every hour for an event to host.  You will at least get the creative juices flowing, and who knows?  Some of what you create might actually be good.

- Money is a means, not an end.  Money on its own, sitting in a bank account, will not make you happy, no matter how much there is.  But money well-used can lead to happiness if you are spending it on doing things that make you and others happy.  If you are using the money, then yes money can buy you some happiness because you are more able and you have more resources to more easily do the things that you love.  The only downside is that too much money can make things too easy, and you no longer value them as much because you aren't putting forth that effort toward growth.  There is no time to savor the process of improvement if you are able to jump right to the end. 

-Money is also relative.  A person who makes $40,000 but feels that they really only need $20,000 to survive comfortably is going to be happier than a person who makes $80,000 but feels that they ought to be making $100,000 based on their skills and experience.  The first person makes less but feels like they're in a situation of abundance.  The second person makes more but feels under-appreciated.  
       -A large part of happiness is in how we perceive our circumstances.  We really can't be happy unless we think we are happy.  So while external happenings do have a heavy influence on our attitude, our perceptions and ways of framing those events have just as much influence.  Remember Descartes's philosophy, "I think, therefore I am?"  He was talking about proofs of existence, but I think it applies to attitude.  This is why psychological illness is so difficult to treat.  If you think everyone is out to get you, then for you, your reality consists of a world in which everyone is actually out to get you.  The fact that this is completely illogical makes not one bit of difference on how you feel.  Conversely, if you think you enjoyed and got a lot out of a given situation, then you did enjoy and get a lot out of it.  This aspect of attitude is what makes it so frustratingly difficult to change another person's opinion-- we each determine our own "truth."  Thankfully, this concept does make it fairly simple to change our own attitudes around if we have the determination to do so.

- We've each developed certain shortcuts to decision-making, certain psychological maxims that we use every day to help us determine what to do, what has value for us, and with whom to interact.  Psychologists call these heuristics.  The writer Gretchen Rubin calls them "True Rules."  I've always thought of mine (the positive ones anyway) as The Philosophy of Zach.  Most of the time these ways of thinking are helpful in identifying our core values and in making day-to-day decisions based on those values.  But sometimes these heuristics can be misleading, inaccurate, or harmful (Example: prejudice).  It is important to be able to recognize and root out the harmful ones, and allow the useful ones to flourish within your life.
        -Examples of a few harmful heuristics I caught myself operating under this past year:
                  People in Kentucky are uneducated.            
                  Alcohol will make me feel better.
                  Most people are boring.
    These ways of thinking led me to some troubles.    The second one in particular made me do some dumb things which I regretted.  The first and third made me fail to do things I would have likes to do i.e. reaching out and interacting more with strangers/new people.
         -Examples of the positive heuristics I live by, or The Philosophy of Zach:
                  Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
                  The difficult thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same.
                  Love is never wasted.
                  Good things take time.  Great things happen all at once. 
                  Variety is the spice of life.
                  Yesterday is over.
                  The future does not exist.
                  Be good to yourself. 
                  Love your neighbor.
                  Thank God.
       Most of these, by the way, have existed much longer than I have so the name Philosophy of Zach in no way implies ownership of ideas.  It simply helps me relate these ideas more directly to my own identity, which then helps me better put them into practice.
        - In short, a person who is both self-aware and willing to adjust has a very good chance at becoming happier, because they can understand and admit to both their virtues and their faults.  They can have the courage to improve on their skills and work around or eliminate entirely the faults.

 I hope these concepts spark an interest in you.  If you you're happy now, may you get happier.  If you're miserable, may you find the courage and inspiration to change.  Just remember that happiness is not an independent quality.  It is an overall feeling that result from your own lifestyle choices, experiences, and perceptions.  You will not get happier by accident, by simply wanting to be happy.  You have to make sure that the major elements of your life match up with your internal values and attitudes.  You need to take steps to ensure that the person you are and the person you wish to be are the same person.

Thank you to Gretchen Rubin and her book The Happiness Project for inspiring and providing much of the content of this post.  If you have an interest in learning more about her work on this topic, visit  her blog at www.happiness-project.com.  If you want to try and start your own happiness project, which when you get down to it is simply a conscious and specific effort to improve your quality of life, check out www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com.