Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Manifesto.

A Happiness Manifesto

• To be happy, you need to consider feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
• One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
• The days are long, but the years are short.
• You're not happy unless you think you're happy.
• Your body matters.
• Happiness is other people.
• Think about yourself so you can forget yourself.
• "It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light."—G. K. Chesterton
• What's fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa.
• Best is good, better is best.
• Outer order contributes to inner calm.
• Happiness comes not from having more, not from having less, but from wanting what you have.
• You can choose what you do, but you can't choose what you like to do.
• "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy." —Robert Louis Stevenson
• You manage what you measure.

Reasons my kid is awesome #547 and #892

#547: Today we were walking across campus and Emily said "Mom, do you remember that time we were walking down here and Ben jumped out of the bushes and scared me? I think he was playing psychic!"

#892: Emily is in the bath tub, picking her teeth vie her reflection in that circular metal knob thing (what are those for anyway?).

Em: Mom, where do babies come from?
Me: They come out of their mommy's vagina.
Em: But where before that?
Me: They live in their mommy's uterus until they have grown enough to come out.
Em: But how do they get there?
Me: They get there when a man and a woman have sex.
Em: What's sex?
Me: *deep breathe* Sexual intercourse is where a man sticks his penis in a womans vagina. Sometimes, it results in the woman becoming pregnant.
Em: *blank astonished look and long silence* *glance at her own vagina* *confused look back at me* I bet he forgot.
Me: What?
Em: The man, I bet he forgot about putting his penis in her 'gina!

Then she calmly returned to picking her teeth.

The Grandma Jo memoirs. take 1.

My Grandma Joanne was a remarkable woman. She never learned how to swim, and never left the country, but she was smarter than most people I know. When I was little she taught me the magic of growing things in the ground to sustain us. She would dig the holes, in rows of tilled soil, and I would drop the seeds in. Together we would cover this little spark of life and water it. Within the weeks that would pass, waiting for something to grow, she would teach me about flowers, let me walk the dog, and bake me cookies or make me milkshakes. When the corn stalks were tall enough to tower over both of our heads (she was a relatively short woman), we would run up and down the rows of the green silk stalks, laughing. I can hear her whimsical voice, "Come find meeeee" as she disappeared around the corner of a row.

She taught me how to write my name, how to crack the eggs into the batter, and the proper way to cuddle up on the couch. She would embrace me, surround me, and hold me in what I remember as her M&M blanket. A crocheted blanket that was the color of M&M's, her favorite candy. We would lay there and watch National Geographic shows or the Discovery channel. She used to grow pumpkins every year. And when they were still green she would take me and my cousins out there and carve each of our names in one. Our very own pumpkin.

My grandma had a very comforting smell. Clinique moisturizer, sunshine, baking, and love. When I was at her house shortly after her death, I opened a drawer of her sweaters and I could smell her. It was as if she were right there with me. Holding me one last time. I wish I had taken the time to hold her, at least one more time before she left. To tell her I love her. To tell her how very much she meant to me, how foundational she is to who I am and what I hold dear in this life. Her patience was unmatched. Her guidance and nurturing are some of the warmest memories I have. Her presence was a comfort to me.

I felt her here tonight. I could smell her. Standing behind me like she used to when I was waist high, with her arm around me so that I could lean back into her. I used to love being that close to her. So close that I could feel her chuckle. So close that her love would wrap me up and keep me safe and warm.

where are you going, my little one, little one?

The ways in which little girls play amongst themselves really baffles me. They compete, they cut each other down, and one up each other. Everything is a game of who has the better this or that, who is wearing the coolest ___, or who is the best at___. Just listening to it takes my self-esteem down a few notches and gives the creeps. Where do they learn this? What happened to the nice, playing together and being positive, uplifting friends stage? I liked that one.

This stage, not so much. As a parent who may or may not have an overprotective tendency, it is really difficult to listen to two girls sort through these issues on their own without intervening with a grouchy "CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?!" There is value in letting children figure out how to navigate through other peoples bullshit, but damn. There is that fine line. The line in which on one side I am explaining why the way those words sounded may have hurt the other persons feelings and suggesting we look for a better way to say it, and then there is the other side where I am dancing up and down madly, pulling my hair out (or imagine myself doing so in my head) as I say wildly "Will you two just knock it off? I am tired of listening to you to treat each other this way!" Depending on delivery, that last part might not be so bad but it seems that every time I say that, the response I get is "But we are just playing!"

When did playing become so mean? Or has it really always been this way and I have just done a really excellent job of blocking all of my own childhood experiences from memory? Of course, this also may be where the whole 'more friends that are boys than girls' thing comes in.

On the up side, I made some awesome gluten free cupcakes tonight.

Credo Week, day four: What is my faith?

What do I trust?

What experiences have taught me to trust?

Where do I look for strength and encouragement?

How do I celebrate my life and experiences?

What do I trust in that does not require explanation?

What has earned my unconditional trust and faith? Why?

I trust in the power of love for one another. I trust in strength of passions that drive us to become more authentic selves. I trust that the Universe wants me to succeed and has provided me with options to do so. I trust in my ability to listen to these things. I trust that this moment, as with the last, shall pass and make room for the next moment. Nature has a way of doing things. It may take longer than I want it to, but it works out in the end the way that it should. Childbirth is a perfect example of this. It hurts. It takes a long time, and your body does things you never thought it could, would, or should. But in the end, the nature of your body has produced a tiny human being and seen its passage into this world. I think all of life is like this. If I can only take the time to stop long enough to feel the natural passage from this step to the next, I will see what is meant to be. Or maybe I won't, but I will feel nature there at work. I trust in this process because when I quit believing in it, it was still there. Life was still happening all around me. Plants and animals and people, still living, breathing, loving. Still there.

Strength and encouragement is all around me. I can find it when I am looking, and sometimes, even when I'm not. Because it is in the nature of the Universe, and in the nature of people, to care for one another. I go to the mountains, or to the beach to sit and listen to the quiet drum of the earth that consoles me and strengthens me when I am down. I can watch the waves roll in and out and am reminded that life is like this. A wave rolls in, and I am close to divinity, it rolls out, and divinity is pulling me to where I might be meant to go. I trust in this guidance. And I trust in my ability to choose which way to turn. I trust in the ability to hear the divine through the people in my life. Wisdom can be found in the most wondrous, unexepected places. My daughter can find it in a slug making it's way across the sidewalk. I strive to be able to do this as well. When I listen to the words and experiences of others, I am strengthened in my belief in the potential of us all. When I trust their intentions and support, I am strengthened in my belief in myself.

I celebrate my life and experiences with my community. With my circle of loved ones. With my friends, family, my church. It is in sharing our joys with each other that I am reinvested in my faith. My faith in people, and my faith in nature. I celebrate out in the open, and I celebrate quietly inside of myself too. Even my failures are worth celebrating as long as they have jarred my consciousness enough to make me think in a new way about what I have failed.

I have unconditional trust and faith in the human experience. It is all that I can trust in sometimes. Life may be going in a direction that is not in my favor, but it is still an experience. My human-ness is the lens through which I experience it all, it is a foundation for my reception of and reaction to it all. All of life will be my human experience, whether I embrace it or not. I have unconditional trust and faith in my ability to choose. I have the power to view this all as an adventure, to let love in, to laugh and to learn. Just as I have the choice to hunker down and put my blinders on, as if this shall pass over like a terrible storm. And I have unconditional trust and faith in the experience of love. My faith is love. It is my experience of the divine. It is my expression of the divine. We nurture and care and support because of love. We defend and fight because of love. We learn and grow and move because of love. We accept, serve, give and receive because of love. Because of life.

Credo Week, day three: Why Am I Here?

What is my purpose?

What have I been doing with my life?

What would the last chapter of my autobiography look like if it were already written?

What will I do with my gifts?

My purpose in this life is to heal people. To give more love than I receive. And to help nurture the passions of people around me. It is through these things that I feel most fulfilled and content. It is through these things I will leave this world a better place. Or, at least my little corner of it.

With my life, I have done a tremendous amount of wandering around inside of myself, and my immediate surroundings, searching for what has felt true for me. Growing up, in my teens, I poured my existence into my Unitarian identity and experiences because it was the first place I found that celebrated who I was when I got there, who I was while I was there, and who I was when I left. Because of this, I put energy in my life towards creating that for others. I have not taken very many of the traditional paths that have come my way, and for a while, this bothered me. Until I realized that it is because I have done things differently that I know what I do, that I feel what I do, and that I would not have been satisfied doing it any other way. I have immersed myself in communities I never would have found had I gone straight to college. I have experienced ways of life that I wouldn't have had time for had I been busy "becoming my grown-up self". I have tried professions I wouldn't have found. It is through these experiences that I have learned a lot about what I don't want to be, and more than a little about what I do. None of these experiences even comes close to the experience of being a mom. By parenting my child the way I want her to be raised I have learned the kind of world I want to create around me. I have had to teach myself to be intentional about my life. The people I let into it, the food that I eat, the way that I speak, the way I show love. Everything. It is through caring so intensely for her that I have learned that my radical act of love and change in this world has to be through helping the lives of others, that is the only way it will feel genuine to me. I have been given a tremendous amount of love and support from those around me, in ways big and small, and for me to walk away from that and not pay it forward would be unfortunate. And ungrateful of me. I have been cradled at times I needed it most so that I could pick myself up again and keep going. It is through these gestures of love and generosity that I have learned just how much we all need each other. The walls that we as people and societies build up between ourselves do us no service. They prevent us from realizing how connected we all really are. They justify the times when we consciously choose not to be good to each other, and prevent us from seeing the damage we do to all, when we damage one.

I like imagining what the last chapter of my autobiography will be like. My life is a collection of stories already, what will it be like then? I will be an old, opinionated, content, crotchedy woman surrounded by the people I love. I will sit on my porch with Vanessa, wearing moo-moo's with our obscenely colored hair, being as honest and blunt as I chose; because I will have overcome my irrational fear of expressing myself at the expense of others to the point where it is at the expense of myself. I will have a beautiful garden that all the neighborhood will come to help in, to learn in, and to be in community together. The lives of hundreds of people will be healthier, and lived with more intention because of my work with them. My daughter will be grown, happy, and healthy, living out her passions with as much love and support as I can give her and as she will take. Hatchets buried, I will be at peace with the things in my life that did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. I will have traveled to many places and experienced many cultures and ways of life. I will have been of service to the people that I encounter. I will have known love of every kind. I will live in among the trees, in harmony with the earth and all the living things around me. I will be a modern day Mrs. Piggle Wiggle with a wild streak. Life will be creative, and beautiful, and lived.

With my gifts, I will do what I can to live my values and heal my surroundings. With my gifts I will draw in love, I will give away love, I will feel it all around me. With my gifts, I will help people realize their own, help them choose the life they want, help them realize it. With my gifts, I will create change and harmony. With my gifts I will live, so that others may also live.

Credo Week, day two: What is good, right, true?

WHAT IS GOOD, RIGHT, TRUE?

What values and authorities do I respect and why?
Who do I consider a role model?
What examples do I follow?
Do I base my ethical choices on rules, culture, consequences or something else entirely?
Does human evil exist and if so how so?
How could I change the world to be a better place and what do I do already?
What do I believe about ultimate authority, God(s) and/or Goddess(es)?
Who has the power to decide the truth?

There is plenty in this world that is good, right, and true. Too many people try to define this for everyone else, yet cannot define what it means for themselves when they look within. Maybe this is because when we look within, we have to face the times when we have not chosen what is good, right, and true? I have a special admiration and respect for people who know beyond any doubt what their values are. Or have the courage to evaluate and change accordingly so that they are true to themselves in this moment. I value and respect people who have the courage to broadcast their values to a general public that has no obligation to be joyous or even respectful of those values. I may not agree with another's values, but the fact that they are strong enough in their belief is something I envy at times.

I value those walks of life that take into account their impact on the world around them. I value the kindness and decency of treating others as you'd like to be treated, and I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that what we put out into the universe comes back to us threefold. I respect people who have the mindfulness to be able to see through the exterior that people put up and realize that we are all struggling at times, that what we portray of ourselves on the outside is not the whole person we really are, and that can treat everyone with patience and gentleness. I struggle with this sometimes.

I think everyone is a role model. Not necessarily a good one though. Some people step up to the challenge and responsibility and live their lives as a role model, wearing their values on their sleeves and letting their actions speak for them. Others tend to ignore or not see the potential they have in affecting change, or hide from that responsibility, because it is a huge one to live up to. It requires us to be accountable for our choices and actions in life. It means being able to know and explain why we eat, live, act the way we do. It also means acknowledging and accepting the times when we did not do right by ourselves or others, learning from it, and then incorporating that lesson into who we are. Not everyone is conscious enough of themselves to do this. Who do I see as role models is my life? There are so many. The first three that come to mind are my daughter, for her endless ability to see the magic in life and remember what is good and important. My mother, for her strength she has for others. I have never seen someone sacrifice so much or be so steadfast in times of struggle as she has in my lifetime. She is also a role model to me because she has exhibited that when you sacrifice of yourself too much, that strength becomes a weakness, and through her, I have learned to care for myself. And St. Therese of Lisieux. Her dedication to being happy in order to help others be happy is inspiring. In her book she talks about making a point to feel love for another nun in the convent who she was least fond of, by way of smiling at her always and greeting her with love. I think if we all took time to be nicer to ourselves, those we love, and especially those we don't, the world be a lot more stable.

Does human evil exist? Maybe in the choices that we make. I don't believe that anyone is inherently evil. The idea of original sin is silly to me. We are all a product of our environment and as we grow older we become our own person, and make choices accordingly. We each have to power to make our lives as good, happy, hard, or evil as we choose. To a large extent I feel all of life is a choice for each of us. It is easier to leave ultimate authority to a Diety for some, but when it comes down to standing there deciding to help the person who has tripped in the middle of the street or walk away, I am the only person debating what to do inside of my head. At the end of the day, I may feel my choice aligned with my Great Spirit, or maybe it didn't and it is fuel to try more next time. Ultimate authority rests within ourselves, we choose to give it up to someone or something else, but we have the ability to take control of it. Diety, to me, serves as guidance and gentle support, not ruler and judge.

At the end of the day, truth is decided within me. I live my life based on my intuitions, and so far, the times I have listened to it, it hasn't failed me yet.