The Art Of Being Happy
oy, how many years will it take to write this? according to aristotle, only when I have lived my whole life can I even determine if it was happy. thinking I will have to live a long ass time or have some really bitchen years to get there, really some truely remarkable morsels in this life so far, mostly the people I love, my family and few great friends but even all that only gets enjoyed in tiny tiny increments. why such a ration on joy? really annoying, anyway its like fucking, I dont know 6 or 7 years after I started this damn thing and I think I have like 5 pages tops but I have some good stuff to get down again so here goes;
first, the people who posted spam on this blog, you will die foot first into a wood chipper, then I will be happy, very happy, now I know why there is evil in the world, it is evil for me to feel that way but ya know, some people just need to be turned into fertilizer and soon, no?
any friken way.....12/06
So, I wanted to get down this perfect moment that I got to have once. this is the really interesting thing, it happened on the very worst day of my entire life, or the next, I don't remember so well, thats how bad it was.My Dad died.
I was 21.
However, I was a seasoned professional, my best friend was killed by a drunk driver when I was 11, I was supposed to be with him at the time, all very dark and all, but out of that, I ended up with the best friend I have to this day, however, I did not get a new dad out of this particular deal.
Thats important because to this day, like everyone else my dad died when I was an adult, off living in another state, payin' my own way in life, and many said, well thank god at least all the kids were grown. My sisters 6 and a half and 8 and a half years older than me were long married, kids, houses, lives, and most importantly a spouse, someone to be there through thick and thin and man was this thin. I had a fiance at the time, but she turned out to be an evil selfish bitch, but at least for the required time she pretended to care, but after three months, she was really tired of it and wanted me to just get over it. I really can only thank her for having sex with me the day I got home. I really didnt understand why I needed that so bad til I saw high fidelity, when her dad dies and they get back together because she just wants to feel ANYTHING else but this. point being, I knew a guy once who lost his dad when he was 17 and to this day people look at him with some reverence, they realize that all the great success he has achieved has been an uphill battle, a real fuckfest, mom there just hangin on, trying to do her best, no dad. but for me, I should be fine, only good thing I guess is that even though I wish I had done a better job with my kids so far, I know that they really need me so much more after they are 21 than before.
Oh yea, perfect moment, super high concentration of happiness, right up there with the first time I kissed my wife, held my newborn son, like that. (if you have no idea what I am talking about, you are either very young, or fucked.)
It was at the morticians shop, luckily thats all they did, no takahashi's bate shop and sushi bar, yikes. There was some guy there, salesman really but highly trained in the somber arts, hats off to him, selling shit like that for a living? man, thats tough, how do you do that with integrity every single time? people need you, thats for sure, people dyin all over the place every day, they need a box, a big box, a small box, a big fire, a big hole and someone to never fuck up and say the wrong thing. Well, he did, but it was the RIGHT thing, it was the funniest, happiest moment of my life. At dads request, He would be cremated. Hard part was that dad was a quarter Norwegian and therefore stubborn as a mule, and was very clear about not 'wasting' money on dealing with his death, kinda like my teenage son who doesn't want his picture taken because HE doesn't like how he looks, der! not for you captain brainjob!
But I digress.... so we already know how its going down, burn the body, good and plenty, dump it in a cardboard box, then save all the expense for uncle sam, he owes us and he sure as hell owes my dad, 6000 hours in front of a navagators radar in a c-130 might have had something to do with his current condition. His wish was to simply be chucked out the door of said c-130 the next time his squadron flew over the magnetic north pole so he could 'rest in peace' well, in some fucking peace, I would imagine.
Great exit dad, wish I could come up with one so clever, but my work isn't so glamorous. So he was the dude that figured out how to accurately do this in the first place, fly, on purpose over the magnetic north pole. Sounds easy enough, every compass points to it, er, until you are pretty close to 'there' then it gets messy, then your compass looks more like a hughey bookin ass out of Saigon under fire, not your best guide to the great white north, so first you need to know where the hell you are, degrees, minutes, seconds, etc.. then you need to know what the stars look like there and exactly what time it is, and um, you have to know trig like you know when your moms pissed at you, your hair needs to stand on end when you get close to the right answer.
He was like, really really good at that, best in the world til he went and died on us then a good buddy of his was #1, wish I knew that guy, must have been a great friend, mom had turned him into a blubbering 4 year old who had lost his ice cream cone in the sewer earlier that day, or the day before, dont remember, thats how bad it was... by telling him that he was now #1, thats all she had to say. Dad often said "Joe Schmo, a good friend of mine, is the second best navigator in the world but modesty forbids me from saying who it the best"
He was funny like that, always the straight man but always way way the hell off of center, people would say, how ya doin?, bout half he'd say, always got a furrowed brow out of the other person, perplexed as shit with anything other than fine. Christmas was off the charts, no lard ass picachu santa on the roof or nothin, but man was he into it, he would tell us all to line up alphabetically according to height, then he would plug the lights to the tree in, the tree being just out of sight, oh god I am ryming, thats just how powerful it was. Then he would look in awe at what he had created and say 'ooooooh boy!, oooooooooooh boooooyeeee'. Just then like the whitest slow motion Michael Jackson, he would pick up one leg, knee bend and shake his whole body so that the elevated foot would sway left and right, hands up, fingers snapping. We, dreary eyed and having seen this dozens of times before stood tired yet in awe of his enthusiasm until he released us from our imprisonment to garner our presents and cup o swiss mocha in my moms case. Then and only then did things get somewhat normal.
So back to the great moment, here we are, all of us, thinking about our dad, gone, in this little room, with a salesman, there to do his best not to make the worst day of our lives worse but still make a buck and make his boss happy. he started rattling off options, casket, no, cremation we interupted, ok, well we have a large collection of beautifu....no, John insisted on the free cardboard box, yes, brigader general phd eagle scout john carl stafford wanted to go out in a cardboard box, now THAT is cheap! um, ok the salesman says, clinging to his last bit of something, he rightly did not assume that there would be no service so at the appointed hour of my fathers departure in the mannor of his wishes, the salesman says, we can arrange for a motorcycle police escort....
the laughter could be heard from a block away I am sure, and we hushed each other as we were brought to tears from laughing so hard it hurt my abs, at the look on the salesmans face, the fear that there were other people greiving here, somewhere in another room, forgetting completely that we were too... all of us picturing a slew of harleys with cops on them, driving right out the back of a c-130 over the magnetic north pole, chasing a cardboard box with my dad in it.
for everything else, there's mastercard.
Here goes, like I am one to talk, do I know how to “be” happy, well yes, that is why I am writing this. Am I happy?, well no, that is why I am writing this. This is for me, I am being selfish here, but that’s ok that’s rule number one, be selfish.
Selfishness.
Yep, be selfish. Sounds easy doesn’t it, just think about your needs and no one else’s, how simple. It isn’t simple. This is the very core of happiness. You are, at about this time, saying to yourself, um like duh, what a waste of words here man. I understand. These concepts are terribly simple. However, actually living them, is nearly impossible. So I am here to write this down so that I can look back and follow my own “rules” if you will. If you are not me and you are reading this, cool, good for you, I hope you glean something of what I am getting at here.
So back to selfishness. Was Hitler selfish?, Bill Gates?, No. Mother Theresa: Nobel Prize for enlightened selfishness. She had It goin on. You don’t believe me do you? Well its this simple, don’t you admire her? Wouldn’t you like to be her, or attempt to be such a person, well guess what SHE GOT TO DO IT! Can you imagine something as huge and monolithic and old as the Catholic church tapping their toe and going hmm well, we are going to have to wait a good long while to stick with the rules but this guy is going to have to be made a saint, for all time, people for god knows how long, putting St. Joe bob down in honor of what a cool mother fucker you were, sorry I just doesn’t get any more selfish than that. Do you see how that is MORE selfish than taking the last piece of candy? Not so simple afterall , is it?
Ok so you aren’t quite up to healing the lepers but you can handle drinking a beer while watching baseball. So, hmm, um well if you actually sort of like drinking beer and watching baseball I probably cant help you, beer part is fine, but the visual of the nasty ass chair you must have is scaring me and nothing is more pointless than baseball, well that’s not true there is always politics and raking leaves in the fall but other than those baseball is pointless. At least for me. So you find you own damn way out of that, this is the advanced class or whatever.
What-EVER.
Yep, Rule number two is whatever. That is the answer to everything.
However, I am not done with selfishness, just don’t let me forget to get back to whatever ok? So for those of you beyond baseball, um football, and Bowling, god I hate bowling too, anyway if you are past those or are willing to suspend your attachment to their importance for a moment, read on.
So how do you, over baseball but under Mother Theresa get selfish? Listen. Listen to yourself, and I don’t mean like chant and burn scented candles listen to yourself I mean, you know that voice, the little fucker that wont shut up in your head. Stop, I said listen to him, don’t act on everything he says, he will say things like “go bag that incredible, all that and a bag of chips in the skirt” from time to time, but that’s not even him talking ( sorry ladies, please use “ dude with the unbelieveable ass in those to die for silk slacks with that accent that could melt lead” ). Anyway you know the voice, but sometimes he knows his shit, just listen. Now the other dude, the one with the halo, the little cute white wings-n-shit, send him for take out for a sec. This is the guy who has ruined your life. He is the altruist the goody goody the sensitive ‘90s guy who digs Cher. He has to go, nothing against Cher but you know what I mean.
The little red guy, once in a while will say, yo, dude, just fucking go for it. This is the hard part, the consequences of listening to this simple advice is: lose your job, house, car, cat, wife, girlfriend, mind, etc… AND possibly, possibly gain something you wouldn’t recognize now – happiness. “Let go, Luke….” Couldn’t have said it better myself, funny thing is if you let go, if you risk losing all that, you probably wont, you will probably have more of all of the above. Don’t let anyone change your mind about this. Don’t get sucked into being miserable. If it doesn’t make you feel good why are you doing it? Hold on here, I don’t mean for you to quit your job the second it doesn’t make you feel good, give the thing a good sampling, does the pay or benefits allow you to feel good or more, way more importantly, does it make you feel good most of the time. If it always makes you feel like shit, you need to move on.
Some advice about work. Money only sucks if you don’t have it. Not having money is the root of all evil. The guy who said money CAN’T buy happiness doesn’t know where to shop. Lets get real here the guy who disagrees with this isn’t poor and hasn’t ever been poor. You need to get paid for what you do. The starving artist may be a great artist but not a great man. Chances are, no that isn’t a good way to put it, lets say this, If you LOVE doing something, and learn to do it well, you will be paid well for it one way or another. It took me YEARS to learn this. You need to forget about money to make money. If you are totally nuts about anything, you can be filthy rich, if you are a boring hick who doesn’t give a shit about much but that hogie sandwich then you will be poor but hey hogies are cheap, so no worries eh mate?
You need money to be happy, sorry that’s the truth and I wont candy ass sugar cote it for you. You do not need a Ferrari, you do not need a 20,000 square foot house either. What you need is power. Not musillini power, but power none the less. You need to be able to whip out that fat wallet on a moments notice and pay pay pay. 90% of the time you will spend very little if you are already happy. Ironically it is, in fact, the simple things in life that bring happiness, a cheap ass rolled up pair of dockers and a loose white cotton shirt half unbuttoned chillin in a perfectly proportioned aderondak chair with a beer in one hand and someone who “gets” who you sitting next to you on a simple uninhabited beach, on an average day just sitting there – being. What I have just described will cost you no more than $423.42 on the surface, but the cash cost of having that moment is astounding. Its what it costs to not be in a mall in ohio on Sunday just before Christmas with $50 left on your visa left to get your mother in law a perfect gift that she will throw away anyway. It costs BANK to have that moment and it is worth every penny.
I think I may have more thoughts on selfishness, and certainly whatever, but for some reason I want to keep moving forward.
Meaning
People keep seeking meaning, the ‘60s were fraught with this behavior, constantly trying to do something meaningful. Its so strange to look back on days like that I can only see children, everyone who has come before is somehow younger, and in a way they really are, the world I KNOW is older than the one that is theirs, its like we own that which is real the moment we become grown, that that is our world, it has officially been handed down. So what does this have to do with happiness? Simple, false gods, we seek happiness in that which appears to somehow cause those around us to be happy, “ I gave up my brilliant career in advertising to dedicate myself to the suffering needy in Bangladesh” these are the people you must run from, the are not genuine, those who are genuine never speak of deeds that they might deem altruistic, they are almost embarrassed that they have lost their way and succumbed to giving of themselves in such an obvious way. This is a good habit to have, never be proud of that which you have given, never speak of it, it merely shows that you mean to illicit the praise of others, very base.
Those who annoy you will teach you more than those who love you, those who love you will never annoy you, you will see through anything they do, as the actions of someone who really knows all of you and loves every piece. Why does the love of another person matter, I tend to disagree with pop psychology on this, not being loved is a sign of not being a good person, which is necessary for happiness, its not that you have to be loved by others to be happy, but that you have to be loveable. You know damn well all of you, what it takes to be loveable, cut the shit. You cannot complain, you must either change or be happy, when in a state of change you are approaching happiness, and are thus in no place to complain. When you complain you do not wish to be happy and I have no sympathy for you.
Now back to What-ever
This is where you need the sound effects or at least the sound, of my brother Christopher, saying What – ever, the intonation and inflection in one small moment conveys the entire theory perfectly, he taught me this by simply saying what – ever, properly, many times. For you I will have to explain.
Its far more complicated than the response to things you must simply just let go of even though they do matter, wait, no it is exactly that so I guess its totally fucking simple again just like “be selfish”, I really have to work on this shit or it will never get published, like I need to just tell you that you need to hold a cherry in one hand while signing your own tune about termites in order to be happy, and if I am wearing a saffron robe and sound soothing and have a pink rolls Royce you will follow my lead. But I am just not cut out like that.
So, what – ever, if you were born between 1968 and 1974 just skip this, you know exactly what I mean, and if not, where the hell have you been?! You see we lived through the darkest part of the cold war, for the span of our entire childhood clear till we were in our twenties there was at least one bomber in the air 24/7/365 with nuclear “ordinace” to be “delivered” upon the “enemy” at a moments notice. And like the good little enemy that they were they were all jacked to blow their wad too. My entire young life was lived on a 45min countdown that was reset every minute, I always had 45min left to live before surely the bomb would drop.
NOW all of you who lived through the Cuban missle crisis think you can relate, you cant, by the time I entered high school there was enough of this shit to make the earth a shinny eight ball 7 TIMES OVER who the hell approved this shit? If that wasn’t bad enough that money came out of health care and schools, that’s right we would rather be dumb or dead than communist.
So our answer to what no child could cope with, you guess it :
WHAT – Fucking – EVER!
Once applied to “global thermonuclear war” we found it worked on everything including the famine in Ethiopia, not that we didn’t care but if I cant do jack shit about it, plug in the whatever and let go of the stress, there’s way more to worry about in today’s world than one kid can handle.
Dress like Jesus but don’t put his name on your bumper…
Let me be straight with you right up front, I don’t believe in organized religion, there, that’s my best shot at saying that I agree with Karl on the original economic sin thing. If you go to a church that’s your business, if you do so because thinking for yourself is just too damn tiring and confusing, then give up on happiness, that deer in car headlights thing you call happiness is IDENTICAL to the happiness claimed by heroin addicts and you both need another program with fewer steps before you are ready for this.
Ok so your boss is a Jewish carpenter, I am offended by this on many levels, most of all that someone whom I have to share oxygen, freeway space and other precious scarce resources with thought this up and got paid for it. I want you to really imagine the real human Jesus right now, the long haired bearded dude in sandals and a robe, true that describes everyone in his era and times are different but really transport him here and show him your bumper sticker, imagine the sad shame in his eyes as he tries – ever being himself – to say something nice. He never said please stop thinking. And just to add my thinking on the subject as if anyone cared, he was just some guy and that’s ok. Why does someone have to be deified to say something reasonable? Sidartha had the same bum rap couldn’t leave well enough alone and say some royal run – away had a thought and “ hey here’s an idea try this to get some happy…” no it was a very good idea and therefore he must have been a god we will call him Buddha and that will make it ok for us to not continue to think but just fuck with his ideas and put our heads down and act like sheep. Although I am sorry but the Buddists are way out in front of the J/C/I faiths on thinking for themselves, at least they aren’t apposed to comfortable clothing, this is a sure sign of higher brain functioning, that and the love of chocolate - another chapter altogether.
The Ever Present Shit Storm
If you’re like me, you have spent more of your life enduring the shit storm than not, I don’t have a total answer for this, when being plagued by said storm it is very very hard to feel happy at all, in fact, its very hard to choose to keep living. When you start to feel like the whole world is working against your humble needs and the more beaten down you get the more they hit you, well, you are entirely right and worse yet it really isn’t your fault and worse yet even still, no one is going to help you out of it, and nothing miraculous is going to happen to make it better tomorrow, if you are very lucky 8 weeks from tomorrow will just plain suck and you will only appreciate it for its lack of shit stormedness.
Really pumping sunshine up your skirt now aren’t I? Well right now I am in the middle of one of those storms bad shit just keeps getting worse by the second and it just wont let up, so I figure if I can get the part out that you can relate to surely I will come up with the answer by the time I finish, but I haven’t, I am depressed and very unhappy at its all because I haven’t followed any of my own rules and now I am paying for it, so I will close and when I read this again I will remember how I got out of this mess and back to happy and fill you in.
