Happiness is what you say it is

OK, time for existentialism post grad level.

I heard a report in the last few days about how 3/4 of Americans don't like their jobs, even though they have a job and almost 7% of folks don't--much higher in rural areas and among minorities.

Gone, I suspect, are the days that were what they were for my parents' generation: having a job = happiness.

I was a full-time priest for over 30 years. For the first decade of that, I can't say that I 'loved' my job that much. I felt beset upon by the things that happened and the meaning those things drug after them. Then, in 1987 I think (though my linear time stuff is halting, as you probably already know) I went to The Making A Difference Workshop and learned that meaning is 'what we say it is' and that it is possible to 'be' in the face of what happens and what we say about it.

I know the first time I heard that kind of language I was perplexed and confused. But believe me on this (going back to a recent post about how life is 'empty and meaningless') stuff that happens doesn't 'mean' anything. It just happens and the happening of it is empty and meaningless. The "meaning" comes from WHAT WE SAY about WHAT HAPPENED, not from 'what happened' itself.

"Stuff happens": a baby is born, a war begins, someone visits the moon, a child dies in an accident, the stock market crashes, a war ends, an election is held, a marriage breaks up, someone gets AIDS, two people fall in love, the stock market rebounds, Congress passes a bill, you get cancer, your daughter gets married, you father becomes senile, you get a raise, a hurricane sweeps in off the south Atlantic, on and on.

Believe me on this: nothing about "what happened" had 'meaning' attached. It's just 'what happened'.

Then you and I talk about 'what happened' and weigh it down with 'meaningfulness' and then imagine the 'meaning' came from what happened and not what we said about it.

People hate their jobs and believe, totally believe, their jobs bring the hatefulness with them.

Instead, the jobs are just what they are--no meaning attached--and the transforming, liberating reality is that you and I get to 'say what they mean'.

Stuff happens and we talk about it and we believe what we have to say about what happened came from 'what happened'. NO! We made up the meaning.

Ponder, if you can, what a wondrous thing it is that we can 'name' the meaning of 'what happens' to us.

I'll leave you there. And, I'll be back.

Made my day....

N. is a dear lady who attends St. Peter's Episcopal Church here in Cheshire. She sometimes volunteers in the office and since I hang out there on Tuesdays I met her a couple of years ago.

Today I was in Stop and Shop--as I am most days, Bern and I are European in dinner, usually getting the ingredients on the day we intend to eat them--and N. tapped me on the shoulder.

She wanted to tell me that one of the last things she does each night is look to see if there's something new on "Under the Castor Oil Tree". She told me how much it meant to me and that she felt she knew Bern and our dog and when I miss a few days she worries if something is wrong in my life.

It made my day in a big way.

I've said before I'd probably write this blog is no one read it. And I would. It is a discipline I need as an 'almost retired' Episcopal priest. I am capable of whiling away vast quantities of time with no regrets. I average reading two books every three days--some 250 books a year. I'm perfectly happy to spend whole days reading.

I used to have a poster on my office wall when I was Rector of St. Paul's in New Haven that had a drawing of a comfortable looking chair on it and said, "Sometimes I sits and thinks...and sometimes, I just sits..." I'm capable of that with no guilt.

So writing the blog I would do just to give a modicum of order to my rather disorderly days. I've always been good at doing not much of anything--something I have brought to an art form since 2010!

So N.'s words spoke deeply to my heart. Even if I'm seemingly 'do-less' most of the time, what I create in this space makes a difference for N. That makes writing this more than just a way to put a little order into a rather disorderly way of living.

From time to time I take a look at the statistics on "Under the Castor Oil Tree". There are well over a thousand page views a month. Daily average is between 30 and 90. And Lord knows how many pages they read each time.

So, I promise to ponder the possibility that my musings here actually matter and make a difference to a lot more people than N. That ups the ante of these otherwise rather self-centered and random ponderings.

Thank you, N., you not only made my day but altered the occurring of this blog for me. Thanks so much....

headed for 'the home'

I had my annual physical yesterday. I've been with my primary care physician for 25 years, so he knows me very well. I'd lost six pounds in the month since I last saw him and that was cause for celebration and high fives! He knows I don't take well to nagging about my weight (or anything for that matter) so he resorts to gentle nudges and outlandish praise when I do something that actually contributes to my health and well-being.

It's my opinion that doctors giving physicals should have to wear one of those little gowns that tie in the back why doing the examination. That way it would be a level playing field with two people looking silly.

We did all the stuff you do in a physical except I talked him out of sticking his finger up my butt since I'd just seen my urologist less than a month ago. He doesn't like to stick his finger up my butt anymore than I like him to, so he was glad to pass on that. It's a good thing, too....

I went into one of the bathrooms to pee when I was leaving and couldn't for the life of me find the opening in my boxer shorts. I took off my pants again and discovered I had the boxers on backward! By avoiding butt probing, he didn't get to see that every day or so I do something that indicates 'the home' is in my future.

empty and meaningless

OK, just take a moment and ponder this: what if life is, in its essence, empty and meaningless.


Had enough time? Take a moment more.

So, what if, just like a possibility, life is, deep down, empty and meaningless?

If you haven't run screaming from your computer at this point, let me point out what a liberating thing that would be. What if one of my favorite bumper stickers--"SHIT HAPPENS"--is on target and correct?

Know what that means? It means that the 'meaning' of life doesn't exist in any way in the stuff that happens. Meaning--such as it is--doesn't come from the world or from the passage of time or from the events of life...'meaning' is what we say it is.

Can you begin to see how liberating that could be?

I used to be terrified of flying. One night, before I was to fly the next day, I was telling my friend, Tom, how scared I was already, knowing that in 15 hours I'd be getting on an airplane.

Tom asked, "what does it feel like?"

And I said, "I'm terrified, scared to death, horrified!!!"

And Tom said, calmly, "no, that's not what I mean. I mean, tell me about the actual feelings in your body, not what you call time."

So I went through the litany: tight butt, racing heart, dizziness, muscle tension. The whole thing.

And Tom said, calmly (as Tom said all things), "ok, why don't we call those feelings excitement?"

It was one of the biggest breakthroughs of my life. From that moment on, my feelings were transformed. They didn't 'change'--oh, no, whenever I get on a plane my butt is tight, my heart is racing and I'm a tad dizzy with tension in my muscles. All that has happened is that I came to understand that the 'meaning' about those feelings is mine to assign and name.

So, I name it "excitement" and I love to fly.

It is really liberating and transforming to realize that the 'meaning' of what happens comes, not from 'what happens' but from what we say about it.

"Meaning" comes from us and we are free to re-name it and embrace it differently in a way that makes a difference for the better.

So, you could either call it 'anger' or 'whimsy'. You could either call it 'envy' or 'appreciation'. You could either call it 'fear' or 'astonishment'. It IS what you name it.

Just something to ponder. That's all....

OK, enough about "Frozen"....

It's enough that every little girl in America knows all the words to "Let it Go". My granddaughters even have the arm and hand movements down!

First it was the Christian Fundamentalist Pastors who claimed it encouraged lesbianism in little girls!

After thinking long and hard about that accusation, it occurred to me that one of the last songs celebrates the love between two girls--but they're sisters, pastors! God, you guys spend to long looking for LGBT 'recruitment'. Lesbians and Gay Men have enough lesbians and gay men to choose from...they aren't 'recruiting' anybody!

Now a woman in Japan is divorcing her husband because (she says) "there is something not right about you as a human being"...because he didn't like Frozen. She saw it half-a-dozen times before nagging him into going with her and his comment was "it's an OK film, it just doesn't appeal to me." She moved back into her parents' house and started divorce proceedings....

Look, everybody calm down...deep breaths.

Let me let you in on something: It's a MOVIE, for God's sake.

And a kids movie at that....(though I did enjoy it a lot....)

Quit trying to make it more than that....Just enjoy the little girls singing "Let it Go" and let everything else go. OK?

Cat

OK, my favorite singer ever was Cat Stevens. I wore out a couple of his albums and was devastated when he converted to Islam, changed his name to Yusaf Islam and stopped recording. He disappeared into his life of prayer and devotion and left me deeply respecting his life choice and yet begrudging his leaving me.

Bern and I were watching the Thunder/Spurs game and she kept flipping back to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions because Cat Stevens was to be one of the inductees. Neither of us believed he would be there--Linda Ronstat wasn't, after all. But after Kiss was inducted (Josh's favorite band when he was a young child--Bern used to paint his face like their's) there was Art Garfunkle, of all people, introducing Cat Stevens.

Not only was he there, dressed as you expect middle-class Arabs to be--a coat, a collar-less shirt, a vest and comfortable pants--and he sang three songs.

I had almost forgotten how wondrous his music and lyrics were. The third, and last song was Peace Train. Amazing....

God (Allah) bless him in his new life. He, as a gray  haired man, can still sing the shit out of a song......

In full bloom

The Rhododendron around our house is in full bloom. We have three plants that hang around the edge of our deck and three in front of our front porch and one on the side yard that I transplanted from the deck area and is 12 feet high and about to collapse under the weight of the blooms.

Rhododendron, which my spell check underlines in red but won't give me an option to for spelling, is the state flower of West Virginia. Some call it Mountain Laural, but I prefer the long name.

In early May, when I was a kid, would load me in the car and we'd go Rhododendron looking the way people in New England go 'leafing' in the fall.

A thousand shades of green would be interrupted all across Peal Chestnut Mountain and down through the little towns along RT. 52 until we went up Elkhorn Mountain and back home.

Our Mountain Laural is pale purple, but back home there were pink and deep red variates as well. It was wondrous, all the color among the endless shades of green.

Green is a color with endless shades, if you ponder 'green' for a while.