Tag: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning Clean My Closets Fight Right Read Aristotle and Generally Have More Fun

Beauty and Happiness

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself “-Thich Nhat Hanh

I saw this phrase the other day and it really struck a chord in me about my happiness project. One of my basic things to remember during January and February is to “Be Authentic”. The problem with that, being authentic for me isn’t knowing who I am. Many people struggle with their personal definition, goals, passions etc. That is something I have securely in my brain; my issue is execution. I spend so much of my life trying to do for others, which is a huge part of who I truly am, but often it’s seeking acceptance or worse yet, approval.
As children, we are all afflicted with the need and desire to please and be accepted by our parents. We want them to be proud of us, to appreciate us. and give us praise. Because I spend so much time, energy, and often money doing everything I can and then some for others, I seek that approval from more or less, everyone.
How does this relate to beauty, you ask? Well, it relates in that approval and acceptance are relevant to every part of ourselves. If someone tells you over and over again that you’re an amazing athlete, you often FEEL like an amazing athlete. If you hear that you’re beautiful constantly, even if you don’t see yourself as beautiful, you nevertheless carry yourself with more confidence. But at the same time, seeking praise from outside sources makes you feel good only temporarily. And if you’re in a profession that relies on the praise of others or on physical beauty, you’re often more stressed out, overly concerned with vanity and generally exude the feelings of unrest, strife and unhappiness.


Unhappiness is like a perfume, the more you feel it, the more others can “smell” it on you. You may be cool, calm, and collected…. but you reek of misery. That’s where this quote comes in: You have to be accepting of yourself, without the acceptance of others. That is true, inner beauty.  Look at Mother Theresa. Outwardly, she wasn’t the most physically beautiful person on the planet, however, she had the most beautiful heart. So much so that she’s now a Saint. She gave everything to saving others, and to me, that’s amazingly beautiful. I’d also venture to say that she didn’t do it for outside praise, but because she had an internal driving force compelling her. I’m sure she’d have said it was god, and that’s because of her faith, but spirituality aside, it was an internal compelling force that propelled her to help others until the last moments of her life.

It occurred to me also the other day that people who seek outside validation and acceptance are often very poor role models for young people. The catalyst to this idea happened at a basketball game. I was commenting that the “cheerleader” women should find other jobs and those types of jobs, where women are bumping and grinding as entertainment during sporting events, should be eliminated. As a savvy observer and media consumer, I find it offensive that these archaic symbols of “entertainment” are still commonplace in so many subtle areas, as in all professional sports. Men like to say that they don’t even notice them or care that they’re there, but I know that’s not always true. However, these women are examples of the unattainable “ideal” of what women should look like, move like, dress like and work like… yes, they’re dancers and it’s a physically demanding job, they donate loads of their time and energy to causes, charities and the like, but at what cost to future generations? Young girls look up to these women and want to be like them… tall, thin, tan, nipped and tucked, with flowing, Caucasian hair, no physical flaws…. while at the same time, wearing close to underwear and go-go boots or knee high stilettos, rooting for the home team. That seems like a very complex contradiction to me.
It was pointed out to me that many of these cheerleaders have day jobs, like teachers and nurses. This not only confuses me a whole lot, because during the day, these ladies are sophisticated professionals and at night they’re undulating in their skivvies? There’s got to be some sort of disconnect with them.
Which leads me back to my point. “Be Authentic”. Accept yourself in everything you are, in everything you do, unconditionally. Be you. Waver for no one. I’m learning this, slowly but surely. Those that are still standing with you at the end are the ones that accept you for you also.

And that my friends, is happiness and true beauty.

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My name is [Blank], and my desk is a disaster…

If only there were some sort of magic wand that I could wave and this mess would just be organized. So, as ashamed of my dirty little secret as I am, I think acknowledging it is the first step to recovery. This picture is my area of the office that I share with my honey. His desk: generally clean… a few bits of paper, a pen or two, a stack of CDs and a few receipts from whatever, are the only things on it besides his computer. As you can see from the image here, mine is exactly the opposite. There’s nothing that will fit, that isn’t on this desk. There’s all the stuff from the trunk of my totaled car that’s been here for months (car was wrecked in November), school books, notebooks, papers, bags that I can’t manage to toss, cups and more cups, likely a plate or two (since I eat at my desk more times than not), clothes… you name it. I’ve got it in my little corner. It’s truly a sad state of affairs and I hate it.

However, in my defense, I am extraordinarily busy most of the time and just put things down only to either forget about them, set something else there or just procrastinate until it’s this heap of clutter. Hell, there’s even a book on, get this, ORGANIZATION, on this desk. Between the Buddha and the yoga mat. Sad, I know.

I’ve put this month’s goals into focus in the last few days and I realized that I’ve been really trying (and not doing so well) at tackling my 15 minutes of miracles. Really, those have been lacking and I think I need a new perspective. But given my busy schedule now that I’m back in school, ug… I’ve got to do something about this bloody desk. Even my backpack looks like this inside and I’ve been saying that I’m going to clean it out, but I’ve not found the time. I always manage to find something more important than dumping out the contents of my satchel (which, are a mighty lot of contents), mainly wrappers, receipts and schoolwork, to sort through the stuff I’m hoarding (yes, I said it) and stuff I actually need.

The rest of our home is quite tidy and minimalist, for the most part… I’ve got issues with where to put dirty laundry since we’re severely lacking in storage space and where I’ve decided my clothes can go is less than functional… but that’s another story altogether. Our home is not bare, it’s well furnished, but we just don’t have a lot of clutter to speak of. Just my desk and it makes me not only crazy, but it also makes me feel guilty. As I mentioned before… it’s my dirty little secret.

Anyway, I’ve decided to not focus so hard on the miracles that aren’t happening, but rather to tame the chaos. See, as I’ve also mentioned before, outside chaos is inside chaos. This is one of those little things I picked up along the way and it’s really stuck with me and proven to be absolutely right. Not just in the sense of clutter around the house, but also that in life. For instance, trouble in relationships or at work lead to great feelings of failure, unhappiness, hopelessness, helplessness and ultimately, chaos. So, in my mind if I tackle these sources of chaos, there will be less chaos around me, literally and figuratively. Today is Thursday, therefore, Saturday morning… my mission: Clean my freaking desk.

What other sources of chaos are around? Please add your comments or share your thoughts about clutter and chaos. Thanks for reading!

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15 Minutes is a LONG time

When I originally set my goals for this and next month, it was my thinking that I can do just about anything for fifteen minutes. It’s not THAT long, but it’s long enough to get something accomplished, right? Wrong! When you set a timer and actually MAKE yourself do something for a predetermined amount of time, it’s incredibly long.

For instance, fifteen minutes of watching television; easy. Fifteen minutes of scrubbing the grout; hard. Fifteen minutes of talking with your honey without distractions of pets and television; pretty easy. Fifteen minutes of cleaning out the cat box or giving the dog a bath or dusting the electronics; hard. Now, most of these things are not hard in the traditional sense, like scrubbing grout, but they’re a special kind of hard. They are the hard that while you know it needs to be done, finding the motivation to do it is terribly hard to come by. Even things you WANT to do, like find your missing whatever, take a walk around the block on a sunny day, do yoga… when you add into the mix a lack of motivation (either because of being tired or just not really into that particular thing at that moment), I think that the task is doomed. This is where I’m at. Doomed.

I say doomed in a lighthearted, not “really” doomed, kind of way. But doing the task is unlikely to happen. I think that it’s this reason many resolutions fail shortly after the new year. People are tired, busy, stressed out and generally pulled in many directions… so much so that finding the drive to complete even necessary tasks, like doing the dishes, is potentially an overwhelming burden. I can only imagine what adding children to that stew would be like. I can see it from the “pet perspective” clear as day, however. So, my point is this… motivation is the key to getting anything done, even the stuff you want to do. Now, if I could find some of that stuff lying around, I’d be golden in getting to my goals this month.

Fifteen minutes is a long time….

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I can’t live that way

I was at work the other day and I heard a song that I’ve heard a million times, but for some reason, THIS time I actually heard the lyrics. How often is it that we hear things that we’ve heard time and again, yet we have know idea what it says or means? I can sing almost every song on a particular station, but ask me to recall the actual words, forget it. But I digress.

Unwritten

The part of the song that struck a chord in me is as follows:

“I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines
We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can’t live that way”

I know that this sentiment goes back to my previous post the other day, but I feel like I understood those words for the very first time when I was singing along while working away. I have to say it was one of those “ah ha!” kind of moments that people are so frequently talking about, as if a light bulb just switched on. I say this because I’ve always considered myself non-traditional. For many years, that was one of the ways I described myself to other people, as if it were my own personal adjective. However, the rest of the song is equally profound when I really listened to it.

This is the chorus:

“Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inner visions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins”

If this isn’t a true example of living in the moment and experiencing awareness in this and every moment, I don’t know what is. The implications are vast and far reaching, but the meaning is so very simple. You have to live your life, on your terms, NOW.

I often feel guilty. I’m not sure why I’m riddled with this feeling even if it’s completely misplaced, but I do. I feel guilty for close to everything. I take blame for things I’ve got nothing to do with on a fairly regular basis and it’s maddening, I assure you. But part of my project is to rid myself of these feelings of guilt that are not mine for the taking, but that’s later. Anyway, I mention this because I feel guilty for wanting to live my life my way. I give good “face” and act like it doesn’t bother me, that I’m not an incredibly sensitive person when it comes to how others view me and that I’m just this person who doesn’t care one bit about “conforming”. I wish that I WAS the person, but things effect me very profoundly most of the time. I give off the vibe like it doesn’t bother me in hopes that someday, things like that won’t bother me. Which brings me to the core of my revelation: I am myself. Nobody else on this Earth, in this or any other Universe has the same thoughts, feelings, experiences or any other thing as me, in this combination. I’m 100% unique, except for some DNA coding, but that’s a bit too technical for this post… I am me. What a striking concept to figure out at almost 31 years old. I knew all of these things and many more for my whole life, but when I was the weird kid, the tall kid, the awkward kid; I was trying to conform. But once I embraced the idea that I’m ME, I felt more comfortable in my own skin.

I still struggle with being myself all the time, mainly because I’ve got intense pressures from outside sources to be something less than me, but my overriding principle for the start of my happiness quest is first and foremost to be AUTHENTIC. I cannot find true, lasting happiness if I’m not ME first. I’ll be chasing nothing more than a pipe dream if I cannot first accept myself, exactly as I am. And that’s also a core principle for Jodo Shinshu. The Buddha’s teachings are for everyone, just as they are. I finally understand that with stark clarity. Wow.

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Efforts in futility

I first want to begin by saying, I am not an animal hoarder. I say this because my honey and I each had two dogs and then we moved in together, which brings us to four dogs. Granted, two of them are Chihuahuas, there are still four of them. A few months ago I then had the bright idea that I missed having a cat, since my former cat was struck down by a car one night in front of my old house. It took me several years to come to terms with that and move on to wanting to bring a feline friend into our home.

This brings me to my topic this fine Phoenix morning. Futility. As I’m 100% sure parents of small children and others with packs of animals can attest, there are daily reminders in our lives that our efforts sometimes, are futile. Point in case: as one can imagine with four dogs of various ages and sizes… ranging from 10 years old and 65 pounds to 4 years old and a whopping 7 pounds… there’s politics. Especially when they’re all boys, save for the big, old Mama dog, all of our pets are boys. All but one of them are neutered (and that will be remedied in the near future), yet there’s still this godawful instinct to show dominance in the form of urine. I cannot explain this behavior, I’ve tried. We have literally tried everything short of outdoor quarantine, diapers or making a frantic phone call to that blasted Caesar Milan.

Parents that I know agree that cleaning up after young children is similar to cleaning up after dogs. JUST as you manage to pick up the last Lego, your little bundle of energy manages to have dragged out their Play-Doh or watercolors and has already made a mess. That’s kind of how I feel as I’m mopping in true OCD fashion at 5:30 in the morning. I’m sorry, but there’s something absolutely wretched about stepping in any liquid with socks on, let alone pee. Just saying. Add in a 6 month old kitten to this manic cleaning, and it’s a recipe for disaster. It takes an incredible amount of willpower to not smack the cat with a wet mop every time he crosses over the spot that I JUST CLEANED in an attempt to attack said mop, especially when my honey is blissfully in dream land in the next room. We live in a small house and noise travels pretty readily.

So as I’m furiously mopping the floor (shout out to Nature’s Miracle, Clorox, and my new string mop), there are dogs strewn about the floor and furniture and I’m just going around them in a feverish attempt to “just get the big areas” so that I can focus on getting ready for work, and here comes the cat. He’s stalking the mop, behind the leg of the coffee table… then pounces! Behind the leg of the bar…. then pounces! Behind the stove… then pounces! All the while tracking dirt through my freshly cleaned (though panickedly so) floors. This my friends, is futility.

A good friend of mine, rest his soul, years ago was talking about when he first came to Buddhism. It was after he was hired as a security official to protect a monastery in the western outskirts of Phoenix where there was a horribly tragic rampage where several monks lost their lives. He was raised Baptist and was Agnostic at best at this time in his life, but found something in this temple that brought him to the Dharma. He began attending this particular temple after his duties as security were over. One day he was raking the rock garden there and every time he raked the whole garden, there were still more leaves where he’d just raked. He went to the leaves and raked them up. Then there were still more leaves. He raked those. And more. Rake. And yet more. Rake. One of the monks came by as he was feverishly raking for at least the fifth time and in a fit of frustration he asked the monk what to do about the leaves. The monk replied, “The tree has leaves. They will fall. This is karma.” My friend: “What do leaves have to do with my karma?” Monk: “Maybe it’s not just your karma.” My friend took a moment to contemplate that statement and then put the rake away.

Futility. There will always be leaves. Do your best and move on. Breathe.

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