Happy Occasions

Happy Occasions:

I have written a musing on happiness earlier. But here I attempt to identify the happiest times in my life. I think I'll skip the unhappiest since we fortunately tend to shove these experiences deep in our psyche. I think I'll leave them there.

It would be difficult to rank from the happiest down in any kind of accurate order, so I will go chronologically.

Pets have always meant a lot to me. And I have had a lot of pets right up to now. Making a pet happy makes me happy. But pets die too soon.

Sports have always been mostly happy adventures for me, especially the sandlot games in childhood. If arguing can be titled happiness sometimes, then those sandlot games were happy times. Setting the local crosscountry track record was high on the happiness level (relatively new course so not an earth shattering record) but it came so suddenly (the first time I finished a race) and I still remember the kids in my homeroom class, upon hearing this over the loudspeaker, turning around and staring in disbelief. The jocks in the school began to speak to me, that was cool.

Winning the neighborhood Morningside Olympics was a happy thing, although it was structured so the achievement was more luck and manipulation than any real athletic accomplishment. Going to country and western shows were real happy events for me. So was the time later on when I, along with a boyhood friend, promoted our own country and western show, and I met the Louvin Brothers in person. My dad was wrong about the need for a Brinks truck to haul the money away. We actually lost a little money.

I was ecstatic about receiving a major scholarship to the college of my first choice. It was my high school track coach that really convinced them to give it to me. A lot of good things one owes to others.

Being appointed the senior Biology Department Assistant in undergraduate school was up there as a happy moment. I wasn't the best biology student by far, so this too came out of nowhere. So much in life is luck and dependent on others that it's hard to be serious about any "I earned it" mentality.

Being a track and crosscountry coach was a happy and challenging experience. Myself and a lot of students accomplished a lot in a short time, and I think we all remember that in highly positive terms. I got fired for all the turmoil generated from the efforts, but it was not tragedy at all as it forced me to go back to school and get a doctorate in physiology. I learned never to take a job where you are not allowed to do your job your way. For most jobs this is not possible so I lucked out again.

I was allowed to do my doctoral thesis while teaching at another university. This is rather unheard of in science, and once again I don't know why the Chairperson of Physiology let me do such a thing. I think sometimes a person gives you some slack if you are a bit off the wall in a good sort of way. Earlier, when getting my Master's in that department, I refused to put down a particular dog (for experimental purposes) being kept up in animal care by my advisor. I stole the dog out of animal care and kept him in in the Graduate Assistants Office complex. I threatened to go to the Humane Society if anybody touched that dog. The dog tore up the Graduate Assistant Office during a violent thunderstorm. I still remember so well the Chairperson of the Department calling me in and telling me "There is a rumor someone is keeping a dog in the Assistants Office. I would like you to investigate this and hopefully within a month you can report back that there is no dog being housed there". The dog and I made a crosscountry train trip back to my parents and they got the dog as a surprise. Some surprise, but they grew to love the dog too. The point is I sense the Chairperson let me do my Ph.D. thesis off campus because of the dog thing. My guess is he liked dogs and admired what I did. My advisor did not like it at all.

I guess being elected by students as teacher of the Year at every place I taught was up there in my happiest moments. But it was also embarrassing. I was not the smartest teacher, not the best lecturer, not the most organized, not an easy grader, and not very sociable in the normal sense. I think my talent was in getting students to try exceptionally hard to pass, some sort of ability to endlessly make a mountain out of a mole hill. I also took serious a high school teacher who lectured constantly about FANAFI---Find a Need and Fill It----as a life mantra. In teaching there are endless needs of students in a zillion different ways. Life is full of trade-offs. Never once did I ever get chosen by administrators for teaching awards which came with monetary rewards. Well, they say you can't please everyone. I think it is better to serve the needs of those under your supervision than the needs of those above you. I recently established a FANAFI Fund in memory of that high school teacher to distribute some of my money over time to worthy causes. This makes me happy.

Genuinely falling in love is no small feat for someone of my personality and plain looks.. So that has to be at the top of my happiness list. Unfortunately love is not something that can occur in a social vacuum and it was not destined to last, primarily because I was not strong enough to make it last. To let down someone you really love is a character deficiency of major sorts. Love for me became the Best of all possible worlds and the Worst of all possible worlds. For some failures one has no right or ability to forgive oneself. I guess it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. God's created evolutionary process gives no real evidence of being centered around any particular species, let alone any individual of a species, and so we really are 'our brother's keeper' if the less fortunate are to have a better life. Praying is not the mode to bring more justice to human lives.

Meaningful social friendships bring happiness. My own personality does not mix well with non meaningful social banter. If I am not going to see someone again, or very often, I have difficulty being genuinely interested in knowing much about them or telling them much about me. Somehow it seems mostly irrelevant. Others thrive on this kind of thing. Thus, my happiest encounters are not social groups of any sort. One could count on one hand how many groups I have ever joined. Not good or bad, just the way I am. This is not to say I have had little contact with all sorts of people. It is just the opposite. My students in class became an intimate group to me almost immediately. They became like my family for the semester or year, whatever the case. People that worked for me became like family. Outside of my parents and a select group of formative years neighborhood friends, family to me is always those with whom I interact with at any given moment in my life. That worked out well for me-----I do what I can, they do what they can, and then we all move on, like ships passing in the night. STILL, these kind of interactions, albeit temporary had a big impact on me as a person, and I would hope had an impact on these other people. I doubt most of them will ever forget me or me them. People build people, they really do. Those whose whole life is a close family unit, to me, have reduced the quality of their life, and by limiting their meaningful interactions to a few genetic relations, will never develop any true appreciation of diversity. If one cannot truly appreciate diversity one cannot be a happy contented person. Some sort of US vs THEM will invariably develop. The only long term group interaction I can be proud of is the 'gang' of my youth. We continued to get together every year for over 50 years, and managed somehow to have meaningful interactions over those years. Distance and time have changed the dynamics of the group and the same kind of interaction in our current lives has diminished, but a few of them are going as strong as ever. One has to admire that. Anyway, special friendships, mostly transient, have brought a good deal of happiness and contentment to my own life.

Retirement is right up there as a happy moment. One definitely feels "Free at Last". A lot of contentment for me revolves around being able to understand the many aspects of life. To understand these matters one has to read a lot, observe a lot, ponder a lot, and in my case----write down my thoughts in a deliberate slow paced, logical manner. Different people arrive at different conclusions about the same topic, but one feels contented only when one has arrived at his/her own personal conclusions.

I understand God's created evolutionary process is governed by chance, diversity, environment, luck, and genetics. In a world where misfortune out numbers good fortune, I consider my self quite lucky. Happiness is, to a degree, a product of being lucky. That there are others luckier than myself in life is of no importance. This is expected. For every person who wanted to see me fail---more often than not, there were others whose kindnesses and loyalty were definitely note worthy; sometimes from someone titled and powerful, and other times from the commonest of common people. I learned early on that if the battle I fought was for others least able to defend themselves, you can stand tall and force more powerful elements in the battle to yield---at a personal price. They will wait eagerly for the chance to pay you back. In my case, never seeking further advancement, they waited forever, and their ass was gone from the scene before mine. People who spend too much time chasing titles and power and financial gain live stressful lives, have to look over their shoulders constantly, and lose a good portion of their soul in the process---not to mention their title of the moment. I think my peculiar oddness, used in ways to help the less fortunate, gave me a pass with some administrators who admired my manipulative abilities for good causes and the audacity I had to confront those not used to being confronted. I have, as a consequence, endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice intended and have received a great deal of kindness, not always quite free from ridicule.

SIMPLE THINGS bring me more contentedness than anything else. Lucky again, but these simple things make me happy: walking, eating good meals, music, pleasant friendships, assisting underdogs attain some justice, reading, musing about life, writing, sleeping, limited traveling to nature places, pets, joking around, horse racing, football (fading away some), and being retired. There was a time when titles, power, money, competition, and material wealth mattered more, but I never was consumed by any of it. Enough is as good as a feast and that helps one's happiness index to rise. It seems to be true that those who are satisfied with little are happier than those for whom enough is never enough.

I have seen a lot of tragic things in my time, as have most others. I have always felt bad to see underdogs of most any ilk get squashed by those more powerful than them. Part of my empathy with these less fortunate came from my inquisitiveness about diversity among human cultures and personalities. This appreciation of diversity has enabled me to get along with a wide assortment of personalities and ethnicities. It is always makes me happy to see others receive some justice in their lives. Furthermore, people with whom you come in contact really do know whether you are on their side or against them. You cannot hide this no matter how politically correct your verbiage. To some extent, kindness towards those who least expect kindness from you will be rewarded by genuine friendship and respect. It brings happiness to be respected by those different from yourself. You feel more attuned to the nature of the evolutionary process. And that is about as close as one will get to God. All other communication is illusionary.

As I have said elsewhere I have learned that happiness is related to contentedness, and contentedness is measured by the extent to which one uses reason, not faith, not culture, not inherited religious dogma to govern ones life. Reason and the reasoned universal principle of the Golden Rule bring happiness to yourself and justice to others. Fair enough.

Planetary Perspective: The Big Picture

Planetary Perspective: The Big Picture---Seeing the Forest for the Sake of the Trees.

It is not easy for me to be concise. With this topic the challenge is daunting.
Our planet and life on it is millions of years old. All of us living on this planet today are but a brief and miniscule portion of the life having existed on the planet before us. We do our best to invent notions that try to make us more important in the whole scheme of God's created evolutionary process, but these are defensive efforts to assuage our fear of death. None of us wring our hands over not having been present in the past and none of us should spend time wringing our hands over our future after our death. All we have, for sure, is the present. The past could not affect us personally and neither can the future of the planet after our death.

I sense most people, everywhere, realize something huge and tumultuous is about to happen on our planet. But we can't see the forest for the sake of the trees. This discourse is about the forest, not the trees. I kind of separate the new factors facing our planet and societies, and the old, usual factors. In the interests of being concise I will refrain from any elaborate discussion of any of these factors. Books are written about each. The object here is not to get lost in detail.

THE NEW FACTORS:

Overriding everything is human overpopulation of the globe. Global population has doubled in my own lifetime, and for it to double again will be catastrophic for all species on the planet. To date, humans---for all our cleverness----have not been able to practice responsible reproduction. We still pretend the individual right to reproduce like rabbits overrides the welfare of planetary life as a whole. Of course individual rights never trump the rights of society as a whole. And more amazingly, politicians of almost every ilk won't even talk seriously about this topic. Of course not, people just don't want to hear it. This is a brand new factor in the history of evolution---human overpopulation on the globe. In the past there was always frontiers of some sort, some place to run and start anew. Not anymore. Where would one run to?

Consequent to the above all sorts of natural resources are becoming depleted, whether it be gases in the atmosphere, life in the oceans, species extinction, loss of arable land, depletion of fresh water sources, energy sources. building materials, fish in the ocean, trees on the land, etc. Right now, today, there are not enough natural resources for all humans to live the kind of lifestyle the affluent now live.

To deny any of these two NEW FACTORS is purely a faith based denial, much like many people accept their inherited religious beliefs on faith. What separates humans from other species is our ability to reason and our inherent ethical nature.
Whenever humans fail to use reason to solve problems or fail to practice and develop their inherent ethical nature, the eventual consequences will be grave. All humans everywhere understand the Golden Rule. For the most part, it is not a question whether we understand right from wrong, but whether we will do the right instead of the wrong.

THE OLD FACTORS:

Every civilized powerful society has collapsed and most of the time it has been for two reasons: the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, and the financial burden of trying to maintain a global empire of some sort.

To this old factor has been added a NEW TWIST: In the past societies were relatively self sufficient. Not anymore. We now have a global economy. That may or may not be a good thing, but it probably is not an avoidable thing. HOWEVER, to have a global economy without minimum wages will reduce every national economy to a third world type economy with production of more and more things being done with slave labor (without plantations). The price of all these 'bargains' will be self destructive in the not so long run. Freedom will be reduced to nothing left to lose because we have nothing with which to purchase anything. For millions and millions of people, they are already there. Even in the United States, right now 30% of children are being raised in poverty; not the old fashioned type of poverty where a family lived off the land peacefully and healthfully. No, many children today live in refugee camps or urban/rural/suburban ghettoes, socially isolated, over stressed, undereducated, and fearful of personal harm from others.

The social fabric is changing rapidly, even in our own country. The social unit now is rarely the neighborhood, the community, an economic class---but the family unit. Family values has been promoted as an ethical concept when it is really an excuse for circling the wagons and viewing all matters as self serving family challenges. The concept of spreading wealth around or taxes around, or anything else around has become passé. In our own country we wage war on borrowed money, we fight drug addiction with an expensive police War on Drugs instead of treating it as a medical problem, we give tax breaks to the wealthy and reduce benefits to the poor, we have eliminated the steep graduated income and inheritance taxes on the wealthy to ensure none of the money gained gets returned to the society from which it came, and we spend three times as much to educate some of our young and three times less to educate most of our young, the very ones most in need of a good education.

Regulation, and 'enough is enough are no longer legitimate and necessary restraints on free enterprise. The concept of "I earned it" is being replaced more and more by inherited wealth. To pay off state and national debts we use political clout and maneuvering to pit one group against another as to who is going to pay off the debt. Ironically, in many cases those who supported all the wars, and military expenditures on weapons of little use in modern warfare, and the police War on Drugs, on maintaining military bases all over the globe, are the very ones who demand the debts incurred be paid off by others and they get a tax break. Greed flourishes and fairness becomes something only on a personal basis.

To me, all of the above is the big picture---the context from which all the particulars we address are being fought. We see today, for our immediate self interests, and have no objective view of the future. All forms of government seem to be failing, for different reasons, and the multitude of complex endangerments to our planet have left us relatively paralyzed. In some respects we are like deer in the headlights, we see it coming but until it hits us we cannot bring ourselves to act. Of course then it may be too late.

The good news, which we as individuals need accept, is that the process of God's evolutionary process will continue. Our 'free will' can help make our personal lives better, but in the big picture, we are but one species participating in moulding the future nature of the planet, and it will be the laws governing this process which determine the future. We are not, as individuals, or as a species, any kind of end product nor do we have any reasonable basis to assume we are a favored species, or a favored individual member of our own species. Believing otherwise does not bring any real contentment (the religious right of any religion are not exactly known as happy campers brimming with contentment). What we have received, by chance, and our environment, is a chance to exist as part of this evolutionary process for a very limited time. Humans are blessed with the ability to reason and an inherent sense of ethics. To the extent we use both in all aspects of our life we can be contented. Remember, it is ethics which allows the less fortunate to reach a level of life for which to reach contentment. Yes, we are our brother's keeper both for his sake and our own sake. One can choose not to help the less fortunate as much as we help ourselves, but in so doing we can never be a really contented person. We are wired to use reason and we are wired to be ethical. Success in these areas is the basis for contentment, and never one without the other.