single words together

Recently, I've been thinking of happiness (I've been reading "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama) and what one can do to be in a position that fosters happiness.

There are those who would tell me that happiness should not be the purpose or pursuit of life. I can understand where they're coming from, usually with the idea that a pursuit of happiness is a self-serving purpose. However, what seems to me to be real, genuine happiness, which is different from pleasure, is something that, when fulfilled for the individual, also pursues a genuine service to family, community, the world--all outwardly-focused.

I've noticed that these factors contribute to my overall happiness and mental health:

1) What I am reading. If I am reading something uplifting or challenging or inspiring, I tend to be more uplifted, challenged, motivated, inspired... When I fill my mind with heavy, heady downers, (even if they are true and horrendous facts about life), I feel more helpless, hopeless and unmotivated. I'm willing to hear an argument that it's important to be aware of what goes on in our world. But there's a lot of beauty and joy there too, and perhaps it's important to have multiple inputs (more hopeful than depressing).

2) When I am with friends. I love spending time with friends and family. This seems to me to be at the center of what really matters.

3) When I am outside. Nature, air, water, trees, animals, mountains, trails, ocean, rivers, lakes, beaches, boats, bicycles, tennis rackets, soccer, frisbee, running, hiking, climbing, sitting, kiting, swimming, watching. The ultimate (and unexpendable) retreat for the mind and spirit.

4) When I am cooking/eating good food. This is where the two ribbons of sensory delight and practical necessity meet and entwine. I heart food.

5) When I am laughing. Perhaps this, along with being with friends and family, is also at the center of what really matters. There is almost nothing I enjoy more than laughter.

6) When I am doing good work. It seems it's important to continually be challenged to do some kind of good, meaningful work that uses one's gifts and abilities, even sweat and some occassional lost sleep. I'm not sure I could enjoy all of the things above if I weren't also doing something that made me earn my keep. However, it also seems to me to be very important to have a job which allows enjoyment of these other things in life. If one's work crowds the rest of that out, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and it ain't fish.

A coworker recently said something to the effect of: "making an opportunity for surprise." I thought about that a bit, wondering if the nature of surprise allows us to actually create an opportunity for it?

I wonder, similarly, about happiness, with it's elusive coming-and-going character. But I think my coworker was on to something. That is, there are states that foster surprise (and happiness) more than others, and if we are aware and awake enough, we can work toward positioning ourselves in those places, and conversely getting ourselves out of those places that foster depression and stagnation.

One of my favorite "life" poems by Victor Hugo (meaning, poems that have been significant all throughout my life):

Let us be like a bird that's perched
on a frail branch as it sings;
though he feels it bend, yet he sings his song,
knowing that he has wings.

"Right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness... I'm using the term [mind] in the sense which has a much broader meaning, closer to 'psyche' or 'spirit'; it includes intellect and feeling, heart and mind."

-The Dalai Lama in The Art of Happiness

-----

What We Need Is here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

by Wendell Berry

-----

"Reality has nothing to do with our concepts." -Thich Naht Hanh

What a liberating idea that is to me at this moment! Reality has nothing to do with our concepts. When I'm stuck in a laundry cycle of confusing concepts, it's wonderful and freeing to think that this is not reality. That my usual equilibrium of a quiet mind and happy spirit is still present under all this chaos. Hmm. Happy thought.

Some thoughts going through my head:

1) Why do we describe a distraught person as being 'beside himself'? Because the ancients believed that soul and body could part and that under great emotional stress the soul would actually leave the body. (from www.phrases.org.uk)

2) From an article in the NY Times 04.20.07 called "Vieques: Solitude of the Sea" about fishing in Puerto Rico:
"This is my favorite kind of fishing," Mr. Gonzales said, "Wading--it's a bit of a hunt. Long periods of watchfulness and anticipation, puncutuated by sudden action for which you are rarely prepared."

3) I'm watching five ravens dive-bombing a yellow-tailed hawk, all of them in the air over Lake Union. The hawk is bigger, stronger, but is being crowded out of the sky. Clearly, there is strength in numbers.

4) How to rattle oneself out of introspection and madness into a healthy community centered way of living once again? I can't remember how to get there.

I'm really fascinated by obituaries, both by the writing and the portrayal of someone's life. I loved this one and would like to be able to say that my life was as full of love, good work, and humor as this man's.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/304223_stadler19.html

David Ross Stadler, 1925-2007: Geneticist leaves legacy of lively dialogue, peace activism
Monday, February 19, 2007

By MIKE BARBER
P-I REPORTER

Dinnertime at the Stadler home was a savory time for the mind.

With David Ross Stadler often emceeing and cooking, lively conversations in stimulating flavors were served up. His wife, Anne, their four children, and guests -- at times including famous names in science, the humanities and politics -- broke bread over food and ideas that Stadler kept stirring.

The ingredients always were chosen with a respect for personal integrity and sprinkled with Stadler's humor and generosity, his wife recalled this week.

One chair is now empty after Stadler, a retired University of Washington geneticist and non-violent peace activist, died Feb. 9 at home at 81 after living the last five years with lymphoma.

At the family's Lake Forest Park home, Anne Stadler shared the memories still evoked by the table where the likes of "Dune" author Frank Herbert, American socialist Norman Thomas and geneticist Norman Horowitz were guests.

"A day after he died, some friends of ours talked about how many important conversations took place around this dining room table with Dave presiding. We always would have these great conversations around the table spurred on by questions of interest" for their four children, she said. "We had dictionaries and books of all kinds sitting next to the dining room table.

"He hosted and cooked in this terrific environment where people were very welcome. It was something very old fashioned, the open-heartedness of our home life and the enthusiasm he had," Anne Stadler, a former KING television producer, said.

Stadler grew up in Missouri, where his father, Louis Stadler, was an important corn geneticist. Stadler graduated from the University of Missouri, served in World War II and earned a doctorate from Princeton University. He met his wife while teaching biology at the University of Rochester in New York. They eloped and later moved to Pasadena, Calif., where Stadler worked with big names in genetics.

In 1952, Stadler was the second geneticist hired by the University of Washington's Botany Department. His career spanned the evolution of genetics from a subbranch of botany to a full-fledged discipline and industry. Stadler, however, always considered himself a "classical geneticist, a pure scientist," his wife said.

Stadler's lab was filled with round petri dishes full of neurospora, an orange mold that grows on bread, and is used in Indonesia as nourishment, she said.

The Stadlers were also committed peace proponents, especially for nuclear disarmament and ending war.

"We had the first peace march in Seattle, in 1958," Anne Stadler recalled. "In 1956, atomic weapons were being tested, and Dave was disturbed about that. He knew a lot because he had been interested in looking at the genetic effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings."

The Stadlers helped found Platform for Peace in 1960, which later became Turn Toward Peace. Stadler was part of a scientific advisory group for former Congressman Mike Lowry made up of local scientists from various disciplines. They met weekly to prepare position papers for Lowry, she said. In the 1980s, the couple participated in building a peace park in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and in 1987, Stadler co-edited a UW study of home radiation dangers from radon.

"He always felt people were good and had the capacity to do the right thing. His relationship to others always brought that aspect out. The kind of questions he raised were not who to blame and find fault with, but how do we figure out what will work to serve the interests of everybody? He always felt in any conflict there was the seed of possibility," Anne Stadler said.

Stadler's true passion was his family. A memorial service is planned for April 14 in the family's front yard, complete with the fellowship and folk music he loved.

None of the children became scientists but followed their parents' belief to identify what you love and pursue it. Two, Mike and Sue, are teachers. Matthew is a writer and Aaron a videographer.

Over the years, the Stadler home had been the epicenter of the couple's generosity. At their instigation, there had been a neighborhood circus, a track meet and music fests late into the night with great attendance. Students stayed in touch over the years. For 40 years, there had been an apple cider pressing party and many potluck dinners.

"He was one of those people who found arcane holidays and would create parties around them," she said.

The events always were enlivened by Stadler's understated humor.

Once, dressed up to attend a play later in the evening, the couple picnicked over spaghetti with friends. Stadler sat alone on the downhill side of the table. When his wife and the other couple on the uphill got up simultaneously, wine and spaghetti catapulted into his lap.

Stadler, in a seersucker suit, "didn't say a word. He just got up, walked down to the lake and up to his neck in water," she said. "There was something about him that knew 'the moment.' "

He "did not call attention to himself," Anne Stadler said of her husband. "He had true humility and a good sense of who he was and his place in the world, and he loved it."

David Ross Stadler's family said donations in his memory can be made to:

PeaceTrees Vietnam, which seeks to clear land mines, at peacetreesvietnam.org.

Or Friends of Third Place Commons, a non-profit public space near Stadler's home, at thirdplacecommons.org.

For more information, write the Stadler family at: stadlermemorial@gmail.com.

I love this article from today's Seattle Times, about the best fried chicken restaurant ever. Check it out:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003554579_ezells03m.html

Watada court martial ruled a mistrial: (from Seattle Times 02-07-07)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003561301_webwatada07.html

One of my professors in college used to say "thought is the enemy of the military." (Frank Spina)

As I follow the unfolding story of Lt. Ehren Watada, this quote runs through my mind again. Lt. Watada, based at Fort Lewis, Washington, was the first officer to refuse to go to war in Iraq on the grounds that the war is illegal. His trial is going on at the moment, and he is being charged for behavior unbecoming an officer. A witness brought in yesterday, one of Watada's men who was deployed to Iraq, said that it is the duty of the commanding officers to decide whether an action is legal or illegal, and it is the duty of those beneath them to comply.

Lt. Watada isn't a pacifist--he asked to be reassigned to Afghanistan instead. But he also said that after studying the Iraq war information before deployment, he knew that his complicity would be, in the future, chargeable as a war crime, and that he would rather refuse to go and face a 4-6 year jail sentence now than to be tried and prosecuted for war crimes in the future.

It's probably true that in the culture of the military, individual thought and consideration and consensus would undermine the efficacy of the whole operation. But if the operation is by nature destructive, or has the potential to be very destructive at least, then isn't there something wrong--crazy even!--with a developed structure that has no checks and balances, where each person involved in the destructive act cannot dissent or question the action without being prosecuted and jailed? Doesn't that strike anyone else as eerily reminiscent of history?

You can read more about this trial and results at http://www.thankyouLt.org

1. On the busride home one evening, I was sitting down and a HUGE, tall man (very athletic) was standing in the aisle next to me. His legs and waste were taller than my head. He was wearing training clothes and I thought he looked like a basketball player. Then he started hiccuping and had unexpectedly high-pitched squeaky hiccups. He hiccupped all the way from 3rd and Pike to 1st and Mercer on a full, mostly silent bus.

2. Ran into one of my best friends in the supermarket. Mary & I caught up over some basmati rice and curried vegetables and glared at a man who seemed to be eavesdropping (but probably he was just trying to get to the tomato paste).

3. It's snowing right now.

4. Last night, I was looking up loveseat-sized futons and ran into a bunch of "futon videos" depicting futons doing...what futons do? I'm not sure why, but that amused me so much that I laughed until I cried. Even now, I'm laughing thinking about it. You should really check it out. (or not)http://www.futonplanet.com/catalog/Futon_Videos-242-1.html

5. Passed a flock of starlings this afternoon and some other tiny bird with a rotund brownish-red chest. He looked so cute and I said, "hi, who are you?" and he pooped a berry. I thought, "What's the point of that?" (eating a berry only to poop the whole thing out again...)

This sums up my weekend, full of dramatic tension. (and, after reading this poem, laughter too)

Tension (by Billy Collins)


 Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias

outside in the garden,

and suddenly I was in the study

looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.


 When suddenly, without warning,

you planted the last petunia in the flat,

and I suddenly closed the dictionary

now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.


 A moment later, we found ourselves

standing suddenly in the kitchen

where you suddenly opened a can of cat food

and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.


 I observed a window of leafy activity

and, beyond that, a bird perched on the edge

of the stone birdbath

when suddenly you announced you were leaving


 to pick up a few things at the market

and I stunned you by impulsively

pointing out that we were getting low on butter

and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.


 Who could tell what the next moment would hold?

Another drip from the faucet?

Another little spasm of the second hand?

Would the painting of a bowl of pears continue


 to hang on the wall from that nail?

Would the heavy anthologies remain on their shelves?

Would the stove hold its position?

Suddenly, it was anyone’s guess.



The sun rose ever higher.

The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map

when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch

where I closed my eyes and without any warning


 began to picture the Andes, of all places,

and a path that led over the mountain to another country

with strange customs and eye-catching hats

suddenly fringed with little colorful, dangling balls.