Create Your Own Happiness

Sometimes your allergies are in full bloom like the flowers and you take the pills. Some work, some don't. Some pills make you clean the house in record time, others leave you in the dust. At first, you say they are driving you crazy. But what happens every year? ALLERGIES. When I was a kid we lived for awhile in the middle of nowhere in farm country. My dad was giving me hell like, 'GO, find a friend!" The only loser I could find sucked his shirt, so it was really slim pick'ins. My allergies would swell my eyes shut, and only because it was all I had! Fast forward to today, they are a part of life and once you decide not to make this your misery, live with it, laugh more or meditate more. Maybe even nap more, and suddenly they fall away from your center of attention. Who is really in control?



Now how can you be miserable wearing this t-shirt?

Is That All There Is?

While having a friend over for breakfast, we were discussing the formation of our concrete acknowledgement of our impending death. Joking about it we sometimes feel that the Peggy Lee song, Is That All There Is? will suddenly come to our last conscious thought. But jokes aside, the self-awareness we have with age is also very comforting. One has enough personal history to fall back on to make hopefully better decisions. And if we make bad decisions we can laugh at ourselves easier.
When you are young, you sense what is behind you feels like jello. So you rush towards the future, in the hopes of finding that elusive happiness, thinking that is out there. We were never schooled on our own minds and how they work. That happiness lies within each of us. If we started kids with meditation, they would develop clearer minds and find no need to look beyond for external happiness. It can’t be found in things, jobs, cars, clothing, or techie gadgets. It was a surprise to me coming from advertising who’s whole premise is that we have something you want. It looks like happiness, it feels like happiness and even smells like happiness but once you get said thing it quickly becomes old or worn and leaves you back were you started. I knew back when I did advertising, there were some things I would never buy, yet would hard at getting others to buy. I slowly became aware to myself that I am selling my soul, if I really had one at that point. I may have been developing my soul, amassing enough personal history to make a better decision but still without finding happiness. Personal transformations happen when one is ready mentally. I tried a lot of external ideas of happiness, and they never quite seemed to work. Years ago, when I awoke from my coma, I saw the worried faces of my partner and family staring at me. That gave me enough strength in absolutely the most difficult circumstances I had ever known up to that date. And now, years later, I am aware that it was my first idea that doing things for others is way better than doing it solely for yourself. The power it gave me to heal for them far exceeded any power I had ever had previously.

A Visa Run

Went this week on a Visa run to the border of Cambodia. With a van full of various foreigners, who were pretty quiet. Except when a few people told the driver we would like to return in one piece. He was driving crazy. Not just fast but driving right up within 3 ft of the vehicle ahead of us then whipping out to pass…welcome to the third world! Anyway, I made conversation with an older Vietnamese man, as the young guys from US were not talking. He is a Dr who escaped the Vietnam war by going to Paris to study in 1960 and staying and not returning. After time he and his wife bought a cheap hotel there. Then later moved to Australia, where he said that like a 1/3 don’t work and it is a rich country. He has since retired in Bangkok and has a condo here, yet his wife remains in Paris taking care of the hotel. Once we arrived at the border, we waited for the paperwork to be done. Walking to the Cambodian side and bought fruit candy for the beggar kids hanging an driving into the creek at the border. Figuring that would be better than giving them each a Baht. They surrounded me, some getting grabby. So when they did, I would stop giving them away until they calmed down. So I could make sure each kid got some. I know that they will beg and it hasn’t changed on bit in the two years since I was last there. They did come across the border, and thanked me for the treats, as no other person paid any attention to them.
The way back went fast, The Dr. and I talked about his friends here in Bangkok and Buddhism.

Patience, an all-day affair

I was doing some things around home and a friend asked me to go to a book sale. I said sure, and drove there. Not knowing it would be all day affair as he looked for books for his classes where he teaches developmentally disabled kids. So, I quickly put my own self aside and helped him. Every time I wanted to leave and get back to doing my own things I reminded myself that my time for both my friend and his kids was more important than what I had to do. I used this as a test to see how patient I could be, and in turn helped him try to find good books. At the end of the day, I even offered to take his books to his school directly, a long way away. Knowing that two people carrying them would be easier. Then we came back home and I let him nap while I cooked dinner for us both. This was really not in my plans for a nice beautiful sunny day, but as an ex-lover once said to me: “People are not things, and are therefore much more important. Yes, some wise things said to you do somehow stick with you!

A Quick Trip

Back after a quick trip to take care of family when my sister needed with her son, when his school and her work schedule did not jive. It gave me a chance to build up a bond with him over the week-long time I had alone with him. We did a lot of different things from riding on go-carts one day to going to a science museum another day to diving for shells other days. I rode with him on this all day pass on the rollercoaster, doing it because it was what he wanted to do. It was something I always dreamed of doing as a child. I managed 42 times on it, before chilling out when he found a young friend to ride with. This allowed him the independence. A great trip to show you how important family is and how children overlook a disability when they know where your heart is.
I had returned to the place I spent many years as a kid, and came away very satisfied with my current choice of home. Sure there was a lot of memories good and bad there and I would often slip into them because they were so distant from where I am now both mentally and physically.