Happy Music, Happy Hobbying

This little fellow is rooted, out of the wind! See the baby tucked in the pot?

I am a good candidate for a Happiness BA.  I am by far mostly a positive person.  You just have to see my previous blogs to understand that I seize the moments.

My quest for Happiness on demand continues.  One of the elements of my research involves hobbies.  The satisfaction of achieving something is out there for all of us.  Even the completion of a jigsaw puzzle gives us a rise.  Today I pledge to complete one of my projects.

 

There is a wind outside, nudging at the cedars outside my window.  They reluctantly move their elbows as Wind shoves at them.  They are loath to let go of their brown used bits, but Nature knows best and off they drop at the urging of Wind. 

Our garden birds usually know better than to fight the gusts.  Once in a while though, a brave sparrow launches from the cherry tree aiming in one direction, but tumbling acrobatically in another.  It should have stayed in the embrace of the wizened branches, and so the raised trills of its friends confirms.  I close my eyes to listen.  On a day like this the birds gather in groups to commiserate over lost time.  Their voices carry sharply, cutting through the fierce breath of Wind. 

Well I won’t be grumbling about time lost.  It’s a delightful day to hobby.  I will put on Lorena McKennitt, turn her pure voice up and lose myself.

Music that evokes positive emotions is another key to Happiness.  At the right volume, with the right tune, the invisible ribbons of sound slide into the listener, gently stroking our insides; embracing our spirits.  It can’t be ignored if the timing is right.  You’ve felt that moment.  That’s a facet of Happiness.  So choose your magic and start the music.  

First Day of Class

My Rock

There is science to Happiness.  Article after article and study after study imply that there are concrete steps to training our minds to be positive.  And positive means happy.  Most stunning is the implication that being kind to others is Number One in making ourselves happy!  On reflection I can see this is true, but what a simple piece of common sense.

So next time I have the opportunity to pay someone’s ten cents they are short on a grocery bill, I won’t hesitate.  ‘Tis better to be rejected than to miss out on a random act of kindness.

Family and close friends are paramount to Happiness. It is early days, but we have been giving each other a long hug every day.  I couldn’t think what else to ask of my stoic husband, but this he can understand and has thrown himself into, his strength coursing through my veins with every squeeze.  I thought I had long ago thrown myself off the pedestal at his feet, but it seems he is willing to gently pick me up and prop me there, just as though he has only been waiting for my thorns to drop.

My rage has morphed into grateful surges of that full-hearted urge to cry in relief and joy.  That lump in your chest and throat that leaks from your eyes with little provocation.  The rage lump is very similar, but results in leaks of the opposite eruption – fury and lashing out.

My Happiness research tells me to smile often.  I sat up in bed this morning and smiled ridiculously at the trees outside the window.  This will be good for smiley wrinkles…better than grumpy ones.

I must also be grateful.  This I already practise.  My diary is full of three good things about each day.  But it doesn’t hurt to start the day with them too.  There’s nothing worse in a class than the twit who keeps saying he knows this and that already.  

Meditation is so personal, but I understand its use.  Any tool that can still my warring thoughts when they are at their worst is necessary.  I have always said daily affirmations, but I am willing to still my breathing and choose a simple phrase to concentrate on with my breathing.  Again my early morning moment in time is perfect for this. 

I shall sip my tea, delivered to my bedside each morning, smile, meditate and be grateful.  Then I will be on the lookout for the victim of my act of kindness.   

Academy of Happiness

Sybile

I have enrolled in the Academy of Happiness.  But to understand the significance of this event you need to know the background influences.

Only in my forties did I sense the niggling possibility that I have a recurrent mental condition. Not a hormonal one that plagues some unlucky sufferers, but an acquired one for sustained terror in my teens due to neglectful inaction (see Sybile above). We are not going there on this journey, but after years of coping, and fighting rare but serious rages that incapacitated me for weeks at a time, it sank in when my mother died that I harbour demons from my teen years. Demons is the name I give these physical forces that I had been stuffing back into their locked cells in my mind as I gained control of each bout. There is nothing biblical about them, but the name conjures up exactly the right connotation.

Somehow I never harmed my children, at least not physically, but I wonder if my screaming anger at them once in a while was harmful. I can't go there though. The most I can say in my defense is that we enrolled in a child behaviour class to help guide the children properly, my thinking being that I needed help child rearing. It was helpful, but my rages were more directed to my husband from then on.

He bore the brunt of my demons lashing out, and my being such a talented wordsmith I learned to tailor my attacks to any of his faults. The obvious one was his work addiction. I think we both were convinced for years that this was the root of our problems.

Nevertheless we carried on, mostly successfully, until my mother became mortally Ill.  Skipping to the end of this nightmare time, suffice to say that she was cruel and all-consuming to me in that time. My chains attached to her were almost lethally binding, leaving me torn, with old wounds re-inflicted. I was incapable, for at least year, of giving myself to my needy children:  The one graduating, the one having a baby, and the one strong daughter who equally needed my presence.

Fast forward to the present, because there are about a thousand pages in between, and just believe me when I say that it was recently that I tried to label my condition. This was in order to attempt some ongoing control over the damned Houdini demons lurking over my shoulder. My symptoms mostly fitted into Depression, but nagging at me was my nemesis, Rage.  Then after emerging raggedly from my most recent, and one of my most Epic battles, it was pointed out that PTSD is a candidate.

No label will ever be my Weapon of Mass Destruction toward the Demons, but knowledge is power, and I'm going with PTSD. I can't afford therapy, but I am smart and determined, so I have enrolled in the Academy of Happiness. It's an exclusive institution with a distinguished enrollment of exactly one. I will learn how to use the tools of the trade, and free myself to spend as many "moments in time" as I wish. There is no Cure for me.  I will always harbour my cruelest Demons, but at least I can diminish their strength by refusing to feed them, like the Gremlins of Hollywood.

Next time I will write about my early days on this adventure of the mind. Already I can feel the Demons shaking in their boots at the prospect of a long siege. En garde!