Happiness - thoughtfully

Dr. Nick Baylis, author of the newly released book The Rough Guide to Happiness: Practical Steps for All-Round Well-Being, spreads his passion for living life to the fullest in his work as an experienced therapist, lecturer and columnist. He begins by explaining what happiness is not: it is not the definition given by Freud -the sum of our pleasures minus our pain.

According to Baylis, pleasure and happiness are not the same. Pleasure is a transitory state dependent on our physical sensations or emotions. Happiness is a deep rapport with life: with others, with nature, with our own conscious and sub-conscious. I could read The Rough Guide to Happiness in one day - and then forget most of what I read. Instead, I'm approaching it as an opportunity to make changes in my own life, by embracing the ideas in his book one by one.

Yesterday I went for the longest walk in a year, exploring the neighborhood around our apartment. It was not the bicycle ride I would have done in years past, but to do nothing because I can't do what I used to enjoy would be to quit the struggle to remain actively engaged with life. And it is a struggle most days, but that is no reason to give up.

There was a merry wedding in the park we passed by, with a horse-drawn carriage for the bridal party. In this recently-built neighborhood, the houses were architected in a style strongly reminiscent of old Portland, and the charming streets reminded me of days from my childhood. A bank of pale pink climbing roses wafted a scent that brought back the rose trellis in our back yard when I was in grade school.

Sights, sounds, smells, memory: engaged with my world, myself, a satisfying afternoon to save in my memory portfolio.

On Grey Hair and Wrinkles

My husband and I both engaged in risky behavior when we were young: speeding cars, speeding jets, speeding boats, etc. We liked to go fast. We also did not think we'd live to be over thirty (that was old!) and we didn't plan for living long and well. Short lives but happy was practically our motto.

So now he is seventy and I'm getting there, and we really are quite perplexed to discover grey hair and wrinkles in the mirror. How did this happen to us? One day at a time, I suppose, but still, we aren't any older in our hearts. Perspective changes though.

On Monday at the periodontist, the hygienist, who I had assumed was newly out of high school and no more than twenty years old, told the dentist he just turned thirty. I nearly choked. Not only do I feel as if I'm walking around in a weird disguise like an 'old person', but really old people like thirty-year- olds are disguising themselves as high school kids.

This just is not acceptable. I'm going to get out my belly-dance CD before I start really believing I'm as old as I look.

All Clear

If the definition of courage is doing something that terrifies you, then I'm much braver than I ever thought - over something most people take for granted, so it doesn't count. Good news, I have a very pretty colon, as colons go, and I will not ruin your day by telling the ugly details of preparation. As a funny consequence, seeing the periodontist next week looks easy by comparison. So the moral of these appointments? Eat your fiber and floss your teeth.

Even a Panda Sometimes Needs a Colonoscopy

Tai Shan at our National Zoo underwent a colonoscopy earlier this month. I shouldn't complain about a mere sigmoidoscopy, so I won't. I printed a picture of Tai Shan being brave to inspire me. This is the third time I have agreed to schedule this procedure, and I won't cancel this time. I won't, won't won't....

Ow. ow - ow - ow

Interesting fact about the elliptical exercise machine - the resistance can be set from low to high. Now I know. (But I didn't know the day before yesterday, when I just hopped on a vacant machine in the gym downstairs. Although I wondered why I couldn't make my machine go as fast as the one my neighbor was using.) So. It turns out my machine was set for 'up a steep hill'. My first time using it. Owww-www.

Sleepless, reading The Beggars Trilogy

I've been an insomniac my entire life. When I was a toddler, my mother would put me down for a nap, and once she fell asleep, I would get up and play.

When I was older, I was found sleep-walking. Life is just too intensely interesting to spend much of it laying down with my eyes shut. When I was made to stay in bed, I brought a flashlight with me so that I could read under the covers.

So I was immediately intrigued by the concept in Beggars in Spain, of a society of Sleepless - people genetically engineered to be productive and awake 24/7. Fifteen years after the first publication, Nancy Kress' Beggars in Spain, Beggars and Choosers, and Beggars Ride is still a mind-boggling rich tapestry of futuristic society, with deep characterizations, a plot that twists shockingly right up to the ending, and a piercingly accurate portrayal of thought processes and social dynamics.

The science is believable and has not yet been outdated, (at least not so far as this non-scientist could tell at any rate). It doesn't get in the way of the plot, and does generate musings on social and medical ethics. Like Heinlein, Cherryh, and Orson Scott Card, Nancy Kress uses the contrast between familiar human society and alien society as a vehicle for raising the question of what, exactly, makes us human and what we value in a person or a society. Beggars in Spain won a Nebula and a Hugo award. I give the trilogy my own highest honor: I'm keeping it on my bookshelf, because I will read it again.