Silly with Abandon

"The clearest indication of character is what people find laughable."
~Goethe


My boyfriend is a complete lunatic. Seriously. He regularly converses with himself (ok, maybe we all do. He just does it at a diaphragm-taxing volume). He tells the sales lady at the Halloween store that we’re looking for tights (for him to wear) to “spice up our relationship,” when I’m really just shopping for false eyelashes. Apropos of nothing, he will break into an air-drum solo, complete with percussive sound effects, which will go on at least a minute longer than is comfortable; and he doesn’t walk across a room, he struts in a manner that can only be described as a near-perfect imitation of an ostrich.

One day he called me and spoke entirely in an unidentifiable, but mostly Russian-sounding accent. I hung up the phone and burst out laughing. In my experience, much of what couples communicate to one another throughout the day is mundane, but his message and thus, that moment, were made more fun by his silliness.

That’s why I liked this quote, pilfered from one of Gretchen Rubin’s daily Moment of Happiness emails. “What people find laughable” can be described as bare-bones silliness, and silliness occurs when we act childlike. Children are unencumbered by self-consciousness, and in not caring what others think, they act in an authentic manner. Because authentic behavior is a manifestation of an individual’s character, my BF’s childlike goofiness, at its core, says a lot about him:

He’s got integrity. Basically, what you see is what you get. If he doesn’t care what you think of him, then he has no reason to lie to you about anything. If he is a good person—and he is—the only way to not care what others think is to always act with good intentions. Having done so, it is much easier to shrug his shoulders and ask himself, “Whaddya gonna do?” when someone has an adverse reaction to an action or behavior of his.

He doesn’t take himself too seriously. Life doesn’t always have to be about making an impeccably good impression. Sometimes being the class clown is more rewarding that being the teacher’s pet.

He thrives on spreading the love. I’m betting my BFs shenanigans are not solely for his benefit. If he can get a laugh out of me, or his 6-year-old, or the disgruntled postal worker, then he will stage a sword fight with an invisible opponent in a crowded room. Sometimes it’s embarrassing, but usually everyone is laughing, and he is always laughing, and I think maybe that’s the whole ridiculous point.

For most of us, self-consciousness prevents us from doing so many things. Fear of looking awkward keeps us from taking that dance class. Fear of failing traps us at our dead-end job, and stagnates our entrepreneurial dreams. Fear that we don’t remember a colleague’s name prevents us from saying hello, and fear of being alone stops us from ending an unhappy relationship. If we look clumsy/take a risk/make a mistake/are alone, what will our neighbors/mothers/bosses think? As a result, an assessment of our characters based upon our silliness might say something like, “Basically a good person, but really needs a vacation. Or an attitude adjustment. Or a roll in the hay.” The footnote scrawled at the bottom of this evaluation in cheery yellow letters would read, “Loosen up! Life’s too short to be so serious all the time.”

The fact that the neighbors surely think he’s insane, or that the sales lady thinks we’re sex freaks, doesn’t affect my BF whatsoever. And when it really comes down to it, there’s no reason why it should. His zany behavior speaks volumes to his enjoyment of each moment and his belief that he is motivated by goodness, as well as to the reward he gets from his happiness rubbing off on those he encounters. It seems my BF knows intuitively what philosopher Lao Tzu described when he said, "When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you."

And it is this idea that makes him a character I can stand behind. Or hide behind when he starts belting out the absolutely incorrect lyrics to Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” while standing in the grocery checkout line.

Staycation Update #2: Serendipity

~Be infinitely flexible and constantly amazed~

                                                                        Jason Kravitz


This morning I am under the weather, which incidentally is overcast and freezing. See that? See how we weren’t supposed to go this weekend? The forecast is exactly the same for Santa Barbara today—how bummed would we have been?

But alas, there will be no bike ride along the murky gray waterfront. No picnic with champagne. Sigh. 

In the spirit of the “spin,” I decide that I can spend the afternoon lazily accomplishing some writing tasks—no pressure to meet a particular deadline--while still feeling as if my slow-paced day isn’t a waste. Boyfriend is completely content to eat whatever his heart desires and watch movies and golf—perhaps his favorite way to unwind. 

Ingredients for a delicious staycation.

The sun traces its familiar arc through the sky--though we don't see it even once today. I drink cheap champagne and mango-passionfruit juice and join Boyfriend in the sensory overload of jalepeno potato chips, sour straws, and a trio of Robert Redford movies.

And then the call comes.

Boyfriend (who recently re-entered the acting arena after an extended hiatus), booked a commercial. They shoot tomorrow.

Um.

We would have been out of town. With a non-refundable hotel reservation for Monday night!

Instead we're in our pjs exactly where, apparently, we're supposed to be.

Grin.

Staycation Update #1: For a Good Time...

Step 1: Find yourself an animated Boyfriend who cannot pose normally in photos.

Step 2: Bike to cozy little wine bar you've been meaning to try for months. Drink the most delicious wine you've tasted this year--one that you forgot you loved. Al-ba-reen-yo. 

Step 3: Take pictures of everything like the dorky tourists that you actually aren't, because you live here. (Tourists, I'm referring to. We are definitely dorky.)

Step 4: While having dinner at sketchy-looking but surprisingly-perfect-seafood-slingin' Raku in Santa Monica, ponder Boyfriend's sanity.

Step 5: Pay with fancy Groupon. Oh yes. Then bike somewhere else for tarte tatin and a sultry red.

Step 6: Sigh and be grateful for your life.

The Staycation: A Prescription for the Blues

When I visualize this blog's future, I imagine a favorite, worn-soft blanket pulled up to my chin against a chilly winter's night or a loyal friend who picks up right where we left off, regardless of time elapsed.

Image: Willem Siers / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My hope is that the blog can become a security net; an archive of action steps for happiness. Action steps for days when you just can't shake the blues; tasks for igniting the senses when you've gotten complacent. While visiting these pages, I hope we remember to appreciate our lovers on more than just birthday, anniversary, and the 14th of February. In reading the tips collected here I hope someone is inspired to give herself a present, just because it's Tuesday. 

Action Step #1: Reframe the Situation

One of the simplest techniques for overcoming negative emotions is to try to find a way to reframe the situation into something positive. Oh right, I hear you saying. Bear with me.

We are evolutionarily inclined to weigh negative thoughts more heavily than positive thoughts (this is why smear campaigns are so effective). If you've ever exaggerated the story of some grievance to a friend so they would commiserate with you about the injustice of it all, you can identify with this tendency. Many times the problem that we have allowed to consume our thoughts and grow so enormous is truly insignificant when filtered through that "bigger picture" lens.

Some days, when we're wallowing lavishly in the depths of self-pity, we need to attach this lens to our eyeballs. View the problem in the context of say, women living in Afghanistan. Find a way to say, "Well at least...(insert silver lining here)," no matter how much of a stretch it seems to be at first. A friend complains she works too much; I immediately think that she's getting rich, especially because she hasn't the time to spend money. Happiness is like strength--we have more of it when we train our muscles, in this case, our brains. By consciously choosing to focus on a positive fact, we retrain our brain to scan for happy thoughts also, instead of concentrating exclusively on the bad news. Read more about our brain's negativity bias. 

Real Life Application

Boyfriend and I planned a biking vacation for the last month and a half, to take place in Santa Barbara. We've been squirreling money away, and I found some impressive discounts on food and lodging. Then (horror!) my work schedule comes out and for next two-weeks, I have only one shift. Ever with his chin up Boyfriend throws himself into even more work to make up the difference, but like all the best-laid plans throughout history, business is bad for the few weeks leading up to our vacation. Our vacation fund must now pay rent and bills. I am devastated. I mean utterly-moping-endlessly-sighing-universe-cursing devastated.

Image: www.playingmom.com

My first inclination is to go anyway, damn it! Who cares if it's completely irresponsible? We deserve a vacation, and we're not gonna let a little rough patch ruin our good time. But a larger part of me is screaming about what kind of vacation I can possibly expect to have while being intensely preoccupied about money. It's all so unfair! I'm being punished at work for taking the time off, and as a result of my punishment, I can't afford to leave town after all! 

Then the fun really starts. Now, because I'm already feeling sorry for myself, I start to add all kinds of additional insults to the pile. My brain, awash in negative thinking, is racing around like a child at an Easter egg hunt, grabbing more nastiness and throwing it on the fire. 

Boyfriend and I don't do anything special together anymore. 

In fact he's been going out with friends a lot lately and spending even less time with me. 

I'm lonely!

And on and on it goes, snowballing into the kind of day I wish I could crawl into bed and forget. And all of it happens not because I enjoy dwelling on the negative, but because some part of my DNA believes I'm better prepared to deal with the world if I'm always thinking in worst-case scenarios.

Break the Pattern

Okay, now let's take each one of those vented frustrations and see if we can play Spin Doctor:

1) We deserve a vacation.

I mean, of course we do. Everybody--and quite specifically workaholic Americans--deserves a vacation. Many more of them, in fact. I vote we take a page out of the European book and take six weeks or more, as opposed to the standard two weeks in the States. But the word deserve feels a little wrong, doesn't it? It tastes disturbingly like entitlement, and there's too much of that in modern life for my liking. Not everybody can afford to take nice vacations the way we can. Some people might never take vacations in their lifetimes. Some people don't even have jobs, so they're far more worried about paying rent than sipping Mai Tais on an exotic beach. Viewed this way, it feels awfully hard to complain about not getting to indulge myself, as if it's something I'm owed.

2) I'm being punished at work.

I work two jobs, which regularly resent each other and me for my lack of availability and divided focus. Meanwhile, I lose sleep over not being everything to both employers. For a year and a half now, I have agonized over not being free five days a week to bartend, when the job is merely a means to an end, and I would go crazy-berzerko-postal if I was there that much anyway. But now I'm hurt and angry that new employees are getting more and better shifts after all my efforts to be cooperative. 

Here's the spin: I know that my employer is not terribly concerned with my situation. As a result, I need to stop wasting precious energy concerning myself with their situation. I will book as much work as I can elsewhere and give them whatever availability is left. When I stop relying on this job, whatever shifts I get then will be "bonus" instead of "bread and butter." The lesson is that I need to find another way to survive.

3) Our vacation funds have to pay our rent.

No two ways around it, this is sad. If you've ever in your life worked hard to save up for something important, you can empathize with our bleeding hearts. But...still. We might not have had the money to bail us out during this inexplicable downturn in the service industry. 

We have money for bills. And it's better to lose our funds to that, than to go into debt.

4) I feel distant from my lover (and the barrage of other nobody likes me, everybody hates me's) to which I subjected myself in self-flagellation.

First of all, I've been writing 90% more than ever before. As a result, I am alone a lot, working from home. This leads to feelings of isolation. Solution: Go meet Amy for coffee.

Secondly, loneliness is causing me to view my relationship with Boyfriend as my everything. His perfectly normal desire to spend some downtime out with friends feels like an articulated choice to not spend time with me. (And I'm always invited to join, but I won't tell you that because I want you to understand my misery)! Solution: Spend some quality time together.

Chances are good, some of my concern and senseless worry is owing to the fact we've gotten complacent. We diligently tread the hamster wheel of our lives and it has probably been a 

while since we've really looked each other in the eyes or had a conversation without simultaneously sending an email or watching The Office. I am a firm believer that the survival of a relationship relies upon practice, changing the routine, and hard work. So I went to my trusty list of Ways to Have an Awesome Relationship, and picked something.

Have an Adventure

Now working with the reframed thought, Staying in town this weekend and not spending money feels responsible and right, I decided we had to have an adventure. We have a beach six blocks away, a love of bike excursions, and an unprecedented entire weekend off together. But how to not spend money? We had accumulated several Groupons on our bulletin board--long forgotten--overlapping and crowding each other as if unperturbed by their lack of use. This discovery equalled free dinner (twice).

So we're going on a staycation. A vacation at home. An adventure. A challenge to make it affordable. An exercise in creatively engaging my favorite person in some quality face time.

I'll meet you back here to let you know how it goes...

A World of Possibility

There's something comforting about the idea that we can take tangible steps to overcome melancholy and anxiety; that happiness is not entirely based on something larger and seemingly uncontrollable--brain chemistry, how much money we make, whether we love our jobs. It may not always be easy to reframe the situation, but practicing helps. The point is, joy is attainable. 

To Quote Bobby McFerrin...

Why A "Happiness Project?”

            

I’m obsessed with happiness. I think about it constantly: in the shower, while stuck in traffic, while I’m cooking (one of the activities that makes me happiest). I want to know why, when all that divides happiness from its alternative is a shift in perspective, it can be so difficult for some folks to be cheerful? I want to know why the people around me make the choices they do, when it seems so obvious to me that different choices would bring higher levels of contentment? I want to know why, at times, it’s impossible for me to apply that same common sense to my own life? Don't think I'm unaware of the hypocrisy--I have periods of serious deficiency in the happiness department, even as I so wisely concoct cheerfulness potions for the people around me.

            

The Only Goal That Matters

All I've ever done is set goals. If there were awards for goal setting, I definitely would have won at least three, and if my goals included being One Helluva Good Goal-Setter, I could die tomorrow.

I set goals because I’ve read statistics. Folks who write down their goals make up only 3-5% of the population and THEY SUCCEED DAMNIT! Way more often than the 95-97% that don't have clear goals and...don't succeed. It was a very scientific study.

I have filled my days with lists of aspirations—small to tall, and a million things in between. Tackling my overwhelming "To Do" list feels like running in a hamster wheel; like I'm entrenched in the "Rat Race," a "slave to the grind." My stomach hurts, I'm irritable with customer service reps and loved ones,  and I ask how the checker is at Ralph's but I don't really listen to the answer.

Then one day in a workshop, I stumble upon an interesting concept. A participant is asked to tell the audience what her number one wish is for herself in her current life situation. Her response is familiar.

“More money.”

The speaker then prompts her to complete the sentence,

“Because money provides you with…what?”

After a moment’s thought, the woman responds,

“Security.”

“Then why not just wish for security, and accept whatever that ends up looking like?”

            

Hmmm. Maybe I've been missing the point. Maybe the specific goals of “successful CEO of a multi-level Event Production Company”, “four-time triathlete,” and “accomplished novelist” were actually short-sighted. Maybe what I really need to be aiming for is…happiness.

And embrace whatever it is that comes with that. 

Enjoy Right Now

And with that simple shift in thinking, I lose my attachment to being 32 and CEO of a company that consists of myself and a negligible profit margin, and instead am able to celebrate the small catering gig that will bring in a couple hundred bucks that I'm doing for a friend next month. Because, in truth, that small job makes me immensely happy. For the first time, I'm forgiving of myself and I'm proud of my baby steps. I enjoy my day and my involvement in a satisfying project; I become "lighter."

It makes me understand that if somehow I can make a commitment to continue doing this, I will absolutely take flight. Because being happy is the key to being great; to doing great things, and creating great art, being a great friend, to achieving your best possible self!

It's Easy to be "Heavy," Tough to be "Light"


It is no simple feat however (no siree), to make a commitment to a constant exploration of happiness. It will take generosity (key to spreading happiness). It will take devotion (to creating an environment of joviality). When all else fails, it will take baked goods. Or a really good martini...But ultimately, who cares what it takes?! I plan to enjoy the process of discovering!

By redefining what the end looks like, perhaps we can enjoy the means by which we get there. Our goal is delight. In every minute. With every breath. We owe it to ourselves. For what other purpose are we here?

So that's why.

Coming Full Circle

It's been awhile, but I'd recognize it anywhere. That sense of satisfaction that comes from hitting "publish" after a particularly cathartic or revelatory blog post. 

What's Next?

To recap: Someone, let's say The Universe, sent me on a journey two years ago because my ability to find happiness had disintegrated. There were no bursts of joy in my day-to-day life, no moments of gratitude for small wonders. I was a sponge for sadness. 

So It sent me to a country that values pleasure above all else. And it rocked my world to see the result of this take the form of stronger family bonds, healthier eating habits, and togetherness as the #1 pastime. Just as the Rumi poem suggests that God drew a circle in the sand around exactly where I’m standing, the trip transformed me in such a way that I am certain that it was never NOT going to happen. 


Italy was meant to spur my curiosity about how to maintain the feeling, once I was back in the States, of experiencing my life as a celebration of my five senses. It was a complete overhaul on my Priority List. (You can read all about my pursuit of pleasure and the inevitable shenanigans that followed in my older posts).

A New Journey 


How appropo then, that the blog that began in Italy now will become a Happiness Project. An exploration of many facets, including things like "the Italian philosophy of pleasure," and the basic components of contentment. Maybe also helpful reminders to embrace life like its a warm hug from a hearty Italian grandmother. 


I hope it will become a place to come and practice gratitude.