Pursuing happiness

This fall I read "The Happiness Project; Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean my Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle and Generally Have More Fun" by Gretchen Rubin.

I can't say enough good things about the book. For starters, it was an enjoyable, easy read. It actually motivated me to take tangible actions, rather than leaving me inspired, but unsure of how to use the book's content to improve my life. And the book contains some excellent insights on the nature and importance of happiness, freeing readers to pursue something that on the surface might seem selfish.

One of my favorite parts of the book were the easy-to-remember phrases and commandments Gretchen developed to remind herself of what makes her happy. Here are some examples:

- Outer order contributes to inner calm
- Act the way I want to feel
- Spend out
- Do it now
- Do what ought to be done
- Lighten up

I wish I could be original right now and say I've developed a half dozen of my own commandments to be happier in the new year, but I think they'd really just be variations on what's above. Like,

- Try to not overreact
- Just do something
- Take the long view
- Create beauty
- Play more

Is any of this working for me? Perhaps, though I think I still have a ways to go. Yet, that's the nature of resolutions - they're not one-and-done kinds of things, like the goal of running a marathon or losing a certain amount of weight.

My mother has also commented that I'm not quite as dramatic about life's little problems these days. For someone who has a pretty marked up track record of overreacting, I'd call that the beginnings of success.

A Berkley surprise

I'm a sucker for those free, weekly community newspapers that come in the mail. You know the kind, the ones with fourteen pages of ads and four pages of news about the high school basketball team, the parks & recreation's summer art camp, and the police beat. Ours is called "Woodward Talk."

Well, from now on I will always read the Woodward Talk because on Friday, while I was eating my cereal, I noticed an announcement in the paper that Greg Mortenson, author of the New York Times bestseller "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace, One School at a Time," was speaking at Berkley High School, which is three blocks from our house.

Now you have to understand Berkley and the surrounding area to understand my shock. Not that there isn't an appreciative audience for Greg here. It's just that there are far more literary, "lecturey," peace-promoting types in nearby towns. Towns like Ann Arbor. The last big event in Berkley was probably the Berkley/Ferndale football game.

So this was major.

Plus, I had read the book this fall with my book club and completely loved it. I won't go into great detail about it, but to summarize, it's about how an ordinary man made a promise to a village in Pakistan to build them a school, and how this one school has now turned into 78 schools, and how education, especially the education of women, is furthering peace and thwarting terrorism.

So today Matt and I went to hear Greg speak. It was standing room only, so perhaps there's more of an audience for him here than I realized, and as expected, he was inspiring.

After the talk, Matt and I went across the street for lunch. As we munched on our fries, Matt said, "So what did his talk make you want to do?"

I thought about it for a bit, and while I really wanted to say it made me want to be with the poor, I can't say that was my first instinct. It did make me want to have more faith in the impossible and believe God for more. It did tap that special place in my heart for reading, reminding me of how urgent my desire was to learn to read when I was young, and how tragic it is that some people never get that gift.

So I mentioned those things, but then, pessimist that I can be, I started to think about the all ordinary people who make promises to build schools, clothe the poor, heal the sick ... and don't meet their goal. I mean, not everyone succeeds or accomplishes the impossible, right? You never read books about those people!

Matt just shook his head and admonished me lightly for my pessimism.

So in the spirit of optimism, I'll end on an upbeat note. In 2000, at the height of the Taliban, there were 800,000 kids in school. Today, there are 7 million, 2 million of which are female.