Opening and closing and opening again

We are living the ancient Chinese curse these days. With so much going on — the upcoming Presidential election, war in Iraq, the ‘war on terror,” gay and lesbian marriage in San Francisco and New Mexico, the President supporting an amendment to the Constitution on the issue, the economy idling for the third year in a row, — these are, indeed, interesting times. You can practically smell the history in the air. People with activist tendencies are beside themselves trying to find a way to be part of it all. Rather what being in Chicago in 1968 or at Kent State in 1970 felt like I would imagine.

Personally, these are very interesting times for me as well. I think I’m having my mid-life crisis early (at least, I hope it’s early). I’m spending a lot of time these days thinking about how I live my life, what’s right vs what I want (often the two are not the same), how to cope with the fact that the populace is largely hard of thinking these days (add that on top of the 80/80 rule (80% of the people in the world don’t think 80% of the time) and no wonder things are a mess), and what it means to be happy.

The Declaration of Independence states:

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Our Founding Fathers didn’t bother to define happiness for us even though it is the state of being for which we all strive. Maybe it’s just because I’m prone to depression (I recently scored a 56 on the Goldberg Depression Quiz) that I think about what it means to be happy so much. After all, my friends who would describe themselves as happy don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. But what defines happiness?

Is happiness the time-limited enjoyment of a particular event, say a concert or a movie? Is happiness that sense of elation you get from new love? Is happiness that feeling of satisfaction you get from finally nailing whatever it is you’ve been trying to do for so long (make 10 free-throws in a row, start your chain saw, finish writing a novel, get the closet organized)? Or is happiness really just an overblown name for contentment (you know, that sort of base level, ‘everything is OK and yeah there are some things I want I don’t have but pretty much it’s all good’ feeling)?

American culture tells us that happiness is stuff, oh, and being thin. Yes, in America, happiness is being hip, and cool, and thin, and having a lot of stuff. But not just any stuff, the specific stuff that will tell others that you are hip and cool. I think American culture is, to put it mildly, way off base on this one.

I think one of the keys to happiness lies inside the dot com concept of the “transforming transaction.” I first ran across this idea in a book I’m reading called There Must Be A Pony In Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and The Quest for the Digital Future by Kara Swisher (get it at Amazon.com). Swisher talks about Jerry Levin, CEO of Time Warner, and Levin’s belief in the “transforming transaction” as a way to move business forward; one such transaction was the deal that got HBO satellite time in the 1970s allowing its parent company to establish it as a national service. Levin also believed that the merger with AOL would be another of these events.

I think where the dot com-ers got it all wrong is believing the transforming transaction has to be something huge. It can be something huge, like getting a new job or getting married, or it can be something small, like learning that someone you respect for whom you are not a natural peer considers you to be a peer. It can be the small, unexpected moment of realization about some fundamental bit of human nature, or it can be something gigantic like the city of San Francisco taking on not only the state of California but the Federal government by treating everyone equally.

It can simply be opening your eyes to realize you have no idea how you got where you are in your life.

So, in the pursuit of happiness, while it may be a little late for these, my resolutions for this year:

1. Relax and take things as they come. Sometimes the only thing I need to do about what is going on around me is observe it with a quiet “hum, isn’t that interesting.”
2. Have more fun. Simple, really, do things that give me that feeling we dub “happiness.” They don’t have to be big things.
3. Stop being so god damn serious about everything (see above)
4. Realize it’s OK to say no to things that I don’t want to do even if they’re expected of me. What I want has to come first sometimes.
5. Try new things. That restaurant I’ve been “meaning to get to, get to it; that stained glass class I’ve wanted to take, sign up for it.
6. Remember that “try new things” does not mean I have to be perfect at them.
7. Be happy

Ironic, really, that all this thought about happiness ripens on Mardi Gras, the last day before Lent. Who says the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Just another dispatch from the Thoughts That Come Unbidden Department.