Blank Canvas

Hot tea, hot breeze,
And the waxing moon rising
Through cloudless lavender skies.
Insects buzz at evening.

Have you ever wondered, if self-help books truly work, why people buy one after another every few months?

I’m participating in a simple study of happiness (which ends 7 Aug 2009 but seems to welcome latecomers) connected to a forthcoming book, :59 seconds—Think a little, Change a lot, which claims to offer simple ways to achieve and feel happy based on research. (via Lone Gunman)

:59 Seconds exposes modern-day mind myths promoted by the self-help industry, and describes hundreds of techniques that help people achieve in minutes not months.

Based on a few conversations that I’ve had, an impression floats around out there that science has nothing to offer those of us seeking happiness. This impression may have its roots in the past where psychology focused on pathology. Only recently has psychology turned to studying human happiness, creating a branch known as positive psychology.

Even though the science looks promising, I doubt that it can deliver a Utopian future. Suffering may be an intrinsic part of human life. Yet I am driven to ameliorate it for myself and for others. Traditional ways of life hold many secrets of living happily, mixed with superstition and folly. I hope that scientific inquiry will separate the wheat from that chaff and provide new insights into what constitutes the good life.

I also doubt that this will be the self-help book to end all self-help books, but perhaps this is part of a nascent trend to subject the self-help culture and traditional lifeways to scientific scrutiny. I believe that will prove to be a good thing in the end.

I freaked out when I woke up. I couldn’t tell whether or not I had killed someone.

The dream that woke me had saturated my mind with guilt and fear. I struggled in the darkness to remember whether or not I had shot a mailman and covered it up for years. I could remember pulling the trigger. That couldn’t be right, but I remembered doing it and felt remorse.

Trying to get back to sleep proved futile, so I got out of bed and shuffled into the living room where my wife was still awake, sewing. I sat on the couch and watched her work. I wasn’t sure whether I should tell her. Even then, in my wakeful state, I wasn’t sure whether the dream were true. It still felt like a true memory. I didn’t want to confess to a crime that would put me in prison if I wasn’t sure it was just a dream.

I decided that I could confide in her. She listened without showing any sign that what I said disturbed her. She showed more faith in my innocence than I felt. She didn’t seem to appreciate my struggle to find a handhold on reality, but her aplomb calmed my mind a little.

The overwhelming remorse for buried secrets felt palpable and real. For all I could tell, I had committed the crime and had evaded detection for years. I thought maybe I had been suppressing the memory, and my dreams had brought it to my conscious awareness.

My wife finished her sewing, and we went to bed together.

I only felt secure in my innocence when I woke up in the morning, though even now traces of doubt flit across my mind. Imagination and memory cannot be fully trusted.

1. Lacey, thank you for being a charitable partner who loves me enough to stay together despite our differences. I admire you for that.
2. Lilah, thank you for being the first child to help me learn to be a father, for opening my heart to to a new kind of love.
3. Eden, thank you for convincing me that I could love more than one child with my whole heart. You have lived up to your name.
4. Thank you to the entrepreneurs and innovators who make my life better through bringing your ideas and expertise to the marketplace.
5. Thank you to all my teachers who have invested part of your lives to brighten my horizons.

Oh! the human irony of following a green Prius with a 2BGREEN license plate as the driver tosses a cigarette butt onto the highway.

I’ve given up trying to be discriminating about who I friend on Facebook. I’m tired of deciding whether or not I can really call someone my friend. Am I the only one who struggles with the implied intimacy of “friend”?

My new standard is if someone took the time to make an overture to me and I can remember who they are, I’ll friend them. That’s what it means to be my friend on Facebook. And I think that’s cool enough.

Do you want to be my friend?

Update: Experts apparently agree that I’m on the right track.

1. Thank you to my parents for raising me.
2. Thank you to my first yoga teacher for setting me on the path of mindfulness all those years ago (at least it seems like forever ago).
3. Thank you Lacey for loving me.
4. Thank you Lilah and Eden helping me see the world through your eyes and getting me outside of myself.
5. Thank you to the people who raise my food and bring it to me, clean and edible.

The Onion provides an idea of what people were really thinking (NSFW) as Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the Moon for the first time.

(via kottke.org)

Thank you to…

1. … my children for being who you are. You’re awesome.
2. … myself for being persistence about my efforts to live more healthily.
3. … the people of the United States of America for investing in my education.
4. … my wife for working together on all the mundane things that make up daily life.
5. … my wife for the way that you communicate with me. I think it makes all the difference. You’re also awesome.

Right now, I’m in a room where the men are outnumbered 5 to 1. This is a common occurrence in the world of higher ed. I once ended up in the back of a limo with eight women on a business trip. That sounds much more fun than it was.