Mission Happiness

I got an email the other day from someone who stumbled across my other blog about art and activism.  He mentioned that although he’s in Cincinnati, he had recently visited Louisville (which inspired the said online search), and was on his way to Chile to visit friends (who he is telling about my work!)

I had to share what he said at the close of his email:

“PS: In exchange for reading some of the thoughts you share in your blogging, here are some notes I scribbled today - not claiming these lines are anything more than a draft with more-than-normal typos from using a foreign keyboard, but the words have some connection to me thinking about your artist-activist lifestyle.

THERE IS AN ITCHING IN MY LEGS
I WANT TO LEAP
I WANT TO RUN
SPINNING WITH ACTIVITY
I FEEL THE THREAD-THIN IMPORTANCE OF MY LIFE
THREAD THAT GAINS STRENGTH WHEN INTERTWINED
OR INTERWOVEN WITH OTHER SLIGHT FIBERS

I WANT TO LIE IN CALM REPOSE
WATCHING RIVERS FLOW
YET TODAY I MIND MY DUTY TO CARRY WATER
TO THOSE WHO CANNOT REACH THE STREAM

THERE IS AN ITCHING IN MY LIMBS
NOT A BURNING
– PERHAPS JUST A TICKLE,
A SPINNING OF ENERGY –
I COULD SOAK IT UP
ABSORB ITS DIZZY-BUZZING-HIGH.
NOT TODAY THOUGH.

RATHER THAN REMAIN MERE FIBER, LOOSE, KNOTTED, UNMATTED,
I SUMMON (IMAGES OF) WORKING, HARD-CALLOUSED HANDS:
GANDHI SPIN-DROPPING HIS SPOOL OF NATIVE COTTON BY THE SEA,
THE THREE THREAD-SPINNING FATES,
THE WISE OLD WOMEN WHO KEEP TALENTS ALIVE,
THE YOUNG APPRENTICES WHO WILL CONTINUE SPINNING AFTER ELDERS DIE…
MAY MY VEGETABLE/VEGETATIVE MATTER SPIDER-SPIN A LINE
WITH STRENGTH ENOUGH TO MEND, NOT TO BIND”

Wow!  Am I blushing?

My very best friend came down from Cincinnati to spend New Year’s Eve with me.  Before we went out for the evening, we were hanging out at my apartment and she asked me if I still had the plastic toy horses she sent in a care package years ago.

See, Colleen and I long ago decided we were going to make a Kentucky Derby board game.  We spent a considerable amount of time designing the game board and coming up with rules.  We never got around to making game pieces.  She later mailed a hodge-podge of quirky stuff to me, included a tube full of plastic miniature horses and a card explaining she had found the missing component to our game at a Cracker Barrel.  She named the gray one “Gallop,” which the card stated only eats double-stuffed Oreos (the card will forever remain on my fridge).

While she was staying in my guest room (aka the pull-out bed in the living room), she hid eight of the plastic horses around my apartment.  I’ve only found five so far, including Gallop.  That’s right, we’re twenty-something going on thirteen (and proud!)

Last year (wow, it feels good to say that), I developed a rather nasty tendency to be anxious and wound up.  To make matters worse, I had lost a familiar outlet for relieving it, so the tension really grew like a weed.  Luckily, a few weeks back I discovered an unexpected way of letting some of it go in the form of listening to jazz music.  Well, not just any jazz; I went to hear my dear friend Harry Pickens play at U of L.  My breath and thoughts slowed down, I felt calm, and later noticed I was smiling.  I actually felt I had gained some energy when I left.  Aaaaaah!  THANK YOU HARRY!!!

Harry Pickens on youtube

I met with a good friend/mentor today for a marathon session about what-ails-Ashley.  The economy came up as it relates to professional next steps.  He asked me what I was afraid of.  I said, among other things, “security.”  He responded by quoting Helen Keller:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

For a mere $9, I am declaring myself the winner of best Christmas gift given.

I went to see an iMax movie at the Louisville Science Center last week and stopped in the gift shop on the way out.  There, I found diseases.  That’s right, Polio, ulcers, chickenpox, and more.  I grabbed some Salmonella for my uncle Jim to put in his stocking.  It seemed fitting since he actually had Salmonella poisoning this year.  He got a big kick out of it, and then took his traditional Christmas nap (Salmonella is exhausting you know).

Finally, I have arisen from my Christmas funk.  Nat King Cole is singing “Merry Christmas to you me” and the decorations have been drug (that’s Kentucky-speak for “dragged”) out of the basement.  I didn’t get a tree this year, but that didn’t stop me.  Six nails, two strands of lights, and one doorway did the job.

I was downstairs yesterday in the LVAA gallery prepping for a group of girls from Maryhurst who were coming to see the Rob Shetterly Americans Who Tell the Truth exhibit. I was working my way through Shetterly’s paintings, reading each bio so that I could intelligently speak to the girls, when the painting above of Rev Cecil Williams deflated my latest gripe like a popped balloon.

The pace of 08 and overwhelming volume of its rapid fire events has stressed me out a bit, but the quote in this painting put it in perspective,

“Death isn’t the greatest thing to be feared for it homogenizes everyone, makes us all equally dead.

Most folks are afraid of living because abundant life requires risking everything to love, liberate, and accept yourself and others now. People are afraid of life for it creates diversity and requires commitment to action. To live is to struggle.”

Right on! So what if my stress is shaving years off my life like a smoking habit? I’ll die at the end of one hell of an accomplished existence that will leave those who played it safe wondering, “What was I waiting for?”

For the second time in a month, I have read about research that measures the effect peoples’ mood have on others. Apparently, a happy person’s joy tends to have far more of a lasting impact than someone’s funk. I first read about this in the Tipping Point. Author Malcolm Galdwell (fitting last name huh?) cited research that showed happiness trumps sadness in terms of its “stickiness factor,” or ability to have an impact that is staying and will influence behavior. Sadness on the other hand, does not really stick.

Then this morning, a friend sent me a link to a Live Science article, which further verifies the power of contagious happiness. The article states,

The researchers analyzed data compiled from nearly 5,000 interconnected people over a 20-year period. After establishing a baseline mood for each participant, the team found that when one person became happier, it rippled through the network, increasing the likelihood that others would become happier too.

So don’t waste your time looking for people to wallow in your sadness with you; apparently they aren’t likely adapt to your mood. Feeling down? Go hang out with people who have smiles on their faces; they’ll bring you up a few notches on the mood meter AND it should stick. It definitely worked for me when I was hanging out with teens (like the girl above) at a recent Youth Alive retreat. I’m sure without even being aware of it, I was smiling just looking at this girl while taking her photo.

I don’t have a TV. I don’t want one. There are better ways to spend my time and I always feel like I’ve wasted part of my life when I get sucked into spending a few hours in front of a screen.  Now there is scientific research that validates my personal take on the topic.  A New York Times article titled, “What Happy People Don’t Do” states,

“We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”

Now, if I can just extract myself from my computer more often…

I’m convinced the sun, in moderation, is like a human battery charger.  Beach sand and salt water are the best skin exfoliants.  And the sound of the ocean meeting the land is hypnotic.  The closest I’d get to all of this in Kentucky, mid-November is a tanning bed, store-bought bath salts, and a sound machine. I prefer Puerto Rico