Tag: happiness

The Happiness of Physical Congruence

RilalyLeave a comment

“You have some killer calves bra,” Gunther, the gym rat, said at the gym. I can’t remember if I said, ‘thanks’ or ‘SECURITY!’ but Gunther (pronounced Goon~thur as opposed to Gun~thur), sensed my awkwardness. “Seriously bro, you’ve done some good work. I’m thinking of getting mine done. Gonna get me some pumped up calves.” After some back and forth, he confirmed that meant he was thinking about having calf implants surgically inserted into his legs. “I do all of the calf raises, the farmer’s walk, the Box jumps, and jumping jacks, and look at me, I got nothing down there bro. Look at those puny things! Look at them compared to my thighs, they’re incongruent!”

You ever meet this guy, a guy who appears to have it all, and he obsesses over something so trivial that if I told you about it, you might say, “He was joking. He had to be.” I didn’t bother breaking it down with him to see if he was joking, because why would I? I was there, and I knew how serious he was. I did wonder what motivated this obvious obsession with anatomical perfection, and I wondered how deep it went. Did he think everyone was staring at his “puny calves” the minute he walked into a room? Did he refuse to wear shorts, to avoid exposing his humiliation? Did he blame his parents for giving him such awful genes “down there”. I wondered if he thought that by attaining “pumped up” calves, even if by artificial means, that he might be able to improve his perception by eradicating the inadequacies below his leg pits.

“Are you looking to get into a pageant?” I asked.

“First of all, they’re not called pageants,” he said. “They’re called bodybuilding competitions. And no, I’m not looking for any of that. I just think it’s unfair that I work ten to twenty times harder than people like you, no offense, and I get no results.”

Gunther, the gym guy, had so many admirable, and I’ll say it, enviable traits that if he commissioned a poll of a thousand casual observers, my bet is one in a thousand might notice his “puny calves”. If Gunther were asked to predict the outcome of that poll, however, he would probably predict that that figure to be somewhere around 999 out of a thousand who spot them. “How could they miss them?” he might ask.

I told him that if he hadn’t pointed them out to me, I never would’ve noticed them, and I added, “I doubt that anyone else would either.” He acknowledged that and waved it off, basically admitting that he kind of knew it was his issue.

The idea that he moisturized his skin was obvious, as was the idea that he used a wide variety of hair products to color and treat his hair. Gunther, the gym rat, worked hard to perfect every element of his physical presentation, and that included achieving what bodybuilders call the X-frame: broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and well-developed thighs. This shape creates what experts call “a striking visual taper, proportion, balance, and a symmetrical emphasis that creates a harmonious and powerful aesthetic that all gym rats strive to achieve.” Yet, Gunther couldn’t do anything about his “puny calves”, so he contemplated letting a surgeon do it for him, because “it wasn’t fair” that he couldn’t.

My guess is if another perfectionist, Leonardo da Vinci, decided to give his Vitruvian Man “puny calves”, after studying the ideal proportions of the human form, none of us would notice. Da Vinci would, and Gunther would, because they were far more concerned with achieving anatomical perfection.

We can all understand and appreciate da Vinci’s drive to achieve an artistic representation of perfection, in other words, but there was something almost obnoxious about Gunther’s psychological drive to fix his “incongruity” that when he used that word it stuck with me. I never heard anyone, in the bodybuilding universe, or anywhere else, complain about their incongruity. It was almost as if he thought if he used a different, more creative term, it might exert some special kind of shame for those muscles, and they might finally respond to all of his efforts. And he did speak of these muscles as if they were disembodied entities. Then, he concluded his scorn by saying if they didn’t respond to his wishes, he would find someone (a surgeon) who would.

I don’t know if Gunther eventually purchased that unnecessary, cosmetic surgery, as that would be the last conversation I had with him. If he bought it, I wonder if it helped him feel more congruent. Our immediate guess would be no, as cosmetics only resolve superficial issues. That’s so true it’s almost a fact, but fixing what ails us, or what we think ails us, can have a placebo effect that helps us feel better about ourselves and solves so many other issues. As my science teacher once told me, our initial guesses are often correct, and my initial guess was that Gunther’s feelings of incongruence were so pervasive that the day, the week, or the month after that surgery, he’d find some other incongruity he considered a roadblock to happiness. 

***

Are we happy? Are we happier than we’ve ever been, right here, right now? We’re not as happy as we’ve been, but we’re pretty sure that once forces beyond our control align, we’re going to be happier in the future.

It’s difficult to avoid taking things for granted, but how many of us consider physical congruence an essential element of happiness? Before laughing that off as silly, we need to consider that physical beauty can lead to more confidence, and confidence can lead to greater happiness, and if the congruity of our face equates to beauty, how happy can we be with a big nose? We can get a nose job, but the minute that’s done, it makes our earlobes look flappy. If we lop those off, how congruent are our lips now, and what about our “too narrow” eyes? And, if we have too much forehead, how do we fix that? We often hear that we must accept what our Creator has given or withheld, but to what extent can absolute congruence align with our identity and eventually foster happiness?

We accuse one another of being superficial when we obsess over the physical beauty of others, but what would they think of us if they knew how superficial we are with our own? Good friends and a great family can provide an excellent support system, and making a boatload of money can help even the scales if we love what we’re doing for a living, but none of these elements of life last forever in intangible and tangible ways. Beauty doesn’t last forever either, of course, and we all know that, but instead of appreciating everything we have while we have it, we obsess over the qualities that prevent us from achieving our definition of perfection. 

I know this makes no sense to the healthy, but we should all take a moment to focus our mind’s eye internally, and appreciate how this incredibly efficient machine that we call our body, operates. We’re not talking about the big guys (heart, liver, lungs) that we all know, but the tiny mechanisms in our systems, the cogs, cranks, chains, and linkages that work in conjunction to keep us healthy and happy, because their quiet efficiencies don’t operate at optimum levels forever. And what’s the difference between internal congruence and superficial? Gunther probably wouldn’t even notice his calves if he had trouble breathing, he had heart problems, or some other internal incongruence that cried out for medical attention. His concerns with his calves were as a result of the luxury afforded to those who have achieved so many levels of optimum efficiency that they have to work their way down the list to find one that isn’t.

We’re talking about physical congruence here. We’re talking about how we should factor physical congruence into our huge, multifaceted happiness puzzle. We all know about how reducing stress and achieving emotional stability can lead to happiness, and we’ve all read how diet and exercise can affect mood stability and a general sense of satisfaction, but how many of us look down at our toes and thank our Creator for giving us foot appendages that grew in a congruent manner to provide the typical comfort we enjoy while standing, walking, or just fitting comfortably into a pair of socks?

***

Don Christie had a middle toe that grew too long for the comfort inherent in congruence. An elongated toe might not generate much sympathy from us because, “It’s a long toe! Who cares?” Compared to a person born with a physical abnormality on the face, or any of the truly sad stories we hear about what babies in prenatal units are forced to endure, it’s tough to do anything more than raise an eyebrow at an otherwise healthy man complaining about an abnormally long toe.

Don’s point was that that toe has affected his life in ways most of us take for granted. In order to find comfort standing and walking, Don has had to purchase shoes one size too large to accommodate the space that elongated toe requires. The toe and the shoes he requires, affect his gait pattern, and he has learned to give that toe some slack when he pulls his socks on. It was an annoying attribute when he was a child that grew to a frustration in adulthood, and it’s become a real painful problem, at times, in his senior years. Did it affect his overall sense of happiness? “A little bit, in the ways a toe can affect a day. I’ve adapted, of course, but every once in a while, it becomes a real, painful problem.”  

“If it’s that painful, or that big of a problem, why doesn’t he just have a surgeon lop the elongated portion of it off?” That falls under the “easy answer” umbrella, and the “easier said than done” one. That answer isn’t wrong, of course, but it’s still a toe. It’s an annoying toe at times, and it can prove painful, but it’s still his toe, and he’d obviously much rather deal with it than lop off part of his toe. 

***

Do your ears produce enough wax or too much? The incredibly complex and largely efficient machine we call the human body effectively clears out most excess wax most of the time, but some unlucky few experience a buildup that can lead to an annoying itch, tinnitus, and in some cases, vertigo that can significantly alter an otherwise pleasant Tuesday in June. 

Jack Radamacher was never what we would call a happy person, but he wasn’t miserable, until he started experiencing some hearing loss, a “muffled” sound, and occasional spells of dizziness. The latter was especially concerning to him, and it led him to experience what he considered one of the worst words in the English dictionary, dependent.

“I’d rather die than be dependent on others,” he often said as a younger man, and now, here he was. He didn’t need an arm to hold onto most of the time, but he never knew when a dizzy spell would hit. Prior to his visit to the ear, nose and throat doctor, Jack attributed his hearing loss, and those muffled sounds, to working in a loud machine shop for thirty-eight-years and his age, because he never heard that sometimes the ears neglect to clear out excess wax. Not only did he learn that some ears forget to clear excess wax, he learned that the muffled sounds and dizzy spells he experienced weren’t all age-related.

After the doctor went about cleaning his ears of excessive buildup, Jack experienced what was for him, a revelation.

“I feel cured!” he said when his sense of balance returned, and he no longer experienced muffled sounds. He experienced an odd sense of liberation that led to a greater sense of happiness, until the buildup began again weeks later. When it happened again, he learned about ear wax candles. No one, not even Jack himself, trusted him to do this himself. “The flames generated by the candle can get a little out of control,” his daughter-in-law warned him. So, he was somewhat still dependent on others, but he accepted that if it meant that he could “cure” himself at home on such a regular basis that he achieved a better quality of life as a result.

***

Do you have enough cushion to provide cushion? Some don’t, and we love going after them. “Gil, you got no butt!” we said with laughter. Gil knew that, and he’s known it his whole adult life. It’s why he carries a cushion to the employee cafeteria every day for lunch. “Those chairs are just so uncomfortable,” he said when we ask him about it.

“Huh, I never noticed how uncomfortable these chairs were,” we said. 

“Of course you didn’t,” Gil said in a dismissive manner, “because you have cushion back there.”

We called him “No butt Gil” and one person added, “He’s got back. A long ass back,” but it wasn’t a source of daily conversation.

So, when Gil said that about our biological cushions, seemingly out of nowhere, we didn’t know what he was talking about, until we thought about why he thought the cheap, plastic chairs were so uncomfortable, why he brought that cushion to lunch every day, why he had to wear suspenders, and how he always complained about lower back pain.

Gil thought the jokes were as funny as we did, but the fact remained that Gil had a physical incongruence that diminished his quality of life to some degree. Those of us who have never met a Gil, never placed the sensory delight of comfortable sitting in our happiness equation, because we never considered how the quantity or quality of bun could affect us after a hard day at work where sitting in a relatively comfortable chair provides a reward at the end of the day. Even sitting in cheap, plastic chairs in an employee cafeteria can provide some rewards to the hard worker, if they have sufficient gluteus maximus. We know this now because we know Gil, and we’ve seen him bring that cushion to the lunchroom area.  

Gil’s doctor prescribed that Gil get a gym membership and do certain workouts, with a particular focus on squats, so he could increase the muscle back there, but Gil didn’t have much to work with, and he knew his physical incongruence would prevent him from ever knowing the absolute joy of sitting in a chair, in a manner the rest of us take for granted.

***

“Have you ever had a bad back?” Imelda asked me at the gym. “It goes away, right? What if it didn’t? What if you experienced the worst back pain you’ve ever had, every day, for years? What would you do if you saw every expert, in every field you could think up, and they couldn’t help you? I am not a suicidal person, but I was in such horrible pain, for so long that I thought this was my life now. I just didn’t see how I could go on living like that.”

Imelda and I used to be great friends at our previous place of employment. When we switched jobs, our plan was to always keep in touch and keep connected in some way, but do we ever do that? No, we often leave those people behind. Sometimes, we don’t even remember who we left behind, until we randomly run into them, a decade later, at a gym.

The Imelda I knew back then was such a little thing, and she was someone I considered extremely attractive, because she hit all the bullet points of a small, attractive woman. The woman standing before me now had biceps, triceps, and her shoulders appeared so round and full. She almost looked like a different person, a big sister of the person I once knew. She was ripped, and I thought about all that in all of the complimentary and somewhat insulting ways. She lost all of her beautiful, feminine form, and replaced it with a form that suggested she was rugged and tough looking. She now looked like a person we probably shouldn’t mess with, and I meant that in complimentary and somewhat insulting ways.  

“I was in a car accident, and it really wasn’t even a bad one,” she said. “The woman hit me just right, in a manner that happened to knock me out of alignment.” Imelda went onto to talk about all of the doctors, chiropractors, and massage therapists she visited over the years. “Every time you enter one of these offices, you have hope, and you pray that they are going to be the ones who are going to end it all for you. Then you leave their office, almost in tears, thinking that if you follow their orders it will end it once and for all. They tried, all of them tried, but nothing helped. I was so desperate, at one point, that I accidentally became an addict, addicted to pain meds, the worst of the worst ones,” she said. “They all provided some, limited relief, but the pain, the excruciating pain of not even being able to pick yourself up off the floor, was never far behind the temporary relief those drugs provided.

“When I finally met my Helen Keller, my miracle worker, I thought she was the worst of all. She was a physical therapist who said, ‘There is only so much I can do to help you, and you have to do the rest.’ She was so honest that I considered asking for my money back. What do you mean you can’t help me? What am I doing here, then? Her prescription was working out.  

“Working out?” I said, “I can’t even get off the floor, and you’re telling me to workout?” It made no sense. I thought the massage therapist was an idiot who didn’t understand my level of pain, but I tried it. I did a couple of her low-stress workouts, and I had to admit I felt some relief, some relief as in a little. Then, I worked my way, through her slow, methodical, and prescribed progressions, until I felt even more relief. I told her about it on my next visit, and we cried together, because I thought she saved me, and she did, but it kept coming back. She suggested, after a time, and when she thought I was finally ready, a full-on powerlifting regimen, and I did it,” and here Imelda cried a little, right in front of me, “and she’s my savior now, and I tell her that, and thank her every time I see her.

“I might not be as attractive as I used to be,” she said, and I tried to dispel her of that notion, but she knew. “No, I know that I no longer look cute with all these muscles, but if you knew what I went through for those two long, excruciating years, you’d understand.”

After hearing Imelda’s testimonial, I thought of Gunther’s complaints about his incongruent calves. I thought about how biologists call the human body a marvel of engineering that is also structurally flawed in places, and in various cases. Some people might experience a flaw in their calves ability to respond to specific workouts, but those biologists also direct specific criticism at the structural flaws inherent in the back that make it prone to pain, injury, and dysfunction. Our rush to end our quadrupedal movement and achieve bipedalism is to blame, they say, and some suggest if we never want to have back pain again, we should revert back to the ways of our ancestors and crawl from space to space. Walking is what screwed us all up, because our rush to walk left little time for optimizing the spine’s ability to handle all of the new mechanical stresses bipedal movement caused. Our S-shaped spine enabled balance and flexibility, but it sacrificed some levels of stability when compared to the straighter spines of apes.

So, if Imelda’s testimony taught me nothing else, I learned to appreciate whatever temporary comfort I have, because this marvel of engineering we call our body has structural flaws that are vulnerable to tweaks, and there are no manufacturer’s warranties on these parts either. They’re as is. How was your back today? Good? So good that you didn’t even notice it? Notice it, mentally mark it down as a great day, and be grateful, because it is structurally flawed, and you might learn that one day, the hard way.  

***

“You experienced a vasovagal syncope episode,” the doctor informed AJ Pinter. 

“A vaso what?” AJ asked.

“A vasovagal syncope episode,” the doctor added. “When you were listening to popular podcast, your vagus nerve became overstimulated, causing blood vessels to dilate and pool in the lower body, reducing flow to the brain. Such an episode can also trigger a sudden drop in heart rate and blood pressure, often due to a reflexive response to stress, pain, or fear.”  

There are a number of results that can occur as a result of a vasovagal syncope episode, but in AJ’s experiences, it led him to faint. Most fainting spells are a reflexive response to a high level of stress, pain and fear. These episodes are usually brief, and recovery is quick, but those who study the effect suggest that the best way to experience such an episode, or recover from one, is to do so while lying down. This is impossible to do in most cases, as it’s almost impossible to predict when such episodes will occur.

AJ’s vasovagal syncope episode arrived when he was driving a delivery truck down the road. AJ had a documented history of fainting at the sight of blood, but that’s so common that documented research shows that 15% of the population faint at the sight of blood. What isn’t as common, and something an overwhelming majority of us have never heard of before, is that some hemophobia (the fear of blood) sufferers cannot maintain consciousness after hearing a discussion about blood. AJ’s case is so uncommon that some suggest that sufferers of those who lose consciousness as a result of hearing such a discussion could number under 1% of the population.

AJ experienced just such an episode while listening to a popular podcast containing an in-depth discussion of blood. When AJ felt the symptoms coming on, he tried to pull off to the side of road, while simultaneously trying to turn the podcast off, but he couldn’t manage to do either in time. He lost consciousness while driving and hit an oncoming truck head-on. AJ broke bones in both hips in his pelvic region. If AJ is now able to endure the arduous, lengthy, and painful rehab his doctors prescribed for him, he’ll relearn how to walk but he may never be able to walk without a noticeable limp, and he’ll likely experience moderate to extreme pain for the rest of his life.

“And this happened because he heard a discussion about blood?” we asked the informant detailing for us the catastrophic consequences of AJ’s obscure condition. We asked that a couple times with an ‘Are you sure you have that right?’ tone, because we never heard of a person passing out as a result of hearing another talk about blood. 

“AJ said it was an in-depth, detail-oriented discussion,” the man informed us, but that didn’t help us understand the matter any better. After working through the particulars of this discussion, we immediately thought about Gunther “the gym rat”, and how Gunther and AJ represented two ends of the spectrum of physical incongruities and their impact on personal happiness. Gunther chose to see an inadequacy that few would notice while failing to recognize the privilege of his otherwise healthy and fully-functional body. He chose to believe that it was “unfair” that he had such “puny calves”. AJ’s story, on the other hand, illustrates true unfairness: a random, obscure condition that upended his life in an instant. Gunther’s fixation is a choice to dwell on an issue most of us consider a non-issue, whereas AJ had no choice in the face of his medical condition. This contrast critiques Gunther’s lack of gratitude and perspective, suggesting that his pursuit of superficial congruence blinds him to the broader, more meaningful aspects of happiness—like the ability to walk, drive, or live without chronic pain. In that light, AJ’s tragedy illustrates the absurdity of Gunther’s self-imposed suffering, framing it as a cautionary tale about the dangers of obsessing over minor flaws at the expense of appreciating one’s overall well-being.

***

Some of us have knee-jerk, impulsive reactions to tales of the incongruent. “They’re weak!” some say. “How can a man survive, or thrive, if he cannot maintain consciousness during a discussion of blood?” Others react with sympathy and/or a sense of appreciation. Some might say that they’re put here, in our lives, to help us gain a renewed sense of appreciation for the idea of physical and mental congruence that we should cherish. 

We rarely think about how our relative levels of congruence produces happiness, until we meet the incongruent. An enlarged heart, prostate, shrunken kidneys, or brain atrophy are more common incongruences that elicit sympathy, but how much sympathy do we have for a man with an elongated toe? If a man was dumb enough to complain about a lack of gluteal muscles, and he did so in manner that suggested he was upset about it, would we be able to restrain our laughter long enough to express sympathy?

“The man can’t sit in most chairs comfortably,” we say to scorn those who cannot control their impulses. “And he experiences chronic back pain as a result.” It’s funny, and it’s not, because most of us don’t consider sitting in a chair or walking on a sidewalk without discomfort one of the luxuries of life, until we have our perspective altered. 

If we hear the terms congruent and incongruent, we often hear them in relation to social, psychological, physiological, philosophical, and spiritual concerns. We rarely talk about the physical, because it just feels so superficial. With all the problems in the world, both in general, and those we learn others experience, it almost feels narcissistic and trivial to complain about an apparent lack of buttocks, an elongated toe, or excessive wax build up. Yet, if we can’t walk or sit without some discomfort, it can affect our quality of life.

When we give thanks for all that we have, we often include good health, but we don’t really mean it. We say it, because that’s just something good people say. A part of us knows that good health can be fleeting, but it’s difficult to appreciate good health, or the incredible machine we have running life for us, until we hear others’ stories. We normally only appreciate such functions when we recover from deficiencies, pain, or some form of tragedy, but when we hear stories of poor health as a result of some odd physical incongruity, it renews our appreciation for even minor functions we currently have operating in peak form, because we know they’re not going to last forever.

The Psychology of Travel

RilalyLeave a comment

“The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” is a line that service industry employees know well. The squeaky wheels are our rant and ravers, adults that throw child-like temper tantrums. They scream and throw things, and they call the service employee before them every profane name they can think up to get what they want. Squeaky wheels know that the standards of the service industry are set up in such a way that no self-respecting manager is going to allow a squeaky wheel to stand at their desk and create a spectacle. They know the standards of the employee’s job duties are set up to appease the screaming minority that call corporate offices and write letters. Squeaky wheels also know that frustrated, low-level employees –those who want to rebel against these standards and treat the screaming minority in the same manner they treat the more deferential majority – are mere stepping stones to a manager that will step in and just give the squeaky wheels all the grease they need applied to make them go away.

“Imagine what it must be like to live like that every day of your life,” the front desk manager informed me after my frustrations reached a boiling point with one particular shrieking wheel, and the favorable treatment he received from the manager after the man acted like a petulant child that wants a lollipop. ‘You’re not going to get anything if you continue to act that way young man,’ was my stance, but my manager stepped in and gave away the farm.

The idea that no discernible punishment awaited the hysterical man that stood before me was the source of my frustration. I grew up believing that there was a social, karmic contract that we all enter into where we attempt to treat others the way we want to be treated, and that the definition of character is formed on how we treat those that can do nothing for us. Watching the way this man acted, and the way management reacted, led me to believe that those standards are nothing but mottos that we’ve developed to keep the rubes in line, while the shrieking minority walks away with all the spoils. The gist of my more reasonable manager’s reply was that this shrieking wheel’s punishment for acting the way he did, was having to live the way he presumably lives.

“A person cannot be that obnoxiously miserable,” he stated, “without being obnoxiously miserable.”

No one involved in this obnoxiously miserable man’s spectacle knew what happened to him after we resolved his issue. We concluded, however, that the remaining moments of his trip would be as miserable as the rest of his life would be, because he was miserable, and that the greatest impediment to him having an enjoyable trip was the decision he made to take him with him.

Happy people tend to get lost in the shuffle in the course of a day at a hotel. They do not have chocolate truffle apologies sent to their room by the manager, they do not have extra-amenities lying in wait for them in their room, and they will not gain the sense of satisfaction that the miserable must gain by conquering an eighteen-year-old service industry employee’s desire to do everything they can to avoid rewarding the obnoxiously miserable. Happiness has its own rewards in all of the intangible ways everyone knows, but some it appears, would rather have a chocolate truffle.

It’s been my experience, working at a hotel in a decidedly non-tourist spot, that happy people can have great, enjoyable vacations no matter where they decide to travel, whom they vacation with, or what their vacation destination has to offer. Their happiness is so infectious that it bleeds over into their daily life, in much the same manner misery does for the miserable. To the happy, the very idea of travel is but a luxury afforded to those who know how to budget accordingly. The miserable, however, can find something to be miserable about in the most luxurious, five-star destination spots the world has to offer, because they make the unfortunate decision to take them, and all of their baggage, with them on vacation.

No vacation can make a person happier, or any more miserable, than they already are. The weather will not act according to plan, everything will be more expensive than calculated, some members of the service industry will be miserable jerks in a manner that makes a vacation more miserable, and a vacationer will run into some unreasonable jerks –in the general population of the locale to which you travel– because these people always seem to find a way to be miserable. It’s been my experience, on both sides of the travel industry, that Murphy’s Law (whatever can go wrong will go wrong) will come into play whenever one decides to go on a vacation. I’ve also learned that Murphy’s Law doesn’t apply to places and things as much as it applies to people, miserable people that seek out misery.

If you are one of these miserable people, and you’ve arrived at the realization that the greatest obstacle to having a great time on vacation is that you have to take you with you, you may want to consider another course of action that will save you, and those you encounter on vacation, a great deal of headache and heartache by finding some way to avoid taking you with you. If that means staying home and watching TV, stay home and watch TV. You can complain about the dwindling number of shrimp in your takeout, or the amount of commercials on TV, from the comfort of your own home, and you won’t have to ruin a vacation for all the happy people around you that enjoy all that life has to offer.

Head in the Sand Gains

Traveling will not change a person, their intelligence level, or any personality traits that are endemic to character. If a person believes that the only way one can know anything about the Vadoma tribe of western Zimbabwe (called “The Ostrich People” in a derogatory fashion) is to travel there and shake hands with a tribal leader, they make a mistake by degrees. They might be able to use a line like this one for the rest of their life: “Oh, you simply must visit the Vadoma people personally. Gluck Gluck, the tribal chief, is an amiable host.” It may enrich a life somewhat to touch the Ectrodactyly-ridden toes of the fraction of this tribe that suffers from the ostrich-like condition, and that may provide a person a conversation piece that lasts the rest of their life that centers around the smell of their refuse, the particular foods that they eat, and the opportunity they had to share that quaint meal with the tribe, or they might even gain a perspective on their life that gives them a renewed appreciation of the extravagances life has afforded them. They will not become smarter, happier, or more miserable by travel alone.

There are people –and they know who they are–who believe that they are somehow worldlier, smarter, and more experienced than others are, based on the quantity and quality of their travels.

“How would you know?” a world traveler (who traveled beyond our borders once) asked me in a debate, completely unrelated to travel. “You haven’t traveled extensively.”

Few people are as bold, or as stark as that, but there does appear to be an element of this mindset in most world travelers. We should all take a moment out of our lives to inform them that some can derive intelligence by reading, and by the manner in which one studies a subject. If a person is one that already knows most of what there is to know about everything, and I think we can say that based on our experience with most world travelers think that they approach most subjects with this mindset, their prospects for greater intelligence are probably going to be limited. If their general nature is such that they approach various subjects without ego, and an insatiable curiosity, their intelligence level may reach a “boundless” characterization by those that listen to them, and they can accomplish this without travel.

This person that questioned my level of intelligence, based on comparatively limited travels, appeared to believe that by traveling in tour groups –on the yellow brick roads that the travel industry built to allow them to view the indigenous people of third world countries from behind proverbial velvet ropes that protected them from “icky” involvement with the indigenous, and basically allowed them to view indigenous people in the manner zoo patrons might view a rhinoceros– that she was somehow smarter, or worldlier than me. She was there, in western Zimbabwe, and no one can ever take that away from her, but she didn’t eat with the people, sleep with them, or spend any significant amount of time with them. She viewed them in the manner zoo patrons view baboons, refraining –we can only assume – from tossing them peanuts.

“I did it for the experience,” is something she might have said. “I did it to be a well-rounded character that has a greater perspective about the world.” 

No one can deny these possibilities, but listening to her one can’t help but think that she took this particular, third world vacation with an unspoken enthusiasm for the mileage it might gain her in the face of those that haven’t. What good is taking such a vacation, if a person doesn’t talk about it, feel worldlier in its aftermath, and lord it over those that have never taken such an excursion?

If this is not enough for a world traveler, and that world traveler wants to view a world beyond the proverbial velvet ropes that line the chamber of commerce’s yellow brick road, and they want to step into the world of adventurous travel, they may want to check to make sure they have an American, OHBM (outrageously hot, blonde mom) in their tour group. If there isn’t one, my advice would be to find the closest thing available and ask her and her husband to join you on your adventurous excursion. The reason for this is that no country –that makes any revenue from tourism– wants to see their country mentioned in the U.S. media, and there’s nothing the U.S. media loves more than a “Something happened to an outrageously hot, blonde mom (OHBM)” story. When something happens to an American overseas, it makes the news. Depending on the severity of what happened, the story may only make the local news and a few internet outlets, but the ability to tell a heart wrenching “Something happened to an American OHBM” story, coupled with the image of that OHBM, might just land the story Malaysian Airlines flight 370 style coverage. One has to guess that the minute a member of a country’s chamber of commerce gets one look at this OHBM, they might assign her their country’s special forces to make sure she isn’t so much as spoken to by the indigenous.

Know Thyself, Know Thy Family

Domestic family vacations offer a far less dangerous adventure, of course, but some of those vacations involve reunions with long lost uncles and aunts. We’ve known them our whole lives, but our love for them jades our perspective. This trip makes it clear that even some of our people, in accordance with the ratio of all people, are miserable. We might acknowledge the idea that every family has one person that is a little angst-ridden, but we never thought one of ours could be that person, until we witness a side of them we never saw before.

Those of us exposed to this side of humanity, take comfort in the idea that we can always return home to our immediate family. We know our family, and we have a firmer grasp on how our parents raised those people. We might reserve some space for individual variance, but we cling to the idea that those who have ventured too far from the path will eventually have a redemptive “come to Jesus” moment that brings them back. We might find those moments laced with regret, but even if it’s not, we continue to hope that that moment will arrive before it’s too late. They usually don’t for reasons that are foreign to us. They usually don’t, because some people don’t believe that they’re been headed in the wrong direction. It’s there course, and if they could see that path, they would’ve corrected course long before the need for a redemptive moment arrived. What usually happens, in my experience with such matters, is that the finger crossers realize they don’t know their people half as well as they thought. These people are miserable, angry people who have some psychological underpinnings that prevent them from acknowledging what everyone else sees, and they have to live with themselves, but so do we.

We’ve all witnessed redemptive moments arrive for the subjects of our concern, and we’ve waited on half a bun while their “sure to arrive” realization tottered on the cusp. We’ve witnessed all of the past events that should’ve led them to a realization, and some of us have even had others corroborate our version of those events, in the company of our subjects. To our utter amazement, these people manage to move away from their vulnerability on the matter, they may offer some sort of excuse regarding their involvement, or they might inform those concerned that they were not involved in the matter. They might even accuse those of us that suggest that they have any vulnerability on the matter of either rewriting history, or being limited in our view on the matter. Long story short, those waiting for an “aha!” moment where the subject comes to the realization that they’ve been doing it wrong in ways large or small, are rarely granted satisfaction.

Bill Murray said that if a person is considering a wedding proposal, it might be a good idea to take their significant other on a long, extended trip with them before doing so. “Travel the world with them,” Murray suggests. The import of this suggestion has something to do with the stresses and strains of boarding a plane, transferring flights, engaging with hotel employees, visiting tourist destinations together, and all of the interactions in between that involves elements outside the other person’s routine. Watch how they engage with service industry employees, examine the trip in the aftermath, and gauge how they conducted themselves throughout. Did they make the most out of every day? Did they inhale the small, otherwise inconsequential sights and sounds of the preferred destination, or did they impatiently attempt to keep the vacation on track? In the aftermath of the vacation, how did the prospective mate describe the trip to others? Did they lord it over people that they had been to one particular location that the others had not? Coupled with all the virtues and pleasantries of travel, are the stresses and strains, and how a person deals with them can define them in ways that may not be apparent in those situations where they are able to keep their best foot forward. The point of the Murray suggestion, given in a prospective groom’s toast, was that people thinking about getting married should place their prospective mate in situations where they don’t know anyone else is looking. It might give a person some insight into whether their prospective mate is a happy person or a miserable person before they invite that person to join them in their journey through life, and how that journey might end up being a happier one if they decide not to take them with them.

Finding the Better, Happier Person Through Change

RilalyLeave a comment

Are you happy? I mean happy. You can tell me. I’m just an anonymous writer. Are you happy? Whisper it to me. You’re not? Well, what are you going to do about it? Are you just going to sit there like a chump while the rest of us are living in the land of sunshine with fortune smiling down upon us? Go out there and get you some happy sistas and brothas!

I used to believe I was on the cusp of being happy. I thought I was so close that if my Dad would just loosen the purse strings a little and purchase this one, solitary item of the moment for me, it would launch me through the entrance of the land of hope and sunshine. I wasn’t running a con game. I truly believed that if my Dad would just purchase this one pack of KISS cards for me, it would go a long way to helping me achieve my ideal state.

“No!” was what he said (cue the dark and foreboding music). He told me “No” on more than one occasion, and there were even times when he would follow that ‘No!’ up with a heaping pile of “Shut up!” (Cue the B roll, creepy B actor with bushy eyebrows that point inward, playing my dad in this reenactment.)

A part of me believed that the constant “No’s!” I received from him manifested into a personality disorder in which I wanted to buy things, but I was scared that I wasn’t worthy of them. Another part of me wondered what kind of man I would be today if he purchased everything I wanted. Would I be a spoiled brat? Would I have some sort of obnoxiousness about me that expected to be able to have everything I wanted (see deserved) regardless if I had to go into debt to get it? Would I be one of those “I deserve it” adult babies who permeate the culture? Another part of me knows that I would’ve had to work my through whatever psychosis my dad chose to inflict on me, and that I would probably end up in the exact same place I’m in right now.

The point is that most of us believe we are in some location on the emotional equator just south of happy, and some of us will live our whole lives down there blaming our parents for it. Most of us are not miserable or depressed in the sense that we need medical assistance. Most of us are just a little south of unhappy, and a little unsatisfied with the way our lives turned out. We had incompetent parents, we grew up in broken homes, we never had any money, we were bullied in school, and our grades weren’t what they could’ve and should’ve been, and if we were able to do it all over again … We wouldn’t want to go through it all over again.

We are who we are, based upon what we’ve been through? Are we happy? Could we be happier? What do you got?

Was I unhappy in that temporary sense that every teen is unhappy when their parent tells them no? I’m quite sure that if a talent agent spotted me in the dramatic aftermath of one of my dad’s denials, they would’ve had their guy call my guy, and said, “That kid’s got the goods.”

As evidence of the fact that my dad did buy me things, I was one of the first kids on my block who had all of the cards necessary to complete the puzzle on the card backs. Did any of the items my dad purchased for me make me happy? I’m sure they did, temporarily, but throughout my reflective examinations, I have found those moments conspicuously absent. I’m sure I received some sort of validation from those sparse moments in life, until the next time my dad and I went to the department store. The next time we went to a store, I had the same notion of being on the cusp of happiness again, and I believed his decision could affect whether or not I would end up in a land of sunshine once again. When he decided not to make those purchases, the cyclical drama would begin again. The question is, was I so unhappy that my definition of happiness was dependent on my dad’s decisions in department stores, or did I enjoy casting him as the bad guy role in the end credits of my psychodrama?

What I thought I was talking about, when I talked to my Dad about making these purchases, was definition. I wanted to be a somebody who had a certain something that someone else had. I wanted to be a have in a world where I felt like a have not, and I knew that those who have are happier. I was also talking about fulfillment, whether I knew it or not. I was talking about a patch, or a hotfix, to correct a bug in my operating system that I thought would help me live through the teenage, “all hope is lost” software program that I just downloaded to my hard drive. I thought was talking about helping him help me become a real player in a world of people that had such products.

How many otherwise unhappy people had parents purchase those KISS cards for them at that seminal checkout counter of their lives? How many of them walked away realizing that that was it. One simple pack of KISS cards was all it took. That moment may have occurred thirty-five years ago, but I’m happy now. I reached the point, after all those years, of fundamental happiness. I have no wants or desire any more. I am what you could call a fulfilled man.

“And Dad, it was those KISS cards that you purchased, when I was all but thirteen years of age, that accomplished that for me. I find it hard to believe too, but all I can say is I told you so.”

Are we happy people in a fundamental sense, or do we define fundamental happiness based on attaining things? If we experience fundamental unhappiness, we may not know what caused it, but we know we need things, and change, and things that change us. We need constant change. Change results in definition and redefinition, until we achieve the ideal state of being that we believe is forever beyond our reach, but one solitary purchase away.

We are oysters in search of a process through which we can change our interiority to protect us from our internal intruders. It’s silly to believe that one pack of KISS cards, of course, as we need layers upon layers of calcium carbonate to shield us from the forces of interiority, until we create that pearl. This process is similar, yet different, from the outer shell we create to protect us from possible external intruders.

The intruder inside us is unhappiness, and to defeat it we need to undergo changes equivalent to those the oyster uses. We’re all animals after all, and we’re required to change, adapt, and evolve throughout life for our survival and for survival of the species? It’s natural, it’s science, and we’re not that much different from the oyster?

Are the changes we require biological, sometimes, but sometimes we just need some sort of change to give us a lift out of the tedium of today, regardless what we did yesterday, to give us a brighter tomorrow. If we’re unhappy, in a manner we define, how do we achieve fundamental and constant happiness? To what do we resort? How do we define ourselves, and if we make sweeping changes, are we ever happy in the aftermath, or are we in need of more change?

✽✽✽

A friend of mine resorted to drastic change. She pursued it. She achieved it. She needed it. The drastic change was so elemental to her makeup that she believed it bisected her personal timeline into a B.C/A.D. demarcation. When she and I talked –after years of separation from the drastic change– she no longer wanted to discuss the B.C. (before change) life that I knew. That discussion seemed irrelevant to her compared to the A.D. (after decision) lifestyle that she was now enjoying. She was no longer the person I knew. She changed, and any observer could see that my attempts to relive our past bored her. Since it had been so long since we last spoke, however, the past was the only thing we had in common. It frustrated her. She found a way to make this conversation relevant, or enjoyable to her, by asking me how the characters of our shared past would’ve reacted to her drastic change … if they had lived long enough to see it.

The question that I would’ve loved to ask her –as if I didn’t already know the answer– is did any of these fundamental changes do anything to help her achieve greater fundamental happiness. An inevitable ‘yes’ would follow, for change is good, change is always good, but more change is better. Once she accomplished these drastic changes, was she able to wipe those memories of a rough upbringing off the slate? Yes she was. Did these changes accomplish everything she hoped they would? Yes they did. These questions would go to the very heart of why she decided she needed change, and very few would admit they were an utter waste of time, but the greater question would be was this change so complete that she would no longer need further, drastic changes in future? I’m quite sure that the next time I run into her, she will have undergone a number of other, drastic changes, now that she’s married a man that can afford them for her.

“Could you achieve the same amount of happiness without those drastic changes?” I would’ve loved to ask her.

“Yes,” I’m sure she would say, “And I did try them. Nothing happened. I needed change.” Fair enough, but how much effort did you put into taking inventory of everything you have that should make you happy, versus everything you could have that could make you happy, and how much have you lost in the pursuit of these total transformations?

If we run across the rare individual who admits that their transformational changes didn’t accomplish what they thought they should, they will have their remedy all ready for us. They will tell us that they need more changes, other changes, and a metamorphosis into something no one considered before. The point of all these changes is to save them from what they were, or to prevent them from becoming what they might become if they don’t change. At some point in this process, they invest so much in change that they cannot turn back.

Are we ever happy? I mean happy! Or, is happiness a state of mind that can achieve internal activation after a series of events occur in a very specific way that we define? We’ve suffered damages that leave us damaged, and we can’t fix them on our own. We have flaws, but there is hope. There is always hope. We can change, and changes can change us. We have the money. We have the technology. We can rebuild it. Better than we were before. Better…stronger…faster…happier. We can make more money, with a different job, a better job. We can have more love … more sex … better sex if we can find a way to change. We might consider having an affair on our spouse, as that could shake things up, cause some turmoil, and lead to couple’s therapy and renewal of sorts that could lead to makeup sex. An affair could also lead to a divorce, but what is divorce? Divorce can be messy and awful, but it can also lead to change, drastic change. We might need pharmaceuticals, and alcohol to help us through it, but it could lead us to refocus on our beauty and losing divorce weight, as we become more concerned with our appearance. We might buy better products and supplements that could lead to more gym time that will lead us to be thinner and happier, until it dawns on us that tummy tucks, collagen injections, and more colonics could change us quicker and better. We’ll need more boob, or better boobs, at some point that will lead us to feel younger, better, and thinner. We’ll have more definition, we’ll be more feminine, or less feminine, and more masculine, and who cares about gender specifics anyway? We could live the rock and roll lifestyle. We’ll have more “me” time, but that could lead to more alone time that could lead to more introspection and some depression. It always does. It will also lead us to focus on the fact that we need better appliances, more extravagant vacations, and more “me” time and greater self-indulgence, until we get what we deserve. Something different. Hey, I’ll try anything once. Change…happiness…change…repeat if necessary.