Diary Entry # 2: How Can I Teach Happiness, I"m Too Depressed!

June 12, 2010

I am in downward facing dog when I decide that I have to write this about the class on happiness. 


In the four weeks since I wrote the first post, I have been in a downward spiral. I have descended into a funk the likes of which I haven’t seen for a few months.

I’ve started the Zoloft, which always means I’m scared and feel like there is no hope that I’ll emerge from the depression.

I don’t want to be depressed. I want to be happy. I want so much to be happy so I guess that I will just say a prayer right here, please God, show me the way.

My husband reminds me that this crash seems to happen at the end of every semester. After the madness of grading is all done, I feel like there is no purpose to life. I have nothing pressing on me, and thus, life becomes so boring that I can barely face the next day.

No matter that we went to Italy for two weeks. When I am in this horrible state of mind, it doesn’t seem to matter what I do. My husband suggested that I start a kind of “HAPPINESS” journal about creating the “happiness” class. It might help to motivate me. Oddly enough, I am starting the happiness journal depressed.

I phoned my friend Karen Jahn and confided in her.

She told me that I’m like all those men who stop working and just die, because they can’t find any purpose to life without work. “You go through this every summer,” she offered. Yuck. She’s right and I wish she weren’t.

She told me that she is reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Bright-Sided, which deals with what she considers American's rather silly and unreasonable reliance on positivity. She suggests that the American obsession with happiness is a source of our weakness (witness the book's subtitle: "How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.”


In particular, she suggests that the idea that we can fight cancer with an endlessly positive attitude is misguided, short-sighted and perhaps, even dangerous.

I do not agree with her, perhaps because I was a poster child for positivity when I was sick with lymphoma. Oddly enough, when I was sick with cancer in 2002 and 2003, I didn’t feel the least bit depressed (scared sometimes maybe but not depressed.)

In those days, ironically, I didn’t need anti-depressants!

I had a purpose: fighting cancer. Staying positive.

Staying alive. Getting better.

I think it’s because I had such a clear purpose: cure and heal myself.

I wrote a ton of poetry to get through cancer. I collected all the poetry later on into a book I named, “Riding My Kite Through Lightning.”

I certainly don't think that every person will be cured of their cancer simply because they smile all day. But in my case, I didn't see any other way to endure the treatment.  I found it essential that I willed myself into positivity each and every day.

Now I just need to figure out how to be happy without having the cancer. I just want to be happy.

I JUST WANT TO BE HAPPY.

And maybe that is why I am starting this class.

I will say it again, as if it is a prayer: I JUST WANT TO BE HAPPY, and then, I just want to show others how to do the same thing.

I am quite certain that my meditation will carry me, and show me the way through this BLUE PERIOD.

In meditation we often set intentions or objectives. So I will give it a try, here is my first objective as I start developing this class:

OBJECTIVE ONE:

To find a way to stay positive, and enjoy life, and feel purposeful WITHOUT having cancer, for heaven’s sake. Please make this possible, I pray.

I told my friend Karen that I think the first thing I have to rethink is the title of this class (she agreed.)

It’s a mistake to call it a class in happiness, for a host of reasons, not the least of which the students will think, ah, easy class, quick fix. BE HAPPY. Easy A.

NOT!

It isn’t a quick fix, this search for happiness. The last few days, it’s felt like slogging through a ton of sand or snow.

It feels like incredibly hard work to be authentically happy. And what exactly does that mean, AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS (that is the title of the book by Martin Seligman, one of the fathers of the Positive Psychology movement and someone apparently that Barbara Ehrenreich does not feel very positively about.)

Do I know what I’m talking about here? Does he?

I have a lot to learn before I can teach this class. I stare at the list of books I have on the counter, including a tome by Aristotle, “The Nichomachean Ethics," in which he says that the pursuit of happiness is the most basic human pursuit, one that underlies all other activities.


I sit here thinking sad thoughts. I think, I am so unhappy how can I possibly teach this class?

Today I think that there is a great big IF in my teaching this class.

One thing I know, though,

The class will have to include a consideration of mindfulness

and consciousness and the self, and how we might try to use writing and thinking and meditation and mindfulness and maybe yoga to change the way we think and feel.

OK, so with that, I want to go back to downward facing dog and get on with my morning yoga. Enough yakking. J

The Happiness Diary, Entry One: May 14, 2010

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking, and reading, about happiness. And the more I read, the more I think how happy other people might be if they were reading along side me.

I'm thinking about happiness because I want to teach a class on the subject next year. I am following in the footsteps of an amazing teacher at Harvard, whose course on happiness (he started it in 2002) was at one point the most popular course at Harvard University.

So I could do worse than try to teach a class like that at my university.

The reason I want to teach this class is very simple: I've been teaching literature, journalism and creative writing at the college level for almost a dozen years and the number of depressed and completely dysfunctional students seems to be on the rise.

I was told by students this semester that the mental health clinic at the University is so swamped and overwhelmed by desperate kids that the clinic is starting to turn students away if they have other counseling resources available to them at home.

Maybe it's the economy.

Maybe it's this increasingly crazy pace at which we live -- all wired up and hooked to screens and Ipods and always on the run.

One thing is definitely clear: it's getting harder to get students to show up in class. And when they show up, it's hard to ignore the pain and anguish on so many of their faces.

Last night, I finished grading for the semester, and I gave out a D minus and an F, unusual for me. I would have had another D except that I chased that particular student (a senior) down to get his final paper.

I know I know, no teacher should have to go chasing a senior in college down for his final paper, but in this case, there were extenuating circumstances.

Another student in the class -- one who got a C plus -- spent part of her final paper (also late) writing very eloquently about why she has had such an abysmal 2010.

It started on New Year's Eve, with a horrifying tale that now explains to me why she was absent a miserable 13 or 14 times. Again, there would be good justification for failing that student on absences alone, but this person really tried, and really suffered all semester.

I'm not sure what we can do as a society to address these deep emotional chasms amongst our young people, but I think at the University level, we had better begin to address this issue.

Interestingly enough, at the same time our desperation levels are growing, so too are our insights into how we might become happier. One area in particular that is a gold mine: the field of mindfulness.

Just try doing a google search and see what comes up. (JUST READ SOME OF THE POSTS ON THE HUFF PO "Living" site!) It's everywhere, this idea of mindfulness!

There are a growing number of research projects demonstrating that mindfulness -- which involves a kind of moment-by-moment awareness of life, and its many riches --has great potential for reducing stress and anxiety,and giving people of all ages the tools to manage life's "issues."

Of course, we love to think that we invent things. But the field of mindfulness -- meditation -- is ancient, a long Eastern practice from many spiritual traditions.
But in recent years, western societies have been re-discovering the Eastern practices. Curiously, at the university where I teach, an enterprising graduate student in psychology --named Nicholas Van Dam --is conducting research on mindfulness and stress reduction and his funding comes from ...

the Dalai Lama (actually it's the Mind and Life Institute but that organization is funded by the Dalai Lama.)

Over the next months, I will be sharing some of what I've been reading. But I won't wait to tell what I read this morning in the book, Happier, by that Harvard professor, Tal Ben-Shahar.

As a society, we Americans are far less happy than other far poorer nations like Afghanistan or Nigeria.

Why, in the midst of our riches, are we so unhappy?

Because happiness doesn't come from riches. Nor does it come from stacking up achievements; in fact, Ben-Shahar suggests that those "rat-racers" (many of whom go to Harvard!) who endlessly chase success inevitably end up in a kind of "now what?" situation where it makes no sense to keep chasing success.

Happiness doesn't come from having things. And true happiness isn't conditional, either. Even though most of us think "I WILL BE HAPPY WHEN...then fill in the blank:

when I get the perfect job...

when I get a new and more beautiful house...

when I get a BMW (one of my students once told me that a particular car was definitely the KEY to his happiness!)

But that is not how happiness works. Of course A NEW HOUSE OR A NEW CAR OR A NEW DRESS OR A NEW GIRLFRIEND will contribute to satisfaction. But they aren't going to give you the kind of lasting happiness that carries over from one day to the next (well, maybe the girlfriend will :).

True happiness, according to Tal Ben Shahar (and others), is a quiet inside job. It's really a matter of learning to appreciate whatever you have at your fingertips. It's the ability to see the positive in every situation (even so-called disasters.) It's the knack for enjoying what seem to be very little things: things like looking out the window, as I am now, and gazing at tree. Or it's sitting with a friend, enjoying a cup of tea or a delicious cup of coffee.

Or it's the gentle touch my husband just laid on my head as he headed to his study to make a phone call.

It's a moment-by-moment process that most of us generally dismiss as we rush around the office or our homes or the mall trying to "get somewhere" or do something or buy something.

The point about happiness is that we are already there, if we just stop, and open our eyes and realize it.

Can "Flipping the Script" on Life Stories Make us Happier? Try It!

Most of us will say that we want to be more happy and peaceful. But how we do that?

One thing we can do is to try to take the sting out of our most trying relationships. Addressing the "dramas" in our lives, and finding new ways to re-see, re-think and rewrite these dramas may help.

OK. First a little background.

Think about the human mind as a kind of word or story machine. The mind -- the intricate workings of which we hardly understand -- encodes all experience in words and stories, pictures and images and sensory impressions.

Every single thought we have is a word creation. A projection. Every thought we have is a kind of story. A made-up story about how things are, or even more accurately, how we perceive things to be.

This fascinates me in part because I am a fiction writer and I just love stories and write them all the time. But it also fascinates me because it has everything to do with whether or not we are happy.

This spring, at my University, I am teaching a brand new interdisciplinary class in Happiness. The class includes readings in philosophy, psychology, narrative theory, neuroscience, as well as a few novels, some poetry and short fiction. We are also taking an eight-week mindfulness class, meeting once a week on Wednesday afternoons.

One important thing we are considering this spring: the notion that the stories we tell ourselves are critically important to how we feel about ourselves, and how healthy we are.

It stands to reason that If we tell ourselves depressing stories, and if we look at the world in a negative light, then chances are that the world around us will be depressing.

But if we flip the script and tell ourselves upbeat and positive stories (within reason of course), then we are likely to be happier and have more positive outcomes in our lives. If you doubt this, try reading some of the emerging literature on mindfulness and positive psychology.

In particular, pick up a copy of Martin Seligman's book, Authentic Happiness, or try reading ex-Harvard professor Tal Ben Shahar's book, Happier (a very quick read, with exercises to boot.) Definitely find a copy of Sharon Begley's Train the Mind, Change the Brain, which is chock full of evidence that demonstrates that we can change our physical brains by thinking in new ways.

Begley lays out a huge array of research findings, including an exciting collaboration between neuroscientists and Buddhist monks -- including the Dalai Lama. This research supports the notion that the brain is infinitely mutable or plastic, and that what if we train ourselves to think in new ways we can find more peace and happiness.

Meanwhile, you might want to try this little experiment; it might make you happier, or at least it is likely to give you some important perspective and crucial insight into one or more of the dramas that plague your life.

OK, so start by thinking about somebody you would like to kill.

Or at least, try thinking about somebody who makes you very very angry. Or very very resentful. Or very very sad and unhappy.

Think perhaps about a recent argument that you've had with this person. One of those screaming matches. Or, maybe one of those cold shoulder experiences, that bitter feeling when you would rather slit your throat than talk to the person who makes you angry.

Recall a situation, something that happened with this person that made you as angry as you could possibly be. Maybe you will even want to write down this story that lit your fury.

Now try this, if you can. Try to flip the story.

Try, just for a moment, to step into the shoes of THE OTHER PERSON, and try to tell the story from your opponent's point of view. Try to, if you can, BE that other person who made you so murderously angry. Or be the person you resent. Or the mother or father who makes or made you or sad or whatever.

The important thing is to feel the situation, from the other point of view. Again, if you can do it, try writing it down.

Go over every moment of that last argument, but force yourself to do it in the eyes and ears and shoes and hat of that other person. Make sure to feel every bit of emotion that your antagonist feels. And especially, try to feel WHY that person feels what he or she feels.

If you do it, I promise you that you will not hate the person you hate quite as much as you did. Or at least, you will have a much better perspective. This exercise may give you insight into why they behave or feel toward you the way they do.

This is one of the exercises that we are going to do this upcoming semester in the Happiness class. We are going to "Flip the Script." We are going to take some of our journal writing, writing in which we detail emotional pain, and we are going to fold it into fiction.

The idea is to get people out of telling the same old stories. The idea is to stop the endless rumination that traps us by creating new stories. The idea is to write fiction that transforms the energy of the pain and makes us moves forward. Ultimately the goal is to move somewhere more peaceful with some personal drama, a drama that holds us back from feelings of happiness.

So, how exactly will we write these fictions that flip the script?

I supervised three students in an independent study this past fall, a kind of test run for the Happiness class. The students started the semester by doing extensive journal exercises. Relying on James Pennebaker's wonderful text, Opening Up, the students wrote regularly (at least three or four times a week) about situations in their lives that were emotionally troubling. (Pennebaker's research documents extraordinary improvements in health when students keep journals in this fashion.)

We never discussed the details of these journal entries, as I was careful to keep the independent study from becoming a therapy session. At no point in the semester did the students ever discuss exactly what they were writing.

After a few weeks writing regularly in their journals, the students were asked (and I helped to guide them) to transform one particularly prominent emotional conflict (one that recurred repeatedly) from the journal into a short piece of fiction.

One way to create fiction out of a journal entry is simply to take an emotional conflict and simply turn it into a back and forth dialogue between "characters." Then you place the dialogue into two characters and set the characters in an important "setting."

Voila. A story!

The next step is to "Flip the Script," that is, to take this piece of fiction and change it in some way or another. Sometimes that means bringing in another character, often an older wiser character (one student this semester found herself with a fairy godmother!) Sometimes that means writing from a different point of view, i.e., the point of view of your "persecutor." Sometimes that means having one of the characters do something that seems completely impossible or outrageously difficult or impossible to do. Something, say, like forgiving somebody something they have done.

The results of these exercises were rather remarkable. My students this fall found themselves exploring very painful life stories but transforming them, re-telling their life tales from another point of view. In one case, a student wrote from her mother's point of view, and for the first time in her life, she was able to see why her mother had had such a hard time being a "good" mother.

All three of the students found themselves with important insights into their lives. All three students -- all of them were upper division psychology majors at the university -- reported in their final papers at the end of the semester -- that they had found the exercises very helpful in gaining perspective on their most difficult and challenging life issues.

So, now I have all of my students trying this exercise. Stay tuned, I'll let you know how it works out for them.

How did her finger teach her the meaning of life?

By Kellie Meisl

I decided I just had to write a story about my finger.

Honestly, what happened to it a few weeks ago was such a rare and instructive event, it really warrants a story. And it kind of points us all forward for the New Year.

So it all began on December 8th, when I was teaching an art class at my home. We were finishing up a paper maché project and doing some painting.

So things are finishing up and I am bustling around the kitchen washing paintbrushes and dabbing paper maché paste off the floor. My son has just come in from school. I offer him a Danish from a plate of airy, seemingly angel-spun delights, when a class member suggests that we warm it up for him -- make the sugar “melty.”

A few moments later, I hear my son say, “Mom, it’s so hot I can’t get it out of the toaster oven.” In my classic routine fashion, I whirl from the sink to the oven and grab it in one fell swoop, like it is a warm muffin. (My sister and I call this move where we go from cabinet, to appliance, to oven, and back to sink, in a single pivot-like movement, often while balancing on one foot, kitchen Thai-chi.)

What I did not realize in that moment is the nice “melty” sugar was now at about 250°. Later, of course, my mother’s words from the day long ago when we made candied apples, about how hot sugar could potentially cause a burn to the bone, did come back to me. I was 10, and my siblings 8, and 6 at the time, but she really made an impression with the bone part. The next day, my math-whiz friend would give me the numbers: boiling water 212°, boiling sugar, “probably at least 250°.” And it was boiling; my son witnessed the sugary bubbles.

What followed was a scene with horror-movie qualities. I rushed to the sink feeling the searing pain and ran my hand under the cold water for a very long time; in fact I would have stayed there through the night if I could have. Thankfully, the burn was confined to a single finger, because the skin looked as melted as the sugar on the Danish.

Almost immediately, it began to hang in a white flaccid pouch that I can only describe as wet cheese cloth -- there was like, about an inch of it. I was thinking, wow, this isn't too bad, (since the pain had diminished by 50%). But then, I saw the look on my son’s face and heard him say "ER." There are some details you don’t need, so let me segue to a few hours later. I will say this: I did not bother with the ER.

After about an hour and a half of ice water and pampering, I slathered on the triple antibiotic cream and a huge Band-aid and called my mother -- who is an RN -- with a report.

Without any visual assessment, my mother was naturally cautious in her response. But she was not alarmed. That was good. Then I Googled the keywords from the incident: sugar, burn. I was surprised to find that I had done precisely the right things, cold water, not ice, triple antibiotic cream, ibuprofen for inflammation, because the finger had been practically in flames, I reasoned.

In the wee hours of the next morning I awoke with a funny feeling in the finger and cut off the Band-aid to see if what I was imagining was accurate, and it was, my finger had doubled in size, the burned area, the bottom two thirds of the back of my right ring finger, was now one BIG as in GIGANTIC watery blister.

And the blister grew.

And it grew.

On the third and fourth days, I sent a series of photographs to friends via email to document the growth of this finger blister which resembled a fetal sac. (I still have those photos of course but I will spare you.)

Let’s just say that after I emailed these photos, some friends were aghast and horrified! One suggested that I rush right over to the ER to see a doctor! I assured this friend that my mom was a nurse and had assessed the situation and that my finger didn't demand a hospital visit.

Then, another dear friend reminded me that I had been very frenzied as of late and that my finger injury, while a bit grotesque, had provided me a very good reason not to “do” but instead just to “be.”

And in a way, I have just been just “being” ever since then, kind of observing more, reflecting some, resting a lot and listening. Sometimes what I hear are echoes of a voice in my very own head telling me things that I had not considered.

Maybe I need to hear these things. (I think that’s what my dreams are, echoes from the day.)

If it hadn't been for my finger injury, I wouldn’t have recognized the echoes. Had I not been burned I would not have slowed wayyyyyyyyy down.

SO there you go, a great lesson for all of us for the New Year. Let's all try, without burning our fingers or doing anything else damaging, to slow down just a bit, and appreciate the very little things. The moment by moment miracles and joys of life.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! And may all your sweetest dreams come true in 2011!

Artist Kellie Meisl, who lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts with her husband and son, Ben,

relies on dreams as a springboard for her work. She uses paint, reclaimed wood, found objects and collage, and has created most of her pieces over the past decade for community causes. Her intricate wire sculpture, a mermaid called "Awareness," pictured here, was purchased this past fall by Pittisfield Mayor James Ruberto during the Think Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Exhibit in October. In 2009, she published her first book, Dream Stories: Recovering the Inner Mystic. Kellie can be reached through her website:www.kelliemeisldreamart.com, where "How My Finger Taught Me the Meaning of Life" appears in its entirety. Kellie Meisl's image, "Shattered Cups," provided the cover image for the novel, "Seeing Red."

Chapter 18: To Get Happy, Just Make This Simple Switch

By Claudia Ricci

How do we stop being scared by life, and by death, and by everything in between? How do we find happiness, living with whatever life deals us? How do we learn to wake up every morning and smile into the day, embracing the hours and tasks that we face as opportunities for discovery rather than as a series of boring or mundane chores to be endured?

Basic questions, difficult to be sure. But if I may, as we end this year, I’d like to share my insights, because I feel as though, after decades of living scared, and depressed, I have finally figured out how to replace the anxiety with a feeling of peace. And joy.

The last year or so has been pivotal. I am not altogether certain how it happened, but I feel as though I have turned a corner. As in, I’m not living in a narrow grey tunnel, holding my breath, or in a dark cave, with my arms over my head. I am not buried underground anymore.

Just this morning, I was looking through the files on my laptop. In quick succession, I happened on a couple of pieces that I wrote while living in DC last year. I was astonished. Honestly, it felt as though another person had written them. (Which makes you wonder about the “self” that is in constant transformation; this is one reason why it is very wise, as I keep telling my students, to keep a regular journal!)

Anyway, I wanted to share one piece I wrote, because I think it suggests how we might all get from A to B, or in this case, from C to A.

It is a beautiful spring evening in Washington, D.C., a Friday late in April. The sky is a pale crystal blue, and I have just finished teaching for the semester. I spent a couple hours this afternoon volunteering at a local women’s health center, where I took photos of mothers and babies for the annual report. Then I went to Starbucks where I sipped iced coffee and started to grade final papers.

But now I sit here in a state of absolute fear and panic, a condition that lately is more and more common. The problem is both simple and very complex:

I have reached a kind of crisis point in my life when I feel like I have run out of dreams. None of the things I used to do seem to matter. Nothing on the horizon excites or interests me in any deep and meaningful way.

I keep praying that this will change, and I am trying to take steps to stoke up the fires, so to speak. And oh yes, I am seeking so-called professional help.

But right now, I don’t think I have ever been so frightened. I am frightened even to admit these feelings in print. I am frightened just to write them down. I am frightened not to. I pray that somehow, by writing them down, something will shift, the cloud will lift and I will find a way out of what feels like the worst crisis of my life.

Anyone who knows me will be surprised when I call this the worst crisis of my life. Because my life has not been a stranger to crisis. Seven years ago, in 2002, I suffered from a serious and life-threatening case of lymphoma. I needed some additional treatment in 2003.

I should be reveling in the fact that I am enjoying good health today. I should be, and I must say that I am often in touch with a deep sense of gratitude that I feel so healthy. But in some sense, that makes this present crisis all the worse. On top of everything else, I feel guilty that I am at such loose ends and feeling so lost and unhappy.

My husband calls it an existential crisis, brought on by the empty nest syndrome. Maybe. But my son, the last one to leave the house, is finishing his sophomore year. As a friend pointed out recently, this empty nest thing has been going on way too long. She didn’t say “way too long,” but I will. It’s been going on way way too long.

Another friend, who is a bit older than me, and retired from university teaching, says that I am not alone. Most of us when we get to this point in life, have to reinvent ourselves. She keeps herself busy with voice lessons and yoga, writing and social activities. She also says she is trying to “learn, just how to be.”

What a thought, just “BEING.” Without being busy, without being productive.

Still another friend, also in her 60s, admitted to me that she faces the same kind of life crisis. And she says there are many other like her. In her words, “We’ve had our children, we’ve had our marriages, we’ve worked jobs, we’ve built houses and gardens, and now we don’t see anything on the horizon that excites us.”

Yes, so, I guess I take some comfort in knowing that I am not alone.

And yet, that knowledge doesn’t always keep the moments of absolute despair and desperation at bay. I am working with a therapist, and exploring acupuncture (and medication) as well as meditation and breathing techniques to help with the anxiety and depression. I am not really tempted to try suicide, although I have thought about it (in the same way one thinks about vacations and everything else that one could do in life.) The truth is that I really don’t want to die. I have a daughter getting married in November, and there are so many family members whose lives I would wreck that I cannot imagine letting them down.

No, I don’t want to die. What I want to do is to find a way to be happy and to feel productive again. Anyone who knows me will say, but you are already so productive. You teach, you write, you paint, you play guitar, you garden. What more do you want?

Again, I’ll say it, but feel sheepish as I do. I keep having this terrifying feeling that none of it really makes a bit of difference. As in, if I didn't do it, who would care? Not me.

And therein is the key. I think as I am writing this that I am actually for the first time beginning to understand something that my wonderful massage therapist said to me the very first time I saw her. In her soft but very reassuring voice, Lucia (who also does talk therapy) said to me, “I think the first thing I want to ask you to do, is to slow...way...down.”

Her objective: to help me figure out how to nurture myself, in big and small ways. As I lay on the table, and she very gently manipulated my arms and legs to try to reduce my anxiety, she suggested that I start developing as many nurturing activities as I could. “And that may be something as small as a favorite blanket,” she said. “What matters is that you pay attention to how your body feels, and feed it what it needs and wants.”

It’s funny, but when she said that, the words passed into my ears and I heard them and yet, it isn’t until RIGHT now, as I am writing her words down, that I am beginning to really understand what she meant. I need to find and to rediscover ways to reconnect to sensations of pleasure.

It isn’t as though I’ve never known them.

There used to be a time when writing fiction, for example, made me supremely happy. And then, maybe because it was so difficult to get published, the whole writing enterprise started to feel absolutely futile.

Lately, when I think about writing fiction, it just seems rather pointless. And painful. I didn’t want to write about the feelings that I am describing here because, well, it’s bad enough to have to feel the despair and desperation, who wants to delve into it further in fiction?

But now I am realizing that maybe there is a way out of this feeling that I am locked up in a box. And maybe writing, and art, are the key.

Last week, in my second visit with the massage therapist, Lucia said something else that stuck with me. Looking at me with those magical eyes of hers -- they are the blue crystal color of an evening sky, she told me that she thinks I am on “a sacred journey. “

“Trying to find new meaning in life after your children are gone can be challenging,” she said. But again, she came back to the notion that we start to find meaning when we pay attention to our bodies, when we encourage ourselves to find pleasure in activities big and small in all kinds of venues, activities that feel nurturing to the soul. A visit with a friend. A walk down a country road. A cup of tea with a good book. Activities that are soothing.

Meanwhile, though, something rather profound occurred to me this week. I was walking to the Metro station or maybe it was a teaching day and I was waiting for the bus to get to campus when I realized that the word SCARED is almost identical to another word.
SACRED.

Just make a tiny switch, reverse the position of the C and the A in one word and, well, there you go.

So maybe that is the key here, maybe that is what I am trying to do here. By writing this, maybe I can somehow switch the c and the a. Take the panic that is pressing against my heart and turn it into a different feeling: the feeling that I can build a kind of shrine inside myself, a place in which to retreat when the world feels like it makes no sense, a place in which to carve a new identity and a new sense of purpose.

I pray for this, and ever so humbly, I ask for divine help."

Like I said, I am still marveling that my prayers were answered. But I know for sure they were.

I sit here this morning, the 23rd of December, 2010, just watching the snow fall outside the window over the pond. It is a fluffy winter wonderland out there, and I could, literally, stare all day at the beauty and mystery that is snow.

What I've found is that I spend a lot more time marveling at the "small" miracles -- flowers growing, snow falling -- and that is what brings me joy. And peace. If you can stare out the window all day (and if you are LUCKY enough to have a house, and to have some time just to sit and stare) well, then you are really OK.

I try to live in this moment, and really see the mysteries and miracles that are constantly unfolding around me. A warm crackling fire in the woodstove. And then, the artful patterns of fire and light in the window of the woodstove! I could stare at those all night!



Decorating our 12-foot Christmas tree with my amazing daughter, Jocelyn, and her incredible husband of a year, Evan. Now that was fun!


My son Noah driving 12 hours from North Carolina, arriving home last Saturday night, to be here for the holidays.

These "small" joys are the real blessings. Finally, now, I get it. I really understand that, to be happy, one need only figure out how to remain in a kind of sacred awareness, a mindfulness, of the moment. A switching of the A and the C!

Sister Mysteries, an on-line book, is part of the Albany Times Union's Writing In Motion project. Sister Mysteries is part of a two-book writing project. It is connected to a novel called Castenata -- a time-travel murder mystery featuring a nun, Sister Renata, who in 1883 was falsely accused of murdering her cousin Antonie.

How Writing a Journal -- and a "Forgiveness" Narrative -- Helps Heal a Student!

By Allyson Pashko

Can writing about the most difficult aspects of our lives really help us? Can we face a situation, come up with a solution, and work through our problems more efficiently if we take the time to sit down and think and write about them clearly? I have pondered this thought over and over, wondering every day for the past few months if it is possible to face the most distressing and haunting situations with a positive attitude. If given the time and energy to face some of the most difficult issues in our lives, is writing the best way to deal with them?

Over the past couple of years I thought that life just couldn’t get any worse. I thought that my entire life revolved around a series of unfortunate events and I believed that I was doomed to a life full of unhappiness. At the young age of 21, I honestly believed that I couldn’t escape the future as a tired, restless, miserable human being. Why was it that I couldn’t find a happy place where I felt comfortable and secure? I felt like my life was falling apart; no one --including the doctors I saw-- around me knew what was going on, and I was desperately in search of hope for a brighter future. I didn’t think it was anywhere within my reach.

Facing the most difficult situations over the past few years has really shaped me into the strong, independent, and intelligent person that I am today. Although I have dealt with some of the most challenging and complicated situations, I have learned some of the most valuable lessons. It seems unreal that so many young people today are dealing with the same kind of terrible situations, leaving them with nowhere to turn. When friends and most importantly family has turned their backs on you, leaving you lonely and vulnerable, where do you turn and how do you put your life back together? How do you repair the broken pieces of the puzzle to your not-so-ordinary world?

I wasn’t sure that there was any definite or possible answer to this question, but through my recent experiences I have learned that it is possible to live and love the way we were meant to. It is possible to discover that happy place in your life that seemed like it was somewhere far out of reach.

I believe my first step on my journey to happiness occurred when I enrolled in the “happiness” class (an independent study) this fall semester of my senior year. (The independent study was a way of doing a "test run" of a new Happiness class, to be offered in the spring of 2011.)

Is it possible that I could take a class to potentially make me happier, I thought to myself? Why not try it? As the reading list seemed a bit intense, I debated my decision, but I figured why not try something new and see what I could learn here in this new course. As I started reading all of these new books on the paths to finding “true happiness,” I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret them. Were these books really providing me with the tools for my happier life or are they bogus material? All of these books, authors, and articles on positive psychology and happiness had to have some authenticity to them, and so I kept reading. I kept reading, learning, and writing my way into a happier lifestyle.

One of the most important things I have learned is that expressive writing has proven benefits and although we may not be happier right after we write, we will eventually feel more satisfaction a few days, weeks, or months after. We are also less likely to end up in the health center or feel sick as we can open up and express our emotions that we would normally keep inside. This has been the biggest help for me this semester. Being able to honestly and openly express some of my deepest thoughts and emotions and release them from this place inside me, allows me to make room for more positive feelings. I never realized how all of these repressed feelings held such a weight over my body and stopped me from being able to live my life to the fullest. I had never really felt true happiness over these past few years, because of all this negative weight holding me down. I can truly say that today I am a happier person than I was exactly a year ago.

Along with this class, came many writing assignments. Reading psychologist James Pennebaker's Opening Up was transformative for me and the other two students taking the independent study in happiness this semester. Each of us found that the book, and the expressive writing practices that the book endorsed, opened doors inside us. The book, which presents research showing how journaling actually improves your health and reduces visits to the doctor, allowed me to expand upon everything I am currently encountering in my life. I have learned to appreciate journal writing and I will try and continue to keep track of all of the wonderful things that will happen in the future, my happier and healthier future.

I believe the toughest assignment I faced this semester was writing a narrative from someone else’s point of view. I was supposed to try and see an issue I was facing that had nearly destroyed me inside and understand it from the point of view of the person who had hurt me. I thought this was the craziest thing I had ever heard and basically refused to do it, even though I thought about it every nday. From just about the first week of class we were given this assignment to think about and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t face the most difficult aspect of my life and effectively write about it and understand it. I just couldn’t see how I could ever write from that point of view, speaking as the person who had hurt me so badly. Still, I knew I wanted to try it. I knew that if I could even write, for just a minute, on the topic that I had progressed throughout the course.

Four months later, I had done it. I sat down, thought about how I would write a narrative, and lost myself in the moment. I became immersed in the story as the other character, and I was really doing it. I was really so lost in my writing and just wrote whatever came to mind, revealing to me some of the most difficult things that I had never even thought about before. I didn’t think about what I was going to write beforehand, it just came to me as it did, and allowed me to face the unthinkable. I can’t believe I was able to write a narrative from the view of that one person, that person I had so much anger and hatred for. I did it. No, I did not feel great after writing my narrative, but I felt great knowing that I had done it.

When I look back and read it, I can’t believe that I did it. Looking back I do feel a lot better and although I get very emotional reading over my story, I know it has helped me grow. It is allowing me to move on from the thing that was holding me back all of these years. I didn’t think that I would ever be able to face the situation so constructively, but writing has proven a great outlet for releasing the thoughts I never wish to face again. I even discovered through writing my piece that I can sit and write for hours and hours, lost in the zone, where I feel safe and secure not caring about a thing in the world. So even through the difficulties I had faced and the tough decision I made to write my piece, I have only benefited and suggest writing to others. I suggest opening up, accepting the past, and moving forward to change it in a productive and positive manner. Writing can do this for you.

Believe it or not, I am a stronger, happier, and healthier individual despite all of the negative that has come my way. I have learned to live and love without holding back, enjoy the present moment, and never think that anything is impossible. We are never destined to a life full of unhappiness and there is always a brighter future ahead of each and every one of us. We can never forget that it takes work though. Leading ourselves into a promising future will never come without any effort. As long as we can accept what life hands us and actively work to make a change, we will always be assured a brighter day ahead. I have come really far this semester and through all of this progress I have found a more optimistic way of thinking. I even believe that I smile bigger and brighter with each waking moment. I will continue to lead this life I adore and never look back into the past that once haunted me. I am changing every day, and although I will never forget where I’ve been, I will never resort back to old ways.

Allyson Pashko, a psychology major, graduated summa cum laude from the University at Albany, SUNY, on December 5, 2010.

NOW THE NIH IS GOING TO LABEL HAPPINESS A PSYCHIATRIC DISORDER!!!!

THIS JUST IN FROM PUB.MED, a leading catalogue of recent articles on medical issues:

Display Settings:AbstractSend to:
J Med Ethics. 1992 Jun;18(2):94-8.
A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder.
Bentall RP.

Department of Clinical Psychology, Liverpool University.
Abstract
It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains--that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.

PMID: 1619629 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]PMCID: PMC1376114Free PMC Article

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