Great example of how to live!

Hey all! Check out the 88-year-old mayor of a major city in Canada...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY79KbCptTo

How to be Happy

It is a hallmark of being human that we constantly desire to be happy. And it is a common misconception that happiness is something that "just happens" - such as happiness just happens when I fulfill all my desires; or happiness just happens when I get my way.

The truth of the matter is that happiness is cultivated, encouraged to grow. There are several key nutrients that make happiness flourish.

First - letting go.

If we hang on to every little wrinkle of what is wrong or what didn't go right, we become overwhelmed with the impossibility of things actually going right. Letting go allows us to have the bigger goal in mind - where are we headed, why do we want to get there, who can help us, does anyone get hurt in the process. Hanging on to the details is like micro-managing. Letting go is leading with vision.

Second - use leverage not force.

If we want to be happy, we need to encourage others around us to be happy. There is a teaching story that illustrates, a kind of catch-more-flies-with-honey: The North Wind and the sun got into a competetive spirit and decided to find out who was better. The look around and see a man with a coat on. "First to get the man's coat off wins!" says the North Wind. "You're on!" replies the sun. So the North Wind blows, and blows on the man, to blow the coat right off! The man responds by pulling his coat tighter around him, struggling to get out of the wind as fast as possible. Again and again, gusts of wind rain down on him, and again and again he grits his teeth and pulls his coat tighter. "Bah! My turn!" says the Sun. With gentle benevolence, the Sun beams his light through the clouds... and slowly looking around him with joy, the man takes his jacket off, hangs it on his arms and whistles a happy tune.

Look around you at the effect you have on others. Do they grit their teeth and run from your presence as soon as possible? Or do they bask in the warmth of your presence, the gentleness of your asking? Experiment with different ways of "getting your way" and report back to me the difference!

Third - appreciate the 95%.

The key word here is to appreciate. The mind is a problem-solving machine - that is it's main function. If we only listing to the mind, then we go about living as if everything is a problem. Well, the same problems can be seen as challenges, or better yet, as adventures! Learning anything new is an adventure into territory never encountered before - or else you wouldn't be learning anything!

But more than a set of problems, life is also love, and intimacy, and the joy of receiving help and the joy of being useful. These things actually comprise the 95% of life that we miss when we only focus on the problem at hand.

Take time to smell the roses! Slow down. Don't let your fear drive you, let your joy guide you!

A Few Final Words

Keep working on these three things and you will see with time happiness automatically grows. It isn't a "just-won-the-lottery" sort of happiness - this is a deep-abiding, lasting satisfaction that gives meaning and joy to living. This is the heart of being alive. This is where spirituality starts, the place where the soul comes alive. Enjoy wtih your journey, and remember to smile!

Is slavery extinct, or just in a different form?

I've been reading _The Lost German Slave Girl_. There is a part that describes the scene around a ship coming in with immigrants - it was a common exploitative practice to ship people across the ocean in return for indentured servitude on the other end. Read the book for a great look into the laws around slavery, but I am going off on a tangent here.

The scene is described as bustling. All sorts of people are interested in buying the labor of another human being for a cheap price... at first that seemed so strange to me. Imagine a boat pulls up to a major harbor like Boston or Philly or NY and a sign goes up - "Get yer indentured servants here!" Who would show up?

But we live in luxurious times - our indentured servants come in the form of oil-burning machines. The price we pay for raping the earth of resources instead of using human labor is only now starting to dawn on us... despite the fact that we have known most of this before we even started using oil... The slavery that oil represents is not as visible - the threat of rebellion and retaliation is not as immediate as within our own household.

And it's all about more. And all that more is a one-way street - consume, with no return to the source, no return to the earth our mother. (Check out a great short called the Story of Stuff http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html ).

And it's all not new - humans have always wanted more, better, faster, harder, prettier, more fertile, more productive... We used to live simpler lives because we couldn't have more - given a chance to have more, we want more.

The big difference is that now we are so able to take, we are taking more than the earth can give. Now to save our lives we have to take less, give more. Maybe it's also a way to save our souls... cuz we collectively have sold our souls for stuff, convenience of stuff, stuff to put stuff in, stuff that moves stuff, stuff that makes more stuff, stuff to eat, stuff to sit on, stuff to put on other stuff.............. We are drowning in landfill even as we want that new LCD TV with surround sound.