Barking Space

From a Scale of One to Ten…

Humans are funny creatures. I think that human beings are the only species on earth that honestly believes that the planet owes them something. Now, I’m not speaking from a cloud on this issue. Once in a while I, too believe that the world owes me something. I’m not really sure why that is. You hear people all the time complaining about how they should have this and that. That they are due for some sort of compensation for deeds well done.

I find this terribly amusing.

I think that part of the problem is that everyone believes that they should be happy.

I suspect a few of you who are reading this are scratching your heads.
Happy? Of course we should all be happy! What the hell is Jorge talking about? I think he’s seriously disturbed.

Believe what you like, but I am wondering whether or not this is our biggest flaw.

Recently, I have had several conversations on this very subject with various people and have noticed that my chat partners spoke about not being happy. These people are all from different walks of life. They are of different races. They are both men and women (Smartypantses like Dave and Jamie can leave the hermaphrodite comments at home).

These folks are feeling down because they wish to be happier.

I suppose that there really is nothing wrong with trying to be happy. However, obsessing about attaining euphoric joy may be something of a let-down. If you keep chasing your dreams without looking where you are going, the likelihood of you running into a wall or off of a cliff are quite high, I’m afraid.

So what to do?

I wondered about this myself. I always tried to strive for happiness. This, I thought, was something worthwhile. However, the bad part about striving for happiness is that when your quest is interrupted, it can really be a downer. You see, when I am not happy, it is usually because of some stress or another. This type of state leaves me weaker, and I tend to get sick. Indeed, worrying myself sick was something I seemed to excel at. And so, I would end up not feeling well for longer than I should have (and I daresay I shouldn’t have been sick in the first place), and this would affect all of the activities that I enjoyed.

I thought about how other species deal with their everyday lives, and I had a little bit of an epiphany. I realized that pretty much every species out there does what it needs to for survival purposes. Indeed, a lot of animals seem to dwell in a state of either fear or contentment (I am severely understating things, of course, but the point is that they are not happy so much as they are content. Honestly, I don’t know how many animals out there consciously go out their way hoping that the sun will come up tomorrow).

Applying this contented frame of mind to people is a little difficult, as we are complicated beings with emotions and feelings and blah blah blah – Honestly, we make ourselves more complicated than we really are.

I think contentment is underrated.

Now, I’m not saying that it is wrong to be happy. I’m just saying that if we keep trying to be happy instead of letting it happen naturally, we will end up killing ourselves from the effort of what I believe to be impossible. Don’t believe what I’m saying? Try forcing a smile all day and see what happens to you…

To better understand my line of thought, let’s create a scale from one to ten, where one is misery and ten is bliss. Ambivalence would be around five, which would make contentment around seven or eight. Now that we have a scale, all we need are some volunteers.

Yes.

You, and…you, in the corner, yes…

Please come to the front.

Let’s examine our volunteers…

Our first volunteer, Jennifer, is an engineer. She loves the satisfaction of a job well done at work, and also enjoys all of the activities she engages in outside of work. She is active in soccer, and in the community, participating in various charity events, and helping out in her neighbourhood. She has a cat, and is also very seriously involved with her boyfriend Chet.

Our Second volunteer, Marcus, is a lawyer. He loves to win cases, and he loves to learn. He’s a great squash player, and is married to his high school sweetheart. While he doesn’t really have a lot of time for active participation in the community, he sponsors two sports teams through his home business (graphic design).

I suppose you were expecting two radically different cases? Not so. Well, not really radical. Let’s move on…

Jennifer is very laid back. While she does get upset once in a while, she doesn’t try to overdo it in the other direction in her search for happiness. While mildly disappointed when things don’t go her way, she doesn’t sit around and worry about it. Instead, she works hard to ensure that it doesn’t get worse, and in doing so achieves a certain level of satisfaction. She resides around the seven or eight mark on the scale we established earlier. With her averaging this score on the scale, she’s pretty level-headed about things, and realistic. There is mild optimism in her personality, too, as she doesn’t have too far to fall if something bad happens.

Marcus, on the other hand, is always trying to win. He’s all about making sure that he’s got a genuine smile on his face, but it comes with a heavy price. When something goes wrong, like a case going sour, his confident manner is usually shaken, and he becomes depressed. He feels like a failure because he can’t keep that level of happiness going. This tends to affect his work, and his home life. The normally happy Marcus tends to brood, and also likes to be alone. By trying to constantly achieve nine and ten on the scale we created, he becomes very vulnerable to falling far, even when he falls just a little.

Thanks, guys. You can go back to your seats.

You see, when Jennifer has a setback, and falls to a lower score, she doesn’t fall as far as Marcus, because her score wasn’t ridiculously high.

I believe that this is the problem with us humans. By constantly trying to achieve an impossible level of happiness, we set ourselves up to fall, and when we fall it feels like we fall so far, even when it is only a short distance…

So now, after all of this introspection, I sit at about a seven or eight. I think this is a great place to be. There is very little stress, and the things that used to bother me don’t really get on my nerves all that much. I don’t go looking for trouble, and at the same time, I don’t kill myself trying to find the holy grail. This is not to say that I don’t do things to make myself a better person.

On the contrary, I’ve been quite busy with my photography project, for example. It’s been an interesting experience, but I’m learning a lot. I don’t expect to be Ansel Adams or Diane Arbus, of course. However, when something good happens, I feel much better about it because I am not constantly waiting for something spectacular to happen while other opportunities might pass me by. And when something spectacular happens? Instant smile.

Does this mean that I just settle for whatever comes my way? Not necessarily. I still manage to have new ideas, and implement new plans. Considering I have a more stable base, this is much easier to do.

I also enjoy spending time with my family and friends.

Think about it. If I am on my own, and I am a seven or eight, imagine what happens when my wife walks into the room, or I’m having an animated conversation with Dave or Cat. The happiness rating usually goes up.

And since falling a little doesn’t feel so bad due to my relative position on the scale, and doesn’t happen so often anymore, the moments where the score rises occur more often, and are cherished for what they are – happy times.

Filed under: Ponderings, Spaces Archive | 23 Comments »

If Jesus Blogged No One Would Ever Know

In the face of comments posted from zealots (who don’t listen to my requests to stop posting crap on my blog), a peculiar thought entered my head…

Picture the second coming of Christ. Jesus sits at his computer wearing jeans and a nice long-sleeved collared shirt and some Tevas, and he’s typing away on his self-coded blog (Self coded? It’s Jesus for God’s sake! He can do anything!). He finishes a thoughtful and insightful article on the latest political happenings and then retires to his study to read some books by Deepak Chopra…

I wonder how many people would read that article written by Jesus and just scan over it to move onto the next blog? Would anyone even guess it’s Him, or would they even care?

I doubt that anyone would really pick up on Jesus blogging. Heck, I doubt that any of the religious heavy-hitters would really get noticed, for that matter. Mohammed and Brahma would probably be as frustrated as Jesus with the lack of real response to what they are writing. It’s because they would get eclipsed by people’s faith.

People’s faith, you ask?

Let me break it down for you…

I have respect for people’s beliefs. I think that it’s wonderful when people stand up for what they believe in. Religious faith is part of that. While I may not believe in what others do, it doesn’t mean I can’t repsect their point of view.

Now on the other hand, some people really take their faith far too seriously. I’m not referring to conviction here, either. I’m talking about how they show people how faithful they are. They go over the top.

Blogging has made it very easy to do this. People express their faith with bells and whistles, and go around to others’ blogs and leave lengthy messages about how to live your life. They have ten million emoticons and pictures on their blogs of all things glitzy to emphasize how much they believe in what they believe in. It’s like Las Vegas, in a convenient, easy-to-read format.

This kind of thing doesn’t impress me. I believe that this doesn’t really impress a lot of people.

In fact, it probably turns a lot of people off of believing in anything, because it has too much flash and not enough thought.

And so what would one more person be expressing their views about religion, even if it was Jesus or Mohammed or Brahma? Probably nothing to a lot of people. Just another slob, like one of us (borrowing from Joan Osbourne a little), posting what we believe to be nothing of consequence.

It’s a shame, really. No matter what you believe, you can always learn something new from a well-expressed opinion.

Filed under: Ponderings, Spaces Archive | 17 Comments »

If Talent Had No Limit and Money Grew Like Weeds

Patresa, in her quest to achieve perfect spelling without a dictionary, wrote about what would happen if her talent had no limit and she had an infinite amount of scratch to eek out a living. Although, come to think of it, eek is probably quite the understatement.

Of course, at the end of her dream sequence, she put forth the challenge to her readers to come up with their own scenarios.

Mine goes something like this…

–

    As the night sky starts to lighten, Jorge wakes up. The sun hasn’t started its visble ascent yet, but the sky’s subtle change alerts him that the blazing daybringer will be arriving relatively soon. He climbs off of the bed, careful not to disturb his sleeping wife, and tiptoes over to the large bay window overlooking Rock Lake.

    He gazes across the clear sky and smiles at the prospect of another clear day. He quietly changes into some clothes with which to explore the forest, and slips out of the large cottage.

    The cottage is a wonder of technology, paid for by his successful photography and music. It cost a king’s ransom to outfit it with the comforts of the city, only because the technology could not be disruptive to the surrounding environment.

    Jorge spends the morning photographing the sunrise with his analog SLR camera. Though he has several digital cameras at his disposal, he likes to use the one that Mrs. J gave him as an engagement gift. Some habits die hard. Some never die.

    By the time he returns, his friend has arrived by boat bearing fish.

    ” I just happened to be out, ” said his friend, Brad.

    ” You just want to use the bullet, don’t you? ” Jorge chuckled.

    ” Well, maybe, ” Brad hopped out of the boat and moored it, ” My old lady is in T-Dot today. I figured I’d suprise her. “

    ” Fine by me. I was thinking of scooting over to Dave’s if you two would like to come with. “

    ” Doggie, ” Brad grinned ear to ear.

–

    After a breakfast of eggs, bacon and fish (Mrs. J opted for toast instead of fish), the trio headed to Huntsville to the train station. Jorge parked the electric car at a recharge space, and the three of them headed over to the platform.

    The waiting area was packed with people waiting to get on the new mag-lev train to Toronto. Everyone was in good spirits and began boarding the train at the blow of the whistle.

    Jorge, Mrs. J and Brad didn’t board that train.

    Instead, they approached an elevator that opened as Jorge approached, and took an elevator down to the experimental “Bullet” train.

–

    After Jorge started making a name for himself, his friends, too, started to become recognized. It was a happy coindcidence that they al achieved fame at the same time, as it gave their next move a lot of power.

    They joined forces with some startup environmentally conscious transportation companies, as well as some startup telcos and clothing lines. By working together, and using the universal catalyst known as money, they managed to create some wonderful inventions that cost very little to maintain.

    At first, people thought that several artists banding together for a cause would not really create an impact. However, rather than appearing at media circuses, and lobbying the government, they took it upon themselves to approach it from a business point of view (with a scientific twist). Utilizing people that were not being recognized for their talent, they managed to create a global movement for change that literally took the world by storm.

    The “Bullet”, while called “experimental” was actually already proven. It was a train that utilized magnetic peristalsis to propel the train car down a tunnel. it allowed for a much smoother acceleration, and higher speeds, with no detriment to stability.

–

    Within an hour they arrived in Toronto, and Brad called his gal and told her to meet us at Dave’s.

    They promptly caught public transit to Dave’s Pub (run by his uncle Gerry).

    Dave met Jorge at the door and greeted him with a hug.

    ” Long time no see, manus, ” Dave smiled.

    ” No kidding, ” Jorge replied.

    ” MY SPOON IS TOO BIG, ” Dave laughed.

    Jorge joined in. Mrs. J just shook her head.

    On the far wall, a vidscreen sprung to life. Ian appeared.

    ” Hey guys, ” he shouted. There seemed to be a party at his pub in Tallinn.

    ” Hey Ian, ” they all replied.

    ” How’s life over there? ” Ian was obviously being jostled by the happy crowd at his place.

    ” Great, ” Jorge said, ” The Bullet Line to Estonia from England should be done within two months. Soon we can hang out again. “

    ” Sweet, ” Ian grinned.

    ” Imagine what will happen when we finish the teleporter? ” Dave winked.

–

I could go on forever with a story like that. Nothing would be dearer to my heart than to help make the world a better place. I’m sure that the tech in my story is a pipe dream (nice pun), but it’s nice to have a vision of something good, right?

Filed under: Ponderings, Spaces Archive | 5 Comments »