Along the Path Of Learning To Smile

Here I sit, still waffling among several paths on the broad topic of happiness and the pursuit thereof (you can tell i've been  looking at English Historians and Philosophers when you see me use "thereof" in a sentence), I have spent time reading John Locke, Sir Edward Coke, Adam Ferguson and more.  This was attempting to define what Eighteenth Century writers like Thomas Jefferson meant by "the pursuit of happiness."  At first glance, it appears that Jefferson merely intended it in the way most people of the time regarded it--pursuit of happiness meant the pursuit of material possessions or 'dower."  However, a more scholarly examination of his work and its context heads you back to philosophers and theologians of the 17th and 18th centuries.

To philosophers and theologians, there are a couple of schools of thought on Jefferson's use of the term "pursuit of happiness."  One is in the Lockean concept of the pursuit of property.   This freedom to own things was considered by this group as the actual meaning intended by Jefferson.  Another school of thought looks at Jefferson's concept as the generosity of individuals, and that the individual upon whom the happiness is bestowed is the giver more than the receiver.  Promoting the well-being of others is the essential way in which one can achieve happiness for oneself.  In this way the generosity of individuals promotes the happiness of the giver as well as society as a whole.  Can we simplify all this and say 'the more you give the more you get?"

In any case, the pursuit of happiness by whatever means you define it is considered an inalienable right in the Declaration of Independence (which was debated and adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 'the dog days" of 1776, I might add.  See my earlier pieces on the dog days of summer and happiness).  It's a tricky business looking into the minds of our Founding Fathers.  On the one hand, we want to say they wrote and spoke of societal benefit and generosity as the pursuit of happiness.  On the other, we recall that they were landowners, people who had accumulated wealth and position, in part by their own hard work and in part by the ownership of slaves.  The latter is written off as the custom of the times, we suppose?

Having dried that topic up, I headed back to the concept of learning to smile sincerely as much as you can to promote your own happiness and the happiness of others.  This was along the more practical path of learning or re-learning how to smile and laugh, which have been  proven to enhance happiness on the level of chemicals in the brain  like endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, etc.  Somewhere in the course of reviewing the many approaches to increasing the smile content is your life, I bumped into Bamboo Forest writing on punintended.com.  I think it was a piece called "Being Happy For Others Makes You Happy" that prompted WikiHow to cite this site (if you'll pardon that expression).  It wasn't that piece I found so interesting, it was some of the other stuff I found--"North Dakota Doesn't Exist"and "An Open Letter to Will Farrell. I have devoted a good deal of time to reading a blog entitled punintended.com, and that is a hoot.  It makes it a little hard to head back to pondering the serious intent of the Second Continental Congress when the included the "pursuit of happiness" as one of man's inalienable rights.  Hard to find a lot to smile about among philosophers and theologians.

So, for the moment, I'm through trying so hard on this topic.  It did make me scratch my head and tickled my funny bone a little, and that's just fine for now.

Adaptation, Capacity and Sanity In the Early Mornng

I started thinking the other morning about adaptation.  The sense in which I used the term was in adapting to changed circumstances, especially as it relates to the changes in a being or its ways and means of existence under the conditions of its environment or surroundings   I believe that the meaning must be broader than that to encompass changes in that being's capacity for engagement with its surroundings.(Again, read enough a certain kind of material and you begin to sound like one of them--in this case scientists--biology, physiology and psychology, to name a few).

Much of what you find when you begin digging deeper is related to biology and physiology and evolution in a species.   My interest doesn't really extend that far.  I am thinking of the day-to-day effort that is required of us and of building or enhancing the capacity to make that effort.  It seems to require a certain amount of determination, assistance from others, and ability to adapt.  There is perhaps a certain bit of biology taking place when there is some alteration in an organism.  The "alteration" in the  structure or function of an organism or any of its parts says to me that adaptation is occurring.  Adaptation  is adding capacity and/or changing the surroundings or even the being itself.  (Whoa, that one is sort of murky).   But yes, it's about capacity to see opportunity where one once saw only barriers or limitations.

That capacity to adapt introduces the freedom to change when opportunity arrives.  This is true of limits, changes or lost function that one might otherwise see as a narrowing of freedom, but with the capacity to adapt comes the freedom to change that outlook.  This morning I noticed a change in my ability to put a sock on my right foot.  I simply couldn't reach far  enough to pull the sock over my smallest toes and maintain my grip on the sock to let me pull it on.  Adaptation has allowed me to perform this task in two steps.  First, I reach down and pull that sock over as many toes as  I can with my hands on the medial side of the foot, then I reach around with right hand from the lateral side of my foot. grasping the sock and pulling it over any remaining uncovered toes and the rest of my foot (the sole and heel of my foot).  You see, adaptation is a matter of using the capacity to change what you are doing, changing the result, and that is the definition of sanity. (Remember, as Einstein put it, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Thus, doing it differently to achieve the desired result is sanity itself.  

Dog Days and Happiness

Following the path from my previous piece on Happiness and Dog Days, I still find myself following two different paths.  The one I left off with was whether you ar as happy as your dog, and I've found my book on the subject.  It was written by Alan Cohen and s actually entitled Are You As Happy As Your Dog?  (Grammar break--should I add another punctuation mark after the question mark in the title?  You could make a case, I think, for both a comma and a period.  First, the sentence is not actually a question.  The question mark it contains just happens to be part of the object--namely the book title.  this is the case for the period--it is used to end a declarative sentence.  A similar logic can be applied for the use of the comma.  If you are choosing to link two complete thoughts in a compound sentence, the two parts should be separated by a comma--not a question mark.    Hmmm...  I'm going with the period.).  Back to Alan Cohen's little book.  After hearing a comment from a friend about his dream to wake up one day as happy as a dog, Mr. Cohen started thinking.  His dog (Munchie), seems to live in a state of continuous delight and discovery.  He goes on to share a few of his observations after watching Munchie for a few days (e.g., Munchie loves unconditionally.  Whenever Alan comes home, Munchie drops whatever he is doing and zooms to meet him.  He barks and cries at the same time, he wags his tail so hard he wipes the floor with his fuzzy butt...  Munchie gives him the same wholehearted greeting whether Alan has been gone for an hour or a week.  When Alan has been gone a long time, Munchie does not cross his arms (legs, actually) and soberly announce, "I think it's time we discuss your commitment to our relationship." Munchie is just happy to see Alan and he lets Alan know it.  Mr. Cohen goes online this for page after page, noting that Munchie always asks for what he wants, seizes the day, keeps his eye on the ball--literally and figuratively--laughs at himself and much more.  I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on it.  

(I've just returned from the Amazon--no, not in South America, at the web site--and it is available there) .  It's not that I'm  promoting the book, but it is a thirty minute read for just a few bucks and it's lots of fun.  Act now, and you will have it for these dog days of summer, which some say are the forty days that follow July 3rd and coincide with the rising of the star Sirius, whose presence augments the sun in the Northern Hemisphere.  Is this a great country or what?  I didn't need to drag out an encyclopedia and look and look for the reference, I just googled it and had 70,200, 000 results in 0.72 seconds--thank you Google.

Leaving aside the book on happiness from a dog's point of view, there are other ways to seek out happiness.  It has been said that smiling causes th release of neuropeptides in the brain like serotonin, dopamine and endorphins.   So, that takes you down another road--learning to smile (or smile again, you have just lost the habit).  If you are familiar with Wikipedia, you might also have seen a related site called WikiHow, which seeks to share how to guides on EVERYTHING, including, I have learned, how to smile.  I may just have to try some of these on to see what fits.   

Wait, Wait, I feel one coming on--annnnd I'm smiling.  Have a good one.

 

Happiness and the Dog Days of Summer

Happiness...everybody wants it, right? Isn't it somewhere in the founding documents of my own country somewhere?  Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is in there somewhere (I just looked it up, it is in the Declaration of Independence).  Several related thoughts have been rolling around in my head lately, and, as usual, I've found the easiest way to get them out of my mind is to write about them here.  

I guess this began with a comment from a certain someone encouraging me to smile.  While it seems like a natural thing to do, forcing a smile somehow doesn't feel like the right idea.  Rather, I have thought, I should find something that makes me smile.  I spend a lot of time reading--mostly mysteries--and from time to time get to wondering whether all that murder and mayhem doesn't make a person naturally gloomy.  I mean, even if the good guys win in the end, there is usually lots of evil in between.  Thinking along those lines, a few months ago I looked for some books that would make me laugh out loud.  It took a while (and a few unsuccessful attempts), but I finally got my hand on one and read it.  Thinking more work by that author might have just the same impact, I bought several more--it didn't work.  The others were just not that funny.  At that point I probably frowned very naturally and resumed the path of slogging through murder and mayhem.  

Consequently, the smiles don't seem to show up as regularly as they should (at least in the eyes of that certain person).  It turns out behavioral science tells us, through experiments conducted on innocent persons like you and me, that smiling produces higher levels of endorphins and a few other positive things like stress relief.  The neuroscientists also tell us that forcing a smile has the same effect, and can even improve your mood.  It certainly is more likely to attract friends than drive people away, as frowns tend to do.  So I'm back to forcing a smile.  But it just never feels quite right to me.  The forced smile appears to me to resemble the expression you will often see in your dog when he or she opens the mouth, shows its teeth and sticks out its tongue.  They look almost as if they are smiling.  Add the factor of a wagging tail and almost everyone would conclude the dog is smiling and happy.  Not having access to the inside of a dog's brain (except in certain movies, etc., which are imagined versions of the dog's thoughts). 

There's a lot more  to this than meets the eye.  Seeing all this I'm reminded of a book I have entitled "Are You As Happy As Your Dog?"  It listed a series of actions dogs take (or seem to) that enables them to avoid many of the things that diminish our happiness (e.g., Dogs seem to  "Get Over It," holding no grudges.  If you happen to accidentally step on the  dogs foot, it will yelp in pain and run away.  A few minutes later the dog is back, smiling and wagging its tail.  It gets over it.  

There were a lot of others, but I don't recall them.  I'll catch up with you later.  I'm going to look for that book.