Happiness is a hot shower

Yesterday I went to the gym feeling particularly well-rested.  So while I was on the treadmill, I threw in some sprints — one-minute bursts at 8 or 9 miles per hour.  Oooh, that felt great.  Then I went to the weight bench, and instead of working with 10 and 20 pound dumbells, my usual range, I went with 15 and 30 pounds.  Same routine, 50% more weight.  After a good stretch at the end, I felt really strong. I totally enjoyed the golden glow of health throughout the rest of the day.

Then I got up this morning.  Ouch.  Upper arms…hurt.    Ankles…pain.  Shoulders… stiff.

I know my body.  I have to keep moving.  But I kept it low key today.  A nice brisk walk, no sprints, no weights, LOTS of slow stretches.

Then I got in to the shower and turned on the hot water.  OMG!  OH.  MY. GOSH!  As the hot jets of water hit my aching shoulder and leg muscles, I could feel ripples — nay, waves — of warm relaxation wash over me.  Whatever tension I was feeling in that moment totally drained away.  I stood under that shower head with steaming water massaging my body and warming my bones for… well, I lost track of time.

After a long while, I came back to reality.  It was time to leave this place of bliss and head to work.  So I did. But it was really hard to pull myself away from the pure pleasure of a hot shower on sore muscles.

Hedonistic pleasure as a form of happiness is typically short lived, but ohhhhh… it feels so good!

Today, Happiness is a hot shower!

Happiness and The Joker

Well, it’s official — THE blockbuster movie of Summer 2008 is The Dark Knight, the new Batman installment starring Heath Ledger as the nihilistic bad guy, the Joker. I finally went to see it on Friday evening.

I don’t evaluate movies based on their Academy Award potential. My standards are: did I have a good time?, and will I recommend it to others? To both, a resounding YES. I had a blast! It is dark, yes. It is chilling at times. The Joker here is a nihilistic bad guy with nothing even resembling a conscience — he is REALLY evil!

He is also scarred. Oh, I’m not talking about the apparent emotional baggage, but the actual physical scarring. He gives different accounts of how it happened, but bottom line is this: at a point in his childhood, his cheeks were sliced open from both corners of his mouth to create an enormous and hideous grin. While the cheeks are healed the scar remains, and he paints the entire scar — down one cheek, across his lips, and up the other cheek — with red.

In one of his stories, he was trying to cheer up his mother, who had ceased to smile. In that version, he took a razor and sliced open his own face in a desperate attempt to increase the size of his smile, hoping it would encourage his mother to also smile.

And I thought, Wow, except for the razor blade part, how many of us do that same sort of thing? We paste on a HUGE smile, in the hopes of encouraging others. But as the Joker learned, it’s not about the facial expression of smiling — it’s about the feeling that goes with it. The Joker enlarged his grin out of fear and desperation, so that’s all his mother picked up from him. In real life, emotions are contagious. A smile based on fear inspires fear. Only a smile based on kindness, compassion, empathy, happiness (or something related) will inspire another person to feel better.

If you’re going to paste on a smile, smile first with your heart. Your face will follow.

You can manage your stress

While researching stress management I came across a lovely little online, self-study course on stress. The class consists of ~20 short lessons linked sequentially. Some of the topics are: What is stress?, good and bad stress, tools for relieving stress, and long-term stress strategies.

You’ll find the course at http://www.mtstcil.org/skills/stress-intro.html. It appears to have been written by a West Virginia-based advocacy group for the disabled. Nice work!

Sometimes you just have to make the decision to be happy

In my year-long quest to see all of the movies nominated for Oscars from last year, I finally picked up Away From Her, with Julie Christie in an absolutely brilliant performance as a woman literally melting away from her life as the linkages in her brain come apart — while her husband, Grant, struggles with the fact that the woman he loves so deeply… no longer remembers him.

Trailer for Away From Her on YouTube

When Grant can no longer handle it by himself, he reaches out to the wife of another Alzheimer’s patient, seeking desperately to ‘fix’ what is happening.  While Grant is alternately sad and angry, Marian (played by the always-fabulous Olympia Dukakis) has a different perspective.  During one scene she and Grant get philosophical.

Marian: “I’m thinking that sometimes you just have to make the decision to be happy.  Just decide.  Things aren’t ever what you hoped they be; not ever; for anybody.  The only thing that separates one kind of person from another is that there are some who stay angry about it and there are some who accept what comes their way.”

Grant: “what kind of person are you?”

Marian: “I was pretty mad about it.  But now — looking at what came my way — I could be the other kind of person!”

And that’s what I’m often talking about — choosing to be that other kind of person.  There’s nothing wrong with anger.  Anger and frustration and sadness are all very real and should be honored and felt deeply.  If we remain too long in those emotions, however, they eventually start to eat away at us and prevent us from noticing that good stuff still occurs in our life.

So, at some point, you just have to decide, “I’m going to give myself permission to experience happiness.  Right now.”

You say that’s not who you are?  That you’ve always been the angry one?  Well, Olympia Dukakis has another great line in the movie: “It’s never too late to become who you might have been.”

You can start today.  Just decide.

Who am I to be happy?