Will becoming more attractive make you happier?  Nope… plastic surgery or weight loss will give you an initial boost, but you get used to your new looks pretty quickly, and in the long run you won’t be any happier.

Will better health make you happier?  Counter intuitively, no. Unless you’re at death’s door, you get used to your state of health, and being less or more healthy doen’t change your happiness level in the long run.

Will moving to a sunny warm city make you happer? Again, no. After the new car smell wears off, your level of happiness will move back to where it was when you were living in a cold northern city.

So, what are some things that make us happier?

1. Connect… with family, friend and neighbours is the most important thing you can do to contribute to your overall happiness. The good news is that this will cost you little or no money to do!
2. Be Active. Walk, run, bike, play games, play sports, dance yoga… these are all things that will improve your mood, especially if you’re in a bad one.
3. Take Notice of the beauty in nature and in life.
4. Keep Learning. Whether it’s new hobbies or a new skill at work. Be challenged and remember that most happiness comes in striving for goals, not in reaching them.
5. Give. Do something nice. Join a community. Be selfless.

If you’d like to read more on this topic, I highly recommend reading Jonathan Haidt book, The Happiness Hypothesis, or if you’d like to read great eight page summary, you can read my brother Bob McCue’s book review.

Finally, here is Dan Gilbert’s entertaining TED Talk with his take on happiness. Enjoy!

I think we all “fake it” on a fairly regular basis.  Not only that, but we’re taught do so from an early age.  Just think of when a parent “encourages” their child to apologize to their sibling or play mate.  Do we really think that the apologizing child feels sorry for what they’ve done?  Most of the time they don’t, but they are being taught how to get along, and perform socially acceptable acts that help make up the civilized portion of our society.  Most people would agree that this sort of “faking it” is a good thing in that it reduces tension in groups, and helps them function more smoothly.

There are other kinds of faking it of course.  John Edwards (the american politician) faked it at the end of the US presidencial campaign, pretending that things were going well in his life and marriage, until it came out that the woman he was having an affair with was close to giving birth to their child. I think that is the kind of faking it that most people cringe at.

Faking it goes on in religion as well.  One example of this is in the Mormon religion I was raised in. As a teenager I was taught that if I told others that I “knew” certain religious “truths” were true, even when I didn’t actually know they were true or false, that I would come to know for myself that they were true. This could be described as the “fake it until you make it” method of learning.  While this may be a useful tool for learning to do certain tasks, I don’t believe that it is effective in determining truth.

So the next time my wife asks me how I like the new dress she bought, should I “fake it” or be completely honest no matter what the consequences?

For example, in looking at how societies portray the model of womanhood, there are probably a number of morally positive ways to do this in between the extremes of the Islamic Burka, and the overt sexuality on the covers of many western mens magazines.

Harris also addresses the issue of giving the same weight to all moral arguments, irregardless of their source.  He argues that some people are better at moral thinking that others, just like some people are better a physics than others, so why should we put the Dali Lama and Ted Bundy on the same footing when it comes to looking at moral arguments?

A thought provoking video even if you don’t agree with everything he says.

Stuart has also written a book called, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion.  

Enjoy!

My imperfect solution: decriminalize polygamy and then institute a mandatory religious social study class in the Province of BC, similar to what Quebec and England have instituted. The religious social study class would definitely not be a forum for religious indoctrination, but simply a class for learning about the beliefs and practices of world religions.  How would this help?

1. Decriminalization would hopefully lessen the siege mentality that the polygamist leaders encourage in their community, and allow community members to be more open to ideas from the outside.
2. A religious social studies class would hopefully open the school children’s eyes to the world of faith and belief outside of their own community.  This might help them, as they mature, to look more critically at their own faith, and make a more informed decision as to whether or not they want to stay in a polygamist community.

My 2 cents worth…

[In the interest of full disclosure you should know that one of my great grand mothers was a polygamist in the early 1900's]

The present festivities of Santa Claus are very difficult to explain, because our Santa Clause is really a funny sort of bastard. No don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean a bastard in the present day context, but a bastard of the Middle Ages. He’s the offspring of old German practices going back two thousand years, and a Roman Catholic saint who lived after the reign of Constantine the Great, (4th Century A.D.) at a time when the Roman Empire was concentrated more in Constantinople than in Rome itself. Let us first look at his father, that is the old Germanic practices.

When I say Germanic I’m not quite correct because they really come from the Celtics, the ancient people who lived in present-day Britain, Ireland, and the Atlantic Coast form Holland to the Pyrennees. Now their practice was to celebrate the ‘sonnewende’ or yuletide, and this originated in the fear that the sun which stood still on that day (December 23rd) would disappear and never come back again. So to appease the sun god, they often brought human sacrifices. When the sun returned (and they knew very well it would because they’d seen it before after all), they would greet it by lighting candles, yule logs, etc., and by feting up trees. These customs remained in this form until the coming of the Irish Priest St. Boniface in 740 A.D.

He came to the Germanic tribes which had replaced the Celts and tried to stop the pagan rituals. He found, however, that the only way he could do it was to assimilate them into Christian practices which he achieved by having the Church year begin on December 15th, and celebrating the sonnewende at the same time. Thus instead of having lights burning for the sun-god they would now be lit for the Christ child. It should be remembered that the coming of a child, especially a boy-child was a special event anyway. (Girls were not so honoured because they represented the expense of a dowry sooner or later).

By the Middle Ages we see that more stress is laid on Christ’s mother, and this reflects the feeling of the time. (Nowadays we hear about women’s liberation, but in fact women were more venerated in the so-called Dark Ages then ever before. It is from this period that we get all our polite habits concerning the treatment of women). The idea of the Virgin Mary begins then as well.

All right, so now we have the yule log, the candles, the tree and the holly, but the focal point is still the crib or manger. The whole thing was designed as a joyful celebration with a serious moral intent…and that was the Middle Ages; they made everything holy, but also gave it a very human aspect as well. Now where does Saint Nicholas fit in?

Well, here we get another person who is connected with goodness and giving like the Christ-figure, and that is the Bishop of Myra whose name was Nicholas. Don’t bother looking for Myra because it doesn’t exist any more. It was once an important seaport on the Aegaan, just north of present-day Smirna; but various factors combined to reduce its place in history. However, it was once the see of a bishop and it was here that Nicholas performed the work which made him famous.

Nicholas brought some consolation to an age which was still far from completely civilized; he was sort of a welfare officer, he helped children, did missionary work amongst sailors, and helped girls to obtain dowries; (don’t forget that this was a time when a girl without a dowry had only two other choices; prostitution or the nunnery, and the latter were not nearly so prevalent after the 3rd century). In short then, he did charity work, and since, in this period at least, it wasn’t too hard to become a saint in the Catholic church, the Pope had him canonized while he was still alive. One reason was undoubtedly because several ‘miracles’ had become ascribed to him, including the anonymous giving of money to the needy. (this was a miracle because he wasn’t likely to have had any himself let alone enough to give away). Nicholas therefore became very well known during his lifetime; but his story might not have created any lasting impression if something hadn’t happened in the 7th century.

It was then that the Muslim Arabs overran the Eastern part of the old Roman Empire and forced the Christians to retreat westward. The result was that Nicholas’ body was removed and taken to the southern Italian seaport of Bari for safekeeping. Here a large cathedral was built in his honor, and his connection with sailors grew until he was finally made their patron saint, which result that his name was spread all over western Europe.

Coincidentally, the conversion of the Slavs occurred at this time, and his name was taken by the missionaries into Eastern Europe, including Russia, where he became the patron saint of the country. (Which explains why so many Russian czars had the name Nicholas). So you can see that Nicholas was pretty well universal by this time, and all that was needed was the veneration of the practice of secret gift-giving to complete the legend.

This occurred in the 9th century, and by the 12th century celebrating St. Nicholas Day on December the sixth was widespread all over Europe. Now actually the celebration happened on the eve of the day, December 5th, as was common for all saints festivities.

With the rise of the Spanish Empire in the 15th century, St. Nicholas became associated with Spain, mainly because that was where all the ‘goodies’ came from; by ‘goodies’ I mean spices and special sugar items which came from the East with the Moors. Thus the good bishop picked up a servant, a black moor who came to be called Black Peter and whose bag contained all the treasures of the Orient. Now we have all the elements of the legend together; a charitable bishop, no longer in Constantinople or Italy but in Spain, who appears on his day with his Moorish companion, all over Europe giving out delicious treats to the children. Don’t forget that sugar was a luxury, and oranges were so rare that in 1386 the city of Coventry made a special gift of twelve of them to Richard the Second. Well, to make it short, by 1300 the practice was well established all over Europe.

Now we get something else popping up and that is this: the Dutch became the main carriers of the St. Nicholas tradition simply because they became the main merchants of Europe, and most especially the Eastern spice trade. This one of the other customs which they transport is the custom of good eating.

So now we have the two holidays of Christmas and Saint Nicholas’ Day, one with the old symbols of sonnewende, and the other with the tradition of gift-giving incorporated. What happens to them when the Dutch take them to the New World? Well, they kept them pretty much as they were, but the trouble was that the tradition of St. Nicholas had almost died out in the non Roman Catholic countries of Europe after the Reformation , simply because Protestants did not recognize holy bishops, and when ten thousand of these Puritan settlers came over to America, it swamped the small Dutch colony in New Amsterdam. Because of neglect on the part of the Mother Country, however, these settlers were very dependent on the Dutch community for the first little while, and especially on Dutch trading ships. (Don’t forget that Holland was still in control of the luxury trade, including all those items connected with the Saint Nicholas celebration).

During this period, the Puritans were gradually taking over the Dutch colony, including their customs; but they had done exactly the same thing as their counterparts in Europe had done; that is to say, cut off all ties with bishops, and so taken all religious sense out of the December 5th festivity. On the other hand, the hard, sparse existence in the wilderness gave the custom of special, luxury item gift-giving a particular appeal to the immigrants, and they dearly wanted to take over the holiday, if only they could find a way of removing the association with the Catholic Church. They did it finally by removing the garment of a bishop from the Nicholas figure, (replacing the mitre with a sleeping cap for instance) and by shifting the date of the celebration to Christmas Day.

Now a curious thing happens’ the holiday, virtually forgotten in the Old World returns to Europe in its revised form and becomes popular again, and the Germans (who formed the bulk of the early settlers to New England) translate the name Saint Nicholas to the equivalent: Santa Claus. Thus it is in New England, after sixteen hundred years, that the marriage of the two great holidays takes place, and it is the Dutch, who had already married the holy idea with the profit motive, that promote the commercial aspect of the result.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see that if you commercialize one part of it, soon the whole thing gets out of hand, especially when, like the Puritans, you have deleted the religious connotation from the patron saint. Santa Clause, no longer a bishop, could hardly be allowed to retain his origins in Catholic Spain either, so his home became the North Pole. And as for Black Peter, well! the slave trade was in full swing by this time, so the veneration of any black man had long since disappeared, and since the Eskimos weren’t known, and the Indians despised, Santa became a pretty solitary figure, with only reindeer, (substituted for the white horse he’d had in Spain), to accompany him, Mrs. Clause and the elves were the additions of a kindlier age.

First let me say that I believe that what the Texas authorities did in taking all the children in the community away from their parents was wrong. If there was a complaint about abuse by an individual, then something should have been done to protect that person’s family until things could be sorted out. This is not the first time the US government has put polygamist families through their legal justice system. I am a happy monogamist, and will encourage my children to be monogamists, but in this day and age, if consenting, informed adults want to enter into polygamist relationships, then the government should not interfere. If teenagers are being encourage or coerced to enter into polygamist marriages, then the adults involved should be prosecuted to the fullest extent under applicable laws (as Warren Jeffs the leader of the FLDS was for example).

My great grandmother Katherine Love Paxman was the fourth wife of William Paxman. At the time she married, Katherine was 24 years old and her husband was almost 50 years old (interestingly, William’s eldest son by his first wife, was 29 at the time he married Katherine). William was a leader in the Mormon church, and in accordance with church doctrine at the time, was encouraged to marry more than one wife. Unfortunately at the time he married my great grand mother, the United States government was beginning to actively prosecute and jail polygamist husbands.

At least partly as a result of the pressure by the US legal system, the church sent William on a mission to New Zealand in order to move him out of the reach of the US government. Only one wife could go with him on his mission, and my grandmother turned out to be the lucky wife, and made the trip to New Zealand with him (I’m not sure why, but it may have been an economic issue, as great grandma didn’t have any children to take with her at the time, unlike her sister wives).

Nine years, and five children later (1897), William died suddenly while eating dinner, just two days after falling off one of his other wife’s roof while fixing it. At the time Katherine was living at her mother’s home, and after his death, to make ends meet, she took a job as secretary at the town hall in Nephi, Utah.

In a sense I am grateful for polygamy. I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for my Great Grandfather William Paxman, and his fourth wife, Great Grandma Katherine Paxman. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, but quite selfishly I’m glad to be here.

P.S. In Sacred Loneliness is lengthy book that provides quite detailed biographical sketches of the lives of Joseph Smiths 30+ wives, right from their births and family back grounds, to their death’s. Todd Compton is an academic, and his prose isn’t captivating for the most part, but some of the stories of the women in his book are truly incredible. Many of the stories taken directly from their personal histories. A great example of one of those incredible stories is of Zina Huntington Jacobs. Joseph Smith approached her about a polygamist marriage in Nauvoo, and she rebuffed him, and within weeks married Zina, who had been courting her at the time. Six months after her marriage to Henry Jacobs, Joseph approached her again and told her that an angel had appeared to him with a drawn sword and told him that if he did not marry her, that he would be killed and that her family would not go to Heaven. She acquiesced, and was married to Joseph as his fifth wife. The marriage was done in secret. So secret in fact that Joseph’s first wife Emma was not told of the marriage.

They suggested that in those cases where it is impractical or impossible to come to a definite conclusion, one should state your option clearly and strongly, but be open to change in the future. Have Strong Opinions but Weakly Held. While a person may be confidant that they are right based on the evidence they currently have, they should be open to change their opinion if new information comes to light, or if a some mistake can be shown in their thinking.

With regards to religion, things are far more complex. From my current perspective, I believe that the LDS is not what it claims to be. That opinion is based on my my personal experience in the church and from the research I’ve done. I hold this opinion strongly, but if I had an experience like Paul did on the road to Damascus, or if a lot of new historial evidence came to light, I could see myself modifying my position. I personally think the chance that I will have an experience like Paul is reported to have had are pretty low given my life experience, but you never know.

On the other hand, everyone has to find their own spiritual path. My path is mine, and not any one else’s. People may choose to stay in a religous tradition for perfectly valid reasons, even though they may not agree with all it’s teachings, or believe in all it’s foundational stories. Everyone has to find a balance that works for them and their family. I guess that is one of the reasons that life so exciting and interesting.

This is one of my Strong Opinions, Weakly Held.

Shermer says that “myths are not about truth. Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life – birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age.” (page 130) In discussing the tension between evolution and religion in some people’s minds, he says that “evolution theory cannot replace faith and religion, and science has no interest in pretending that it can. The theory of evolution is a scientific theory, not a religious doctrine. It stands or falls on evidence alone. Religious faith, by definition, depends on belief when evidence is absent or unimportant. They fill different niches in the human psyche.” (page 135)

So what are some of the reasons that people believe weird things? Here’s Michael’s list:

• It feels good: “More than any other, the reason people believe weird things is because they want to. It feels good. It is comforting. It is consoling. Skeptics, atheists, and militant anti-religionists, in their attempts to undermine belief in a higher power, life after death, and divine providence, are butting up against ten thousand years of history and possibly one hundred thousand years of evolution (if religion and belief in God have a biological basis, which some anthropologists believe they do).” (page 275)
• Immediate Gratification: “Many weird things offer immediate gratification. The 900 number psychic hot-line is a classic example. Deep insight and improvement may take months or years. Delay of gratification is the norm, instant satisfaction the exception. By contrast, the psychic is only a telephone call away.” (page 276)
• Simplicity: “Immediate gratification of one’s beliefs is made all the easier by simple explanations for an often complex and contingent world. God and bad things happen to both good and bad people, seemingly at random. Scientific explanations are often complicated and require training and effort to work through. Superstition and belief in fate and the supernatural provide a simpler path through life’s complex maze.” (page 277)
• Morality and Meaning: “At present, scientific and secular systems of morality and meaning have proved relatively unsatisfying to most people. Without belief in some higher power, people ask, why be moral? What is the basis for ethics? What is the ultimate meaning of life? What’s the point of it all? Scientists and secular humanists have good answers to these good questions, but for many reasons these answers have not reached the population at large. To most people, science seems to offer only cold and brutal logic in its presentation of an infinite, uncaring and purposeless universe. Pseudoscience, superstition, myth, magic, and religion offer simple, immediate, and consoling canons of morality and meaning.” (page 277)
• Hope Springs Eternal: “It is my conviction that humans are, by nature, a forward looking species always seeking greater levels of happiness and satisfaction. Unfortunately, the corollary is that humans are all too often willing to grasp at unrealistic promises of a better life or to believe that a better life can only be attained by clinging to intolerance and ignorance, by lessening the lives of others. And sometimes, by focusing on a life to come, we miss what we have in this life. It is a different source of hope, but it is hope nonetheless: hope that human intelligence, combines with compassion, can solve our myriad problems and enhance the quality of each life; hope that historical progress continues on its march toward greater freedoms and acceptance for all humans; and hope that reason and science as well as love and empathy can help us understand our universe, our world, and ourselves.” (page 278)

That most in the church have never heard of Joseph Smith’s marriages to other men’s wives while they were still married to their first husbands is scandalous. Polygamy makes members of the LDS church uncomfortable enough, but if they knew that he married 9 other men’s wives that would give them pause to think (some married with and some without the other husband’s consent). I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Zina and Henry Jacobs when Joseph Smith asked Zina to marry him less than a year after they themselves were married.

I don’t know how church leaders and other members of the church who know about these marriages justify them in their minds. True, Joseph Smith a number of good things during his life, but not all the fruits he produced were sweet. Most of the Book of Mormon is inspiring, but the doctrine and Joseph Smith’s practice of plural marriage was as abhorrent when he was practicing it as it is to us today. To get a feel for what it must have been like for people in his day we need look no further than Warren Jeffs the FLDS prophet (from the summer of 2007) and how he and his church currently practice polygamy. I’m sure we feel at least as uncomfortable at the accounts of him pressuring young girls to marry older men as people in Joseph Smith’s day did about his match making.

Here are the LDS doctrines and practices that I can no longer support or justify:

• The church’s separate but equal policy with regards to woman and the priesthood. That women cannot hold leadership positions such as Bishop is patently unfair no matter what faithful LDS women say. Ask any 8 year old child, who is more important in the church, men or woman, and you’ll get a more objective and accurate answer. I put this doctrine in the same category as women’s suffrage and blacks and the priesthood. It will change, it is just a question of when.
• The church’s discrimination against gay people and opposition to gay marriage. Most scientists today agree that gay people have not made a choice to be gay, but sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors. In other words this is the way god made them. Active members of the church who are gay are regularly exposed to a virtual hell on earth at church meetings when marriage and the law of chastity are discussed. Their god given sexual drive is described as evil, and they are told that to be exalted they must enter into a marriage with someone of the opposite sex. In many cases this leads to severe depression. In some cases substance abuse is turned to as a way to escape the depression and unfortunately others turn to suicide as a way out. Just think of what a gay person must think when their bishop tells them that it is better off to be dead than to commit sexual sin. For an insightful look at this topic see this Sunstone article.
• The church’s longstanding discrimination against black men (that ended in 1978). Withholding the priesthood from black men was just wrong, and an excellent example of how the Old Testament can be used to support doctrines that make no sense in our modern world.
• I don’t feel good about polygamy in general and particularly with Joseph Smith marrying nine other men’s wives (in addition to the twenty other single women he married). I am inclined to agree with William Law (editor of the Nauvoo Expositor), that if Joseph was a prophet, by the time he started practicing polygamy he was a fallen prophet. This is another example of how the Old Testament can be used to support archaic doctrines.
• The teaching that the prophet of the church can never lead us astray (see above for polygamy as one example of this). I suspect this is where the “cult” accusation against the church comes from. I’d like to think that the prophet would not lead anyone astray, but to say never is unwise given the history of the church. To have an organization tell you that they cannot lead you astray, yet not let you question its teachings is a bad sign. In the short run it does however make it easier to lead an organization when no one challenges or questions your decisions. I believe that the leaders of the church are for the most part well meaning men who act based on their consciences and the needs of the organization.
• The church’s aggressive proselytizing and focus on baptismal goals. This practice antagonizes other churches and can lead to depression in missionaries, when mission goals are not met. I think I personally would have had a much more fulfilling mission, and done much more good if the focus of my mission had been on service to the needy. I will encourage all my kids to take time off school to go do meaningful service in other parts of the world, but will actively discourage them from LDS missions for the above reasons.
• The church not being accountable to members for how tithing monies are spent. As a matter of principle, the church should report its receipts and expenditures to the tithe paying members of the church. It should also report all salaries and stipends given to general authorities of the church. I would be surprised if there was anything greatly amiss, but we currently have no way of knowing.
• The teaching that one can know that the LDS church is Gods’ one true church by saying that it is true (the “get a testimony by bearing it” method). Studies show that the more often you say something you don’t believe, the more you begin to believe that thing. Not a good foundation for a spiritual practice as I’ve found out. Having a testimony of the institutional church or “the church” places faith in a man made institution rather than with god and in higher spiritual things. Whether this has been encouraged maliciously or unintentionally I do not now. I do know that it does not feel right.
• The church’s only true church doctrine. I think it is more important to god that I be a good, charitable person rather than to simply be a person who has been baptised and participated in priesthood ordinances.

Recently one LDS church leader quoted me the scripture “by their fruits shall ye know them” to me, hoping that I would think of all the good things the church does and want to come back into full fellowship. As I said there are a lot of good fruits produced by the church (service and its community for example), but there are also some rotten fruit on the vine, that no one in authority seems to doing anything about.  To me this is one of the strongest evidences that the LDS church is a man made organization that is led by well meaning, but not divinely led men. Most religions in the world teach many good things… That the LDS church teaches many good things is not remarkable in that context. Joseph Smith took a more enlightened position many of the things that were being debated by the Christian denominations of his day. For that we can be thankful.

I believe that if current members were more mindful of the effects of the church’s harmful doctrines, and became fully aware of the history of the church that they have not been taught in Sunday School, that they would demand changes.  The church as become rigid, hierarchical and bound to tradition, the very opposite of the radically inclusive, and open church that Joseph Smith founded.

I am at peace with the direction I am currently taking. I also have no regrets about the time and energy I’ve put into the church over the years. I still attend church meetings and activities periodically, and make sure that my children know where the pitfalls are in the church’s doctrine and practice for when they attend. To be honest to myself and to those closest to me, I feel I had no other choice. In my view the church is on the wrong side of a number of important moral issues, and to occupy a leadership position in the church with that knowledge, was hypocritical. If I felt that there was any chance to reform from within, that might have changed the course I’ve taken, but the church’s organizational and disciplinary structure is such that unless you are at a very high level in the leadership of the church, the opportunities to influence church policy are almost nil.

There is much good in the LDS church. It is a loving service oriented organization. The church needs to build on the good and reject the discriminatory, hurtful and unjust doctrines that are rotting on the vine. Members of the church need to be vocal about what they believe in their hearts and not just object in silence when harmful and uncharitable doctrines are taught. If there is a just god, then living a good, moral, service oriented life should be all that is required of us. That is what I am trying to do, and it is what I teach my children.

A couple of weeks ago I helped someone at the LDS church (or mormon church) with a presentation on Family History. The LDS church is embarking on an ambitious project to digitize vast numbers of census and vital statistics documents in their archives to make them more accessible to people doing genealogical research. When the project is complete it will be a wonderful resource for both genealogists and academic researchers. The church is encouraging as many of its members as possible to participate in this project.

The following day I read in our local newspaper that homeless shelters in the city were looking for volunteers (look to the end of the article I linked to to find out how to volunteer to help the homeless in Victoria, BC, Canada) to help out in order to make more beds available for homeless people as winter approaches.

I couldn’t help but think back to a title of a talk given by one of the leaders of the church, who said that as we look the things we do in our daily lives, to make sure we are not just settling for the “good”, but look for the “best” things that will do the most good. So what would Jesus do? Anyone who is familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan will know that Jesus would most certainly help the homeless person. While digitizing historical records is a good thing to do, helping someone who is homeless is undoubtedly a better use of my precious time.

I’ve now signed up to help out at emergency shelters that are opened in extremely cold weather (cold for Victoria at least). I’ll post something after my first night volunteering to let you know how it went.

photo credit: james_at_middleage
photo url: http://flickr.com/photos/72892823@N00/163320882/

“Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz’s estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. We set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too many choices undermine happiness.” – from the TED website

“The Secret to happiness is low expectations.” Low expectations make it much easier to be pleasantly surprised.

Our brain is a simulation machine… It is great, but it tends to overemphasize the effects of major events in our lives. For example we tend to overestimate the potential upside of good things that happen to us, and tends to overemphasize the potential downside as well. If something happened over 3 months ago, it has virtually no impact on your current happiness. A great example of this is the opposite cases of the lottery winner, and someone who becomes a paraplegic. After one year, both individuals are at the same level of happiness that they we at before their supposed life changing events. Very counter intuitive.

We have with-in us the ability to create or “synthesize happiness”. In other words we can look for the good in everything that happens to us, and can genuinely feel happy. He gives examples of people who have had terrible things happen to them (like being put in jail for 20 years for a crime the person did not commit), and how they say that that terrible thing was the best thing that happened to them. These people looked for the good in what they experienced and “created” or “synthesized” happiness.

Dan talks about how we tend to place a higher value on happiness that we encounter by chance rather than by happiness that we create ourselves. Natural happiness is when you get what you want, and synthetic happiness is what make when we don’t get what we want. In our society we tend to believe that natural happiness is of a higher quality than synthetic happiness. Why? “What kind of an economy would we have if people believed that they could be just as happy with the ‘stuff’ they currently own, rather than going out and buying new stuff at the shopping mall, that marketers have told us that will make us happy?”

He goes on to explain that “Synthetic” happiness is just as good as “Natural” happiness. Watch the 20 minute video for the details… It’s great!

Lastly Dan talks about how excessive choice is the enemy of synthetic happiness. We seem to be able to more easily create happiness when we are stuck with a choice or stuck in a particular situation. We find ways to be happy with what we are stuck with. If we have multiple choices or opportunities to change our choices we don’t have the same sort of ownership of the situation. We may change the situation or what we have, so we unconsciously don’t invest in it by synthesizing happiness. Ironically enough, if people are given a choice to be in a situation where they can change their minds, or simple make a choice and stick with it, most people with opt for the situation where they can change their minds, which will tend to make them less happy.

A few years ago Heather’s mother and father passed away. Her dad was the “gravy guy” in the family until his passing, and it appears that I have inherited his role in family dinners. For now, I am the go to guy for gravy. I have consistently made good tasting, non lumpy gravy all year now! I’m confident that my grandmother McCue smiles down on me every time I make her wonderful tasting, non lumpy, southern Albertan gravy. I’ve also noticed that when my wife tells people that I can make gravy, she doesn’t just stop by saying that I can “make gravy”, but qualifies it by saying that I make “good” or “excellent” gravy. Kind of weird that circumstances have made me the “Gravy Guy” in at least half of my world.

A different research group also took a look at lottery winners in Great Britain. Interestingly he found that in the case of people who won large lotteries (over $200,000); they reported a significant increase in happiness immediately after winning, but within a year, most were back to the same level of happiness that they were at before winning.

Both of these studies confirm what I saw a number of years ago while I was living in Brazil. Most of the people I worked with would be considered “poor” if they lived in Canada, but most were quite happy in spite of their relative lack of material possessions.

What this tells me is that if someone is unhappy with a little bit of money (once their basic needs are met), then there is a very good chance that they will be unhappy with a lot of money. It turns out that money doesn’t buy happiness in the long run. I better get back to work so I can afford my gym membership …

Next he tells about how his firing from apple in the mid 1980′s was one of the best things that could happen to him, although at the time it was devastating.  The firing opened up doors to him that he would not have been able to approach in any other way. He was able to start up Next comptuer, Pixar, and meet his wife.

Lastly he talks about how you have to love what you are doing for work.  He said “Every morning I wake up and ask myself if I like what I am about to do that day.  If I go to many days not liking what I am doing, I know I need to make a change”.  His diagnosis with cancer reinforced that desire to live every day to it’s fullest.  To make sure he is working on things that are worth while and that make him happy.  His final words are “Stay Hungry and Stay Foolish”.

Dear Stuart,

The Vinyl Cafe has been on my mind a lot these past few days. My wife has finally convinced me to write this letter.

I was in the hospital every afternoon this past week for my latest round of treatments. I shared a room during my stay on the Oncology Ward with a three older gentlemen. During the course of the week different patients came an went, but Cliff, one of the fellow patients, was there the whole week with me. While I was around each afternoon, Cliff was never alone. His wife, Pearl, stayed with him during the day and was kind enough to go get some of those little plastic ice cream cups for us all from the fridge down the hall. It must have been at least 25 years since I last ate an ice cream out of one those little cups with the cardboard peel-off lids. The only change those cups have undergone in the past 25 years is that they do not ship them with those little wooden spoons anymore. The good news is that the taste is exactly like I remembered… cool, creamy goodness, laced with enough sugar that they cannot help but taste wonderful. Cliff, Pearl and I sat around enjoying, or eating one of life’s simple pleasures while our other roommates enjoyed an afternoon nap.

While I was lucky enough to be an outpatient, Cliff was in the hospital 24/7 while he was recovering from the radiation treatments he had received for a brain tumour. I wish I could tell you that this was his only health problem, but he also has inoperable cancer in one of his lungs. In spite of these problems, he is hoping to go home in the next few days, once his hospice nurse arranges appropriate home care for him. He misses sleeping in his own bed. Pearl would like to take care of him on her own at home, but both she and Cliff are around 85 years old and she just isn’t as strong as she used to be.

Friday was my last treatment and when I arrived, Cliff and Pearl were quietly sitting together. I greeted them and they asked how I was doing. From the look on their faces, they seemed a bit low, so I offered to go to the fridge down the hall to get some ice cream for everyone. Pearl thanked me for my offer, but told me that she had already been to get some but it appeared that they were out of ice cream today. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

We chatted for a bit, and soon my nurse arrived to hook me up to my IV for my treatment. While I had a few moments to myself, I wracked my brain to try to think of something that might cheer Cliff and Pearl up. Then an idea came to me. My routine had been to talk with my fellow patients upon arrival, then read a chapter of my favourite book (“Marley & Me – Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog”… I highly recommend this book), then do a bit of work on my laptop computer. I also had an iPod with me that I hadn’t been using. Along with all my music on it, I also have virtually all of the Vinyl Cafe stories that have been released onto CD, on it. I could think of at least on thing that would put a smile of both Cliff and Pearl’s faces – “The Blood Pressure Chair” story. I found the story on the iPod and asked if they wanted to hear a really funny story by a great story teller. They said they would, so they each took one of the ear pieces and sat their soaking up the experience. It was amazing and wonderful to see their faces light up as the story unfolded for them. Eventually I could hear Cliff chuckling softly to himself with a wide grin on his face.

Near the end of the “Blood Pressure Chair” story, some visitors arrived for him, but he was too engrossed to leave the story, so Pearl and I chatted with his visitors while he continued to snicker to himself. I’m not sure which story he moved onto next, bit it was about a half hour later when he asked me how to pause the thing so he could say good-bye to his visitors. By the end of my treatment, I’d decided to leave my iPod with Cliff so he could listen to and enjoy the rest of the Vinyl Cafe stories stored on it. I figure that if someone can survive radiation therapy, I’m sure he could survive or even thrive with a few more hours of “Vinyl Cafe” therapy. I’ll go back in a couple of days and ask him which were his favourite stories. Thank you for sharing Dave, Morley and the rest of the gang with us.

Sincerely,
Rich McCue

Victoria, BC

I did learn something interesting yesterday from my nurse.  She was just getting ready to hook me up to My IV drip when I ask her if she knew how much my treatment cost.  She said she didn’t know but that she would go and find out.  I didn’t expect that she would know off the top of her head, and half suspected that she wouldn’t be able to easily find out the cost either. To my surprise she came back about two minutes later with a small booklet with, among other things, the cost of cancer treatment drugs. After thumbing through he booklet she found my drug, and showed me that the cost was $485 per mg, and that my half liter bag clear fluid contained 10 mg of the drug. So the total cost of the drugs for my daily treatment is about $4,850, and the total for my week long treatment will total over $24,000.  Needless to say I think I’m getting my money’s worth out of my federal and provincial taxes this year.  UPDATE: My nurse told me that she had mis-read the booklet.  The cost was about $500 per day, not $5000 per day.  So the treatment was not quite as expensive as I first throught it was.

As I mentioned, I’m sharing a room with three other men who are also going through cancer treatment.  Yesterday I had a chance to chat with Cliff, one of my room mates, and his wife Pearl.  As we talked Pearl told me about an experience she had on the bus that day.  The couple, both in their late 80′s, live in James Bay, and typically take a taxi when they occasionally need to travel further than walking distance from their home. Now that Cliff is in the hospital, and Pearl is visiting every day, the daily taxi rides were starting to strain their tight budget.  So she decided to try taking the bus to the hospital. She caught the bus with out any problem, but when she arrived at the hospital bus stop she realized that she was going to have to go down some stairs to get off the bus. She had the misfortune to catch one of the older buses with steep stairs at the front and back of the bus. Going up the stairs when she boarded the bus wasn’t too bad, but Pearl has problems going down stairs now that she is almost 90 years old.  As she stood at the top of the stairs wondering what she was going to do, she looked around the bus with a distressed look on her face.  Fortunately a couple of fellow passengers noticed the distressed look and asked if she needed any help.  She told them that she has a problem going down stairs.  At that point two passengers jumped up, each held her under her arms and gently assisted her off the bus.  The two young people made sure she was ok and then re-boarded the bus.  The bus pulled away.

Pearl said that she stood there on the side walk overwhelmed with emotion. She had just been standing on the bus, afraid to go down the stairs, and with in a few seconds two young UVic students had carefully helped her off the bus. She felt so grateful that tears started to well up in her eyes. Pearl’s comment to me as we sat chatting in the hospital was that while our society may have some problems, there are still a lot of good people around, who are willing to help a total stranger in need.

I had an enjoyable afternoon.  Take Care.