The Writer's Poke

“Measuring Happiness” is one of my more recent Writer’s Pokes. According to the blogger stats, it’s generating more hits than any other post within the last few weeks. In fact, it’s generating about ten times the amount of interest of any other post. The key word in the title is “Happiness,” and apparently people are searching for it. Living is an art, or should be. For a long time I had Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” up on my office wall. This is a fairly iconic painting that probably most people know, but why is it so popular? Is it true that most of us live lives of quiet desperation? Am I, and others, attracted to this painting simply because the central focal character is no longer staying quiet? What makes life so difficult? Many of us may think we’re “connected,” but more and more we spend our lives isolated from real human contact. Even saying “hello” to someone passing by in the hallway may seem pointless, especially if “hello” is the only thing you ever say to that pers...

At the end of Chapter 2 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig writes, “We were all spectators. And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.” Now, assume for a moment that “motorcycle maintenance” is a metaphor for life. How do people live? By a instruction manual? Can an instruction manual teach caring? Granted, some people may claim that an “instruction manual” for living exists, but does any written document really explain how to live a purposeful life? And, how do people use the written documents they claim as “life’s instruction manual”? Pirsig’s friend John is dependent on his instruction manual. He doesn’t know his motorcycle, and therefore, he falls back on what the manual tells him to do. He doesn’t have the ability to deviate from the manual. He assumes the manual is 100% ...

Lakshmi doesn’t know much of anything about the outside world, but like the other girls who live at Happiness House, she is fascinated by television. When she first came to the city, she thought that the roofs of houses would have golden roofs, but even though that turned out to be false, television didn’t disappoint her. In fact, television is better than golden roofs. Even the commercials. What the girls most like to watch is American soap operas. What do they think when the watch Days of Our Lives or One Life to Live ? Do they assume that what they are watching is real? Remember: these are the same girls from the country who didn’t even know what to expect from the city. The city didn’t turn out as they expected, but can they still believe in the magic of America? Americans, they all know, cannot be trusted. Is this lesson reinforced by the soap operas they watch? America is undoubtedly a strange and mysterious place, but perhaps there is no real to assume that ...

In the United States, abortion has been legal nationwide since 1973, the year that Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. So, assuming you were born after 1973, you should call your mother and thank her for allowing you to live. Once you’re born, you probably no longer worry about someone else having life and death control over your existence. That is, unless you happen to commit a capital offense, you assume that your life is your own and that no one can take it from you. Even when you are a teenager, you know that you might be punished, you might be grounded, but no one is going to kill you for not doing what you’re told to do. Imagine living in another world from the one you know and grew up in. In this world, you have a “master,” and this master can do with you whatever she wishes. Like the world you know, this world might have laws to protect you, but the laws are not enforced. No one cares if you live or die, and you have no way of escaping the prison you find yourself ...

For Lakshmi, being a woman means looking up to your mother. It also means understanding that your mother does not have the power to protect you. Lakshmi’s mother has had four children after her, but none of them have lived. Being a woman means no health care. Being a woman means remaining in the goat shed for seven days when you have your first period. Being a woman means working like a mule. “Women’s work” includes cooking, collecting wood and dung for the fire, raising the children, patching the hut walls, and burying the children. Being a woman means not looking a man in the eye, not talking back to a man, not eating until your husband has eaten, and satisfying your husband in every way. Being a woman means needing a man for protection, but being powerless to do anything about a man that doesn’t uphold his obligations. A man’s obligations are voluntary, whereas a woman’s obligations are mandatory. Being a woman means dreaming big and hiding disappoint when the dreams ...

I like the idea that Bhutan has established. It’s a poor country, so not surprisingly, it doesn’t put as much emphasis on Gross National Product as the United States does. Instead, it has developed something called “Gross National Happiness.” Is Bhutan happier than the rest of the world? That, I don’t know. Every so often, some sort of “contentment survey” is released, and I don’t recall that Bhutan has ever topped the list. Then again, perhaps the people conducting the survey neglect to include Bhutan in their evaluations. Bhutan is a country that was “closed” to the outside world until 1974. Even today, while Bhutan welcomes tourists, it charges them around $200 a day for the privilege of visiting. That obviously makes Bhutan a fairly expensive country to visit. But it is a country that is being more modern. Heck, ten years ago, it finally got a TV station, and the people of Bhutan now have access to the Internet. Bhutan’s main road, finished just 25 years ago or so, has al...

David Attenborough was probably joking when he said that he rather doubted if there was anything in Tibet. Of course when Michael Palin first arrives in Tibet, what he sees he describes as “lunar landscape.” And, it’s true. Not much is there. At least, we don’t see any strip malls, and who knows how many miles it might be to the nearest McDonalds. If by “anything” one means people or even human structures, then perhaps vast portions of Tibet are “nothing.” Then again, Buddhist monks call it home. Are they attracted to the nothingness? Everest is there, too, of course, and it’s the “tallest nothing” on the entire planet. People from around the globe like to test themselves against it. Why? Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, isn’t “nothing.” It’s home to over 250,000 people. However, is Lhasa actually “Tibet”? Palin notes that since the Chinese came, so too came the wide roads, the modern communist-style apartment complexes, and something more: the Chinese. Did the Chinese see Tibet a...

The website FreeTibet.org illustrates that the fight for who controls the idea of Tibet is not yet resolved. China might have assumed political and military control, but it has yet to win all hearts and minds. Following is the link to an interesting page on this website that lists ten facts about Tibet. All the facts listed are political and connect specifically to the mission of the website. (http://www.freetibet.org/about/10-facts-about-tibet ) For facts of a more trivial or fun nature, check out FunTriva.com’s Tibet facts page: (http://www.funtrivia.com/en/Geography/Tibet-15031.html) Below are tidbits of knowledge about Tibet that you will gain when you make your visit: Q: What is the average altitude of Tibet? A: 14,000 feet. Covering an area the size of western Europe, Tibet consists of a vast plateau at an average altitude of 14,000 feet. It is one of the most sensitive and unique environments on Earth. *** Q: In greetings, Tibetans honor guests by placing a decor...

Nepal, a country that was never colonized, was only “opened to the outside world” in the 1950s. Closed societies aren’t all that uncommon throughout history. At one time, Japan and China were “closed” to the West. Today, of course, North Korea is a closed country, although it apparently is toying with the idea of promoting its own brand of cruise-ship tourism. But what does it mean to be a “closed country”? Are such countries simply xenophobic? Elitist? Scared of strangers? Correct in trying to protect themselves, just like individual homeowners are correct when locking their doors and windows? Countries, like people, probably have a variety of reasons for building walls around themselves. China built a Wall to keep the “barbarians” out, and so the mindset seems to be that bad guys come from “out there.” Close the borders, and keep out the bad guys. Nepal and Tibet only has one legal border crossing; only opened in the 1980s, it was commissioned by the Chinese, who dubbed ...

From Pakistan to India to Nepal, one link in the travels of Michael Palin’s Himalaya experiences is human conflict. Palin doesn’t necessarily dwell on it, but it’s always there, just underneath the surface. Sometimes the conflict crosses borders, such as the battle over Kashmir, but other times the conflict is internal, such as the Communist insurgence in Nepal. It might be a stupid and cliché question, but I’ll ask it anyway: Why can’t people all just get along? In Pakistan, the people who seem to get along best are the ones, like the Kalash, who are completely isolated. But I’m sure that even the Kalash have their issues. What affects this region? Poverty, illiteracy, lack of resources. Are these, or like reasons, explanation enough for why human conflict is inevitable? Is it the difference in religions practiced, philosophies held? Is the Himalaya region really all that much different from any other region of the planet in terms of human conflicts? In other words, i...

“Politicians come and go. The people are here to stay.” – Rick Stevens In 2008, Rick Stevens traveled to Iran to see if the country matched the images Americans see in the United States. Not surprisingly, he found some of Iran to be like what is shown on American television, but he also found so much more. The people of Iran were genuinely glad to see him. He recalls asking Iranians to guess where he was from. Typically, they would wrongly guess five or five different countries before he told them he was from the United States. Instead of shouting “Death to America!”, however, they inevitably smiled at him, welcoming him warmly as, perhaps, the first actual American they had ever met. Stevens felt as though the people of Iran didn’t hate Americans, although they might hate America’s leaders. Why would they hate America’s leaders? Because they scare them. In 2008, for example, presidential candidate John McCain parodied the Beach Boys with his version...

In The Complete Persepolis , Marjane Satrapi’s parents make the decision to send her to Europe for her own protection. Once there, however, Satrapi discovers that she no more belongs there than she does in her own country. How Europeans view Iranians has changed, and Satrapi becomes a victim of stereotyping. Interestingly, Satrapi is not above passing judgments on both Iranians and Europeans. For example, she considers her mother’s friend Zozo, not a “liberated Iranian woman” living in Iran; rather, she thinks Zozo’s “power” has turned her nasty. Zozo’s daughter, Shirin, likewise, doesn’t pass Satrapi’s inspection. To Satrapi, Shirin is too materialistic and too concerned about her looks. Zozo doesn’t like Satrapi, either, and quickly finds a way to rid herself of the burden of taking care of her. Much of Satrapi’s problem with life in Europe revolves around being isolated from a more “traditional” environment. In Iran, she was a radical, but in Europe, she’s quite conservativ...

The average American knows nothing about Iran. That’s my basic premise. Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis is the autobiographical account of one girl’s experience growing up in Iran. The period it covers is just before the Shah’s overthrow in 1979 through Satrapi’s ultimate exodus from Iran in 1994. What’s unique about the story is that it provides the average American reader with an “insider’s perspective.” We learn, too, that what it means to be an insider is not uniform. That is, Satrapi presents Iran as a complex nation. It has its extreme elements, and those elements may currently be in power, but Iran shouldn’t be thought of as one person with one voice. Satrapi may be an outsider in her own homeland, but she's not alone. Not even close. In the United States, we recognize that we are a nation of different religions, different regions, different political views, etc. We may have customs and traditions that unify us in important ways, but no American would m...

Is imagination everything? Human beings love to tell stories; perhaps the stories we tell aren’t as important as what the stories say about ourselves. Why do people love Harry Potter? Why do we love science fiction? Vampires? Or why do we love good old-fashioned love stories? Why do we love The Transformers? Human beings tell lots of stories, but almost every story ever told has one thing in common – the participants in the story are human beings. Even stories that don’t feature human characters feature human problems. Characters like Wall-E or The Iron Giant, for example, resonate because they seem somehow human. Imagined characters with real humanity. Did human beings also imagine God? For those that believe that God is real, to say that God is a product of human imagination is probably not a welcome assertion; however, even most believers in a God or gods would have to admit after even a cursory study of mythology that human beings have been imagining gods for t...

What would it mean to turn myth into fact? For Joseph Campbell, writing in 1970, one example is landing on the moon. Granted, 1970 seems like the distant past, but consider this: Eugene Cernan was the last person to ever step foot on the moon in 1972. That’s 40 years ago! Why haven’t we been back to the moon in the past 40 years? Human/Moon direct contact last a mere three years (1969-1972), and only twelve American men ever stepped foot on its surface. Yet our relationship with the moon has been in some ways forever altered as a result. The moon is not unreachable. In theory, we could go back if we wanted to. For America, though, most people probably see the moon as, “Ho-hum. Been there, done that.” Other nations, such as China, however, are still trying to turn the myth of the moon into fact. China has been able to send an unmanned moon orbiter crashing to its surface, but it has yet to turn the myth of the moon into fact. It’s probably only a matter of time, however, unt...

“The only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and can be reached only through suffering.” – Igjugarjuk (Caribou Eskimo) Joseph Campbell suggests that myths act as a nest. But like birds, we must be willing to leave the nest when we’re ready to fly. We must be willing to leave the security of the womb, even if we know that doing so will be a lot tougher. Who wouldn’t want to be protected by the big parent forever? Just stay in the security of the nest and allow yourself to be fed by the big parent. Accept that reality, and happily eat whatever the big parent regurgitates into your mouth. No suffering involved. And no thinking required. Myths, writes Campbell, serve four basic functions. The first he calls the “mystical function.” Myths teach us that we are a part of the universe. We need not fear the universe; rather, myths teach us our place within it. Second, myths describe how the universe works; unfortunately, argues Campbell, myths lock into...

Neon Tetras are tiny little fish, but they add a colorful element to a freshwater tank. We had a 75 gallon bow-front tank with around forty fish. Neon Tetras are cheap, and so we decided to add a dozen. This group of new inductees liked to keep together; all twelve collectively were about the size of one of our Angelfish, of which we had six. At the fish store, fish are color-coded to let buyers know which fish get along well with each other. A green sticker means that “fish play well with others,” and all of the fish in our tank were of the green-sticker variety. So it was a great surprise to wake up the following morning to discover that six of the newly-added Neons had vanished. Where had they gone? Did they somehow escape the tank, making their way for the Savannah River – ala the gang of highly intelligent escape artists in Finding Nemo? We scratched our heads about it, but assumed that they must just be very good at hiding. The next day, however, we turned on the ta...

Yesterday my wife and I picked up our daughter before the preschool’s scheduled naptime. She was so happy to see us because she absolutely hates naps. We didn’t have any plans which required us to get her earlier than normal, but as my wife explains it, going to preschool is Tavi’s job, and everyone deserves an afternoon off now and then. When we arrived home, Tavi was ready to take on her day; her mom and I were ready to take a nap. And we did. I used to be very anti-nap myself. I considered it a complete waste of an afternoon. How can I sleep when there’s so much that needs to be done? Recently, however, I’ve reconsidered my position on napping. Joseph Campbell writes, “illumination cannot be communicated.” For years, my wife tried to convince me that sleeping away the afternoon actually increased her productivity. After all, she said, a successful nap allows a person to reboot. Waking up from a nap is like a second opportunity to seize the day. No matter. She couldn’...

The philosopher John Michael Montgomery once wrote, “Life’s a dance you learn as you go; sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow. Don’t worry about what you don’t know.” I took my daughter to our first daddy-daughter dance this weekend; I think both of us were a little bit uncomfortable, because neither of us knows how to dance. Heading out to the dance floor is kind of like volunteering to be thrown into the deep end when you don’t know how to swim. Perhaps the threat isn’t the same. That is, if you flop around on the dance floor, at least you aren’t going to drown. The best approach to dancing is probably just to go with the flow of the music. Yes, there are specific types of dances, such as the waltz, which have systematic, ordered steps. Even so, I assume the key even to those dances is to “feel” the music and let it run through your movements. For a daddy-daughter type of dance, just ignoring everyone else made it a lot easier. We weren’t there for anyone else, ...

Joseph Campbell’s insights are endlessly fascinating. He suggests that humans are different from animals; spiders, for example, innately knows how to spin a web from birth. Humans, on the other hand, have a pretty long learning curve. Just consider: how long did it take you to learn how to tie your shoes? Ride a bike? Tying shoes and riding bikes aren’t normally considered to be cultural rituals, although at least in Western culture, it might be argued that both are milestones of sorts. More to Campbell’s point, however, is the idea that values are “socially transmitted,” and “myths are the mental supports of rites.” What this means in the most basic sense is that we all learn what it means to be human. What it also indicates is that there is not one right way to be human. Just as different species of spiders might utilize different spider web patterns, humans utilize different myths. These myths may have different parts in common, but essentially we are defined by the myths...