- RT @bargainr: Life in North Korea is absolutely dreadful http://nyti.ms/dAcL26 #
- RT @bitfs: Weekly Favorites and Gratitude!: My Favorite Posts this Week Jeff at Deliver Away Debt threw together the .. http://bit.ly/9J0gGo #
- @LiveRealNow is giving away a copy of Delivering Happiness(@dhbook). Follow and RT to enter. http://bit.ly/czd31X # #
- Baseless claims, biased assumptions, poor understanding of history. Don't bother. #AnimalSpirits #KeynesianCult #
- RT @zappos: Super exciting! "Delivering Happiness" hit #1 on NY Times Bestseller list! Thanks everyone! Details: http://bit.ly/96vEfF #
- @ericabiz Funny, we found a kitten in a box last week. Unfortunately, it was abandoned there, not playing. Now, we have a 5th cat. in reply to ericabiz #
A Well-Trained Husband
I am so well-trained.
I was more than a bit wild when I was younger. For the most part, that ended when my son was born. When you procreate, it’s time to put the wild on a shelf and become a reliable provider. That’s just the way it is. Anybody who prioritizes the wild over the progeny needs to be forcibly sterilized and exiled before be sold for parts.
When my mother-in-law got a membership to Sam’s Club, she gave my wife the second card, so we effectively have a membership. For those who don’t know, Sam’s Club is a warehouse store that has some incredibly good deals and a lot of things that look like good deals because you are buying in bulk.
The thing I hate most about warehouse stores is the default accusation of theft when you leave. They require you to line up so the the person by the door can look at your receipt and pretend to count what’s in your cart while they are really scanning for the most-stolen items in the store and ignoring the rest. The only thing they really accomplish is making all of their customer feel like thieves.
I used to bypass the line and the checker and just leave. My wife got sick of the indignant screeches coming from the store as we left. Eventually she got me to stop.
Last night, I went back to pick up supplies for a fund-raiser I’m helping to organize on Sunday. I went with one of the other organizers, who had some personal shopping to do later. We checked out using his account and he paid, while I took the food home to keep until Sunday. Since he’ll be getting reimbursed for the food, he kept the receipt while I headed for the door. Anybody see the problem here?
When the receipt-checker challenged me, I docilely stepped to the side and called my friend to bring the receipt to the door. I hate the feeling of submitting to authority, especially when the authority is pretending to be customer service. I just calmly did what the door-cop told me, just like my wife wanted, even though she wasn’t there.
I hate warehouse stores.
Friends and Acquaintances
“Friends help you move. Good friends help you move bodies.”
-unknown
Some people have dozens of friends. I’m not that guy.
I have 6.
Everybody in the world can be divided into 4 categories.
- Strangers. A xenophobe’s nightmare. These are the people you don’t know, whether they are passing you on the sidewalk, or newborns on the opposite side of the world.
- Acquaintances. These are the people you’ve met, mostly in passing. They tend not to have much effect on your life. You may pass a friendly bus ride in conversation, but it’s nothing that sticks. A waitress, the clerk at the store, a friend’s latest date; these are the people you interact with for just a moment and rarely think about further.
- Friendlies. Most people call these folks friends. I don’t. I’m friendly with them, hence the name, but it’s not true friendship. Often, they are either my wife’s friends, or my friends’ wives. Sometimes, they are a friend of a friend that I only see at parties, or a coworker that I get along with, but never see outside of work. We’re friendly, but not obliged. I may help with some things, but it’s not necessarily a priority. I’ll go to a funeral, but probably won’t help plan it.
- Friends. To me, calling someone a friend is a big deal. I’m willing to do a lot for my friends. They are able to command large amounts of my time, and ask any number of favors. If needed, I’ll open my home or help demolish their’s. Loyalty, honesty, trust, respect, and companionship are all a part of my definition of a friend. If a friend needs help, I’ll come running. In return, I expect the same.
Family tends to fall into the same analogous categories.
It sounds cold, but I hesitate to let people graduate into the final category. My wife used to try to “set me up” with people that she thought I’d like to be friends with, thinking I was sad to have so few friends. It took years for her to realize that I was happy. It’s a matter of quality over quantity. Most of the friends I have, I’ve had for 10 years or more. I’ve known each of them for at least 5 years, not that time is a requirement.
Moving people into the “friends” category is a lot like dating. You get along, so you invite the potential friends out for a drink, one on one. You feel them out to see if they are compatible. You meet their families, share some food, build some history. If it all works out, eventually, you consider them a true friend, even if you couldn’t mark the date of the transition.
You wouldn’t marry everyone you date, so why would turn everyone you basically get along with into a friend?
Do you have a lot of friends? What marks friendship for you?
Be Happy With What You Have…
…or you will never be happy.
A newer car, a bigger TV, a nicer house, a fancier phone, better tickets, more friends, more gadgets, more toys…more, bigger, better…whatever.
It’s all a disappointment.
Nothing on that list will provide happiness. If that is your goal, you will spend your life miserable. It’s not possible to buy happiness, either directly or indirectly through the accumulation of “stuff”. A purchase may fuel your ego or trigger endorphins, but it is all temporary. There’s no sustainable happiness in the “high” of the latest purchase.
The search for stuff pales in comparison to the search for meaning. Find your passion and follow that. Chase that to the ends of the earth, and come back feeling fulfilled. Feel something that will last longer than the drive home or the next product release.
Find contentment. At some point there is a satisfying level of “enough”. More than that, you feel empty. Less, envious. Find enough and stop there. Find the level that allows you to do the things you need to do and some of what you want to do. Find your balance point and be happy with it.
Living life constantly disappointed that you don’t have more is a sure way to live life disappointed. How do you find your balance point?
Also, have you started the Happiness Challenge?
Link Roundup
Wrestling season is finally over. Q1 is always such a busy time in my house. Now, spring has sprung and it’s time to start enjoying the weather.
On to the links.
Finance:
Here’s an intro guide to settling IRS debts.
Only someone who’s never had to deal with the full default process could think this was a good idea. The Department of Education outsources its collections for a reason. Eliminating private lenders will raise the students’ costs and eliminate options for troubled debtors. Yes, I worked in the industry for several years.
The Guide to Buying Glasses Online. I currently have 6 pairs of glasses that cost me a grand total of $150, with no loss in quality.
PenFed: Credit cards done right.
Not finance:
This is the coolest picture I’ve seen this year. Space pics for under $1000. NASA could take lessons, I think.
I miss the days when napping was possible.
38 Random Acts of Robyn. I’m thinking about incorporating this as a 30 day project.
Lawdog has a great idea to fix the problems with our legislature. It’s a beautiful Constitutional Amendment. If they have to play by the rules they set, the might start setting better rules.
“Only excepting such limited protection as offered by Article One, Section Six, Congress is hereby prohibited from exempting its Members from each, any, and all effects, duties or obligations rendered upon any citizen, or citizens, by any Law, Tax, or other action passed by Congress.”
Diana Nyad: Never Give Up
Diana Nyad, a 64-year-old endurance swimmer, became the first person to swim the 110 mile distance from Cuba to Key West Florida. Certainly, the environmental factors were in her favor as the sea life did not bother her,
the currents stayed friendly, and no storms approached. She swam for over fifty-two hours straight before reaching the coast of Florida.
After her long, treacherous journey across the ocean, her words of advice to others were “I have three messages. One is we should never, ever give up. Two is you never are too old to chase your dreams. Three is it looks like a solitary sport, but it takes a team.” Surely, just as a physical sport requires will-power and endurance not to “throw in the towel” or give up, life also requires this same type of endurance.
We are all running an endurance race of life in which we must preserver when trials arise. In order to succeed in this, we must never look back at past failures, but rather press forward to the reward. Just as people running a foot face are running with intense focus on the goal (to cross the finish line and win the metal), people with purpose are also running this race of life, in which they are looking forward to a reward beyond our human comprehension.
In addition, just as Diana Nyad said that one is never too old to chase his or her dreams, a person should never look at age as a determinant of wisdom or faith in life. This is undoubtedly true in regards to children and their innocent, child-like faith that is unpolluted by experience and unspotted by the knowledge of the evilness that exists all around us in this world.
On the other hand, the older people should not possess a mind-set that limits their ability to stay active in life. As soon as a person determines in his or her head or listens to outside voices telling him or her that he or she cannot do something because of advanced age, he or she has a tendency to live out these thoughts and these thoughts create feelings of defeat. Ultimately, people should keep a child-like faith with an optimistic, determined thought pattern in life. This will surely create better overall mental health and therefore more productivity.
Just as Diana Nyad pointed out that her endurance swim could not have been successfully accomplished without a team, people need positive fellowship in life. When a person is discouraged, having somebody to embrace him or her in a hug and simply offer words of encouragement can greatly leave a positive impact on the soul. When one person is strong in an area, the next person is possibly weak in that same area. We are all unique and have different strengths that we can bring to the community. If everybody shared their time and gifts with their neighbor, this life would be much simpler.
Unfortunately, many “sharks” exist amongst people that are looking for somebody to gnash with their teeth, torture, and devour. It is often said that a shark can “smell fear” and thus responds in a negative matter to fear. Diana Nyad did not focus on the sharks, therefore did not display fear nor was she approached by any dangerous predators. Instead, she focused on the shore, not looking to her right or left. In life, if we do not pay the “sharks” any attention, they will most likely not notice or approach us.
We can learn much from Diana Nyad’s example of her “Never Give Up” endurance swim.