The Happiness Factor

I’ve discovered the definition of happiness.

Happiness is being transported out of yourself, out of ordinary life. It doesn’t mean you’re removed from the ordinary world, but that you transcend it. You are on a plane of existence where it’s OK to be silly, or tearful, or bubbling over with laughter. Effervescence is OK when you’re happy.

It’s the magic of drinking starlight and the warmth of drinking sunlight. A golden froth that burns low inside you, humming in every part of your being until you have to jump, or smile, to look ahead because you can’t and don’t want to keep it inside yourself. You’re lighter; so light you can float, or dance, or fly. Happiness is electrifying because it intensifies all that is wondrous and gently releases all that is painful or upsetting.

We are truly blessed that we can be happy, and those who cannot recognize happiness are truly cursed. It is the world’s most simple healer, a balm to anything and everything. Happiness connects us; it’s something inside of us that says “Yes, I’m here. Yes, I am. Yes. Thank you.”

There’s truth in those cliched adages you hear as you go through life: Standing on top of the world; Jumping for joy. I have stood on top of the world; I have jumped for joy (though I never imagined it was possible). I have been so happy I’ve jettisoned all dignity and spun in circles until I fell over just because the sun was shining, because I was with my friends, because I was.

Those of us who radiate happiness have the power to summon it in others. I read a saying once on the inside of a public bathroom stall that said, “If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.”

Happiness and fulfillment aren’t the same, but they can walk hand in hand like siblings. For me, the distinction between happiness and fulfillment is one of people: when I’m happy, there’s always a person involved. My crush smiled at me, my friend hugged me for no reason I could think of, a baby waved and laughed when he saw me, or my favorite TV characters got together. I am fulfilled when I complete something; when I can stand back and say that I’m satisfied, or when others are satisfied. I am fulfilled when I can make a positive change in my surroundings, but I am happy when I can make a positive change in a person around me. So you see how happiness and fulfillment are complements, and how often we feel both, together, to the point where we begin to think them inseparable.

Life hurts. Happiness is the compensation for – the other side of – that pain. We lose people and things every day: sometimes to Death, sometimes to Time, sometimes to just the ordinary process of living. But happiness pulls us back together like a mooring line, preventing us from drifting so far apart we can find nothing to share. When a smile no longer can gently lift the film of reality from another’s perspective then we’ll know that we’ve gone too far and the human experience has become so microscopic in scale we no longer see each other as a race, as a species.

The sensations of happiness, the invocation of that brightness of spirit and self by something or someone else – is transcendent across borders and nationalities and cultures: all humans, everywhere, that have ever come before and will ever come after, have felt that. We have all drunk the sun-and-starlight potion of joy. And that we have keeps us together when free will, when God or fate or chaos theory contrives to pull us all apart. Haven’t you had that sense, when you’re happy, that you can do anything, be anyone, overcome any impediment before you? I have. Happiness makes men and women mightier than gods, more powerful than any construction of faith or will or science. In happiness, we are invincible. 

WolfGrrl

Am I a Grade-Grubber? How to Tell

Apparently I'm entering the advice business.
We are all (unfortunately) familiar with Grade-Grubbers: those people who, when the professor announces extra-credit for an exam or the TA polls the class on redoing an assignment, snap their hand up faster than Hermione Granger and demand to know the cut-off limit for the extra credit/retest/accumulation of further points. There was a girl in my geology lab, first semester freshman year, who, when the TA offered to let the students who were unhappy with their latest test grade retake the test in his office after class, wanted to know if she could retake even though her grade was 99/100. He looked stupefied that she'd want to, and told her no. These people are the ones I am talking about.

Now, I've sent my share of emails to professors and TAs asking them to re-evaluate an assignment because I feel the grade I received was one I didn't deserve. However, I exercise *common sense* when doing this (as with all relationships of this sort, err on the side of caution when asking for favors and your chances of receiving them when you need them improve drastically). My rule of thumb for making a fuss (or sending a politely worded email of confusion) is to only pick scenarios where I am either aware of a gross discrepancy in grading (I participate directly, every day, and receive a lower grade than someone who never speaks or shows up for class) or scenarios where the principle is significantly more important than the actual grade. I don't make a fuss over something worth ten points, or if my grade will only rise by two points. (Hint: people that do are edging into GG territory.)

So how to do you know if you're a Grade-Grubber? Most people know, but if you're particularly clueless here are a few helpful hints to get you started:

1. The GG constantly checks with classmates to ensure a sufficient margin of "over-achievement" is maintained. (The guy who asks everyone around him what they got on the assignment, then sits back looking smug once they answer.)
2. The GG begins all arguments/dialogues with a variation on "In my paper..." or "The professor really liked it when I said..."
3. The GG makes everything a competition. ("Oh, it only took you ten minutes to shower? I can do it in five if I'm in a rush." "I bet I can finish my paper before you and have ______ edit it for me.")

These are the most obvious warning signs offhand, but as with Identifying the Teacup Human there are many more. Grade-Grubbing is most prevalent in overachieving individuals, or ones who are highly competitive. I, being resentful of comparatives (and also dangerously addicted to them) try to avoid these people. Besides, they're extremely irritating to talk to, and often leave me feeling nauseated and frustrated. If you think you are a Grade-Grubber, I have one further piece of advice: Seek professional help. Immediately.

Oh. And don't come near me.
This is WolfGrrl.

Tragic Flaws

One of the wisest, most powerful statements I've ever heard, and so, honestly true. I listen to this all the time, because it fits me. Completely. I don't know if I wish it didn't, or am grateful that I'm not alone.
Here it is - the wisdom of TV.

Everwood - Tragic Flaw

Until later
WolfGrrl

A (Humorous) List

10 THINGS I CANNOT DO

1. Stand up while laughing. If anyone ever wants to attack me, I have to be sitting down and laughing. Then I'm a goner.
2. That stupid thing where you rub your stomach and pat your head while (this is optional) hopping on one foot. Um, no. Not that coordinated.
3. Drink soda. I get bubbles up my nose, choke and/or sneeze, and spew it all over myself and my surroundings. Not a pretty sight.
4. Eat salad without spilling it all over myself. (See #2)
5. Eat granola without spilling it all over myself. (Also #2)
6. Play any musical instrument with any degree of aptitude. Except, maybe, the kazoo. Or the bongo.
7. Proofs. Oh yeah, if I just tried a little harder...
8. Chemistry. It may not be (all) Greek, but it's Greek to me.
9. Not speak in double entendres. Although I think this reflects more on the dirty minds of my friends than on me.
10. Win an argument with my sister. See #1. And maybe #7. And, oh what the heck, #9 too.

10 THINGS I CAN DO

1. Drive a car. You'd be amazed how many people can't do this [safely]. And I thought New Zealanders had issues...
2. Write a paper. I can write lots of papers, actually. It's a gift.
3. Bake. Eh, not everything, but the nice thing about my friends is that they eat pretty much whatever I bring them. They're like dogs. Or garbage disposals. Only I love them.
4. Talk to children and animals. I'm quite proud of this in fact, though I can't take any real credit since they just find me and attach themselves like leeches. Still, it's rather adorable.
5. Speak four languages. Notice I didn't say I was fluent in four languages. Only that I can speak them. Sort of.
6. Confuse my professors and/or classmates with my philosophical ramblings. Not sure I should be proud of this, but it's so much fun...
7. Avoid jetlag. I think my internal clock migrates. But whatever the reason, I don't usually get jetlagged.
8. Read a book in less than a day (usually three to six hours). This skill has significantly slacked off since college.
9. Organize things. Whether you want me to or not. Mwahahaha.
10. Think of more than 10 things I can't do and less than 10 things I can do. Geez.

This is WolfGrrl.

Relevance

If high school was absolutely irrelevant to my life, college is proving to be the opposite. Every day I'm here I learn something about myself or draw connections between different classes, worlds, or disciplines. Anthropology is the best major for someone of a philosophical, musing nature: it allows for the discovery and analysis of relationships between everything. And (in your face, American education-system structure) all of these connections came from the classes I chose, in the fields I like, not the stupid "General Education requirements" you make me take.

So there. Nyah. (This sound comes with the image of me sneering at the pompous bureaucratic asshat wearing a "Hello-My-Name-Is-American-Education-System" sticker.)

As Michelangelo said "I am still learning." This is so, so painfully true. Every day I learn something, be it helpful, sad, unflattering, or bizarre. Today I found my job description in a book of American horror stories by H. P. Lovecraft, whom I'd never heard of before taking my Popular Genres literature class. Here it is:

"The imaginative writer devotes himself to art in its most essential sense...He is a painter of moods and mind-pictures - a capturer and amplifier of elusive dreams and fancies - a voyager into those unheard-of lands which are glimpsed through the veil of actuality but rarely, and only by the most sensitive..."

Ah, Lovecraft. Once again, my sister proves her often spot-on taste in literature by telling he was "good." (It's impossible to be narrow-minded when she's pestering me to watch Doctor Who, read Harry Potter, and discuss Twilight. I have been forced to vacate every uninformed stance I've ever held against popular culture because of her.) I don't read horror. I don't like to be scared because, quite frankly, I can do that all by myself. But Lovecraft is a person I wish I could have known; his meticulous use of language and the joy he takes in writing is similar to my own (see yesterday's post "Linguistical Logistics").

I love to learn, maybe because my imagination is so diverse and expansive. You could put me in isolation and, once I got used to having no internet and no treadmill, I'd be content to while away my hours with my own thoughts and my own worlds. I love to think, and what is learning but stretching your mental muscles? I can't imagine (ha) anything more relevant than that.

Irreverently,
WolfGrrl

Linguistical Logistics

I like words. I mean I really like words. Which is why I'm sad that my language classes are becoming more of a chore and less of the delight they used to be. It also (somewhat belatedly) occurred to me that readers of my blog might get the mistaken impression that I only know Italian. Ha. If my Italian is on par with my German (and that's not saying much) it's only because of my high school French. Yes, I am so accomplished I can whine in four languages. FOUR. Am I fluent? Absolutely not (although I can understand foreign tourists, and some movies without subtitles). My roommate likes to boast that I'm fluent in French (Deux croissants, s'il vous plait monsieur!) and that I'm slowly mastering German and Italian. While I love her for her faith in me, this isn't exactly true. And I doubt taking two languages back-to-back is helping my poor confused brain sort this out.

Scheduling Tip: If you're taking multiple languages at the same time, try to put them on different days of the week, or if that's impossible, then at least separate them by a couple of hours and/or other classes. It absolutely sucks to go straight from German to Italian and be unable to understand simple stock phrases because I think my TA is asking me to conjugate "machen" in the past tense instead of "fare." And you can always tell when I get really confused because I start madly throwing in French words to make it look like I know what I'm doing. Then there's the inevitable awkward pause as my classmates (never at their best at 9 AM anyway) sit there stupefied, trying to parse out what I just said. Stump the teacher can occasionally be fun. Stumping your fellow students on a regular basis isn't; it just makes you the class outcast. 

Language classes aside, I love to play with words. I had my friend Anthony edit my English paper (yes, the one I was supposed to be working on when I put up Monday's post) and one of his comments pretty much typified my word-addiction. He wrote: "I wish I could live in your world where all these words float around." This came after I described J. K. Rowling's best trait as an author as her ability to approach the mundane from a slightly "tip-tilted" direction. Anthony, having read a lot of other things I write, loves to pick on my word choices. Some others he took exception to were amorphous, mores, leonine, and...there were more but I've forgotten them. I like ten-dollar words. And no, I'm not even an English major.

If I were to start waxing poetic about writing and language we'd be here until the world ends (I highly doubt 2012 is it. I mean, I want to at least study abroad and have a boyfriend before I end up a tyrannosaur's dinner or a lump of charcoal). So I'll throw out an image you're all familiar with and let you fill in the blanks yourself. I am the girl who sits in the middle row in class and takes copious, random notes interspersed with doodles while occasionally throwing out mind-bending phrases that either silence, annoy, or confuse my classmates.

I may lack Uhura's talented tongue (Oh God, I am such a nerd, but Chris Pine is hot and J. J. Abrams is awesome) but I always have and always will love words, even if I ignore every grammar rule there is and my spelling continues to be...creative.

A domani
WolfGrrl

Potter for President

Actually that should say "Granger for Gold!" 

Let me preface this post by stating that I am NOT the world's biggest fan of Harry Potter. Yes, I've read them. Some of them I enjoyed (number three will always have a soft spot in my heart, as it was the first one I ever read). I've watched the movies and written papers on the novels. I admire what J. K. Rowling has achieved. But I sincerely hope that I'm not one of those people who quote the Potterverse in everyday life. Ahem. Mother. Sister. 

I'm too young to be like my mother. And since I don't know my sister’s planet of origin, being like her is tough. 

It's course-planning time. Yes, despite being in the middle of midterms I dutifully went off to Academic Advising yesterday afternoon and planned out my schedule for the spring semester. It was no hardship; I always go to the same advisor and she's wonderful. We had a nice chat, discussed how I should not sit for my two language exams within the same four hour exam period, and then I came home to my room and planned out what I needed to take and when. 

Here's where I begin to quote Potter. Or rather, Hermione Granger.

You have to admire her; she knows where she's going in life. But she has magic on her side; most specifically, that bloody Time Turner. I want one. I am emerald with envy that she has one and I don’t. What a perfect solution! I would be so efficient I’d be in the Guinness Book of World Records: Teacup Human Graduates at 20; Teacup Human Becomes CEO of megacorporation; Teacup Human Becomes Benevolent Dictator of World…

Well, OK. The rest of the world is probably glad I don’t have a Time Turner. (Although I might have a career writing for the National Inquirer.) But really now, unless my brain exploded or I accidentally created a paradox I could, with a Time Turner, simultaneously be in the gym, in bed, in class, working in the library, and holding down a job. Whoo-hoo!

Something just occurred to me, and I’m afraid it’s punctured my excitement balloon. Does a Time Turner accelerate one’s life? If you do everything simultaneously, can you really enjoy anything? Can the brain be split into so many different scenarios or is it really a split-personality, multi-tasking-in-3D phenomenon? I have a hard time texting and walking, let alone doing seventeen different things at the same time. And what happens once you’ve done everything? What then?

In my lovely little utopia, Academic Advising would hand out Time Turners to teach us all time-management skills. The good students wouldn’t need them; the mediocre students would try them and become annoyed; and the bad students would slowly be weeded out because their heads exploded from trying to do everything. Or maybe the good and bad students would overlap.

Argh! See how frustrating this is? (And also how much I’m overthinking this process?) I think this goes under the list of things I should be grateful I don’t have to worry about, like cursing people, flying, and telepathy. I’m an ordinary teacup human with an oversized organizational bent. Can you imagine how annoying I’d be if I was full-sized and had a Time Turner?

Yes. Cringe from me. I will organize you to death. And that’s all by myself.

WolfGrrl

Trading on Tomorrow

Which is really a fancier way of saying “procrastination.” I fear procrastination and its sibling apathy more than I fear the Big Flu, the imminent (according to some of my crazy friends) Zombie Apocalypse, or being fat.  I don’t know what made me think of this; my brain is working overtime to keep me from doing my English paper I guess. I’m sitting at my computer, Microsoft Word open and ready to go, and listening to music and updating my blog. Yes, I think procrastination is definitely the order of the day. Sigh.

Well, the title comes from what I’m doing (or not doing, as the case may be) and what I’m listening to: my all-time favorite band, Trading Yesterday. They have a new name now, and I think some new members, but I don’t care. I live in the past, in the time when their music was clean and sweet and powerful. They don’t fall into that trap where every song is built around the same six notes or the same chord or whatever; their songs are all unique, all beautiful, though of course I have my favorites. I guess I’m guilty of liking soft, romantic music. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy angrier, louder stuff, especially when I’m running, but when I’m vegetating or procrastinating my tastes run towards country, soft pop (is this a genre? Sounds like a weird kind of candy) classical, and movie soundtracks. Haha – I’m nothing if not predictable.

I’m not sure that I would trade my yesterdays (even the really horrible ones) because I need them. As humans we learn through experience; the world of the theoretical is all well and good, but I can’t build a rocket ship just by reading a blueprint. (If you can, good on you; I’ll make sure they keep your grave tidy and stocked with bouquets.) I need hands-on experience to fully connect with whatever I’m doing; the one exception to this rule is my writing, which isn’t really an exception at all since so much of it comes directly from my personal experience and personal growth. It’s vastly entertaining for me to dump all the things I’ve written onto my floor and arrange them chronologically from middle school to the present. It makes me feel old, true, but accomplished when I see the improvement in my comprehension and articulation of the world. Even if I could, I wouldn’t trade my yesterdays.

I am, however, extremely proficient at trading on my tomorrows. I love to make lists: I have lists of lists junking up my wall, fridge, desk, and planner. Last year I was big into sticky notes; my desk was plastered with them and every time I reached up to pull a book off the shelf ten or so reminders would come fluttering down like pink and yellow leaves. Since then I’ve discovered the desktop equivalent; I’ve had to change the format of my wallpaper so many times to accommodate my sticky notes it’s laughable. I trade my tomorrows away as if they’re infinitely variable and infinitely expansive. This has, occasionally, gotten me into trouble as I overschedule myself and my head explodes. (Metaphorically. I am not Old Faithful.)

I am a worrier (hence the ten thousand sticky notes to ensure I remember everything). I worry and then get mad at myself for worrying. I glorify past events and waste my present (and my potential future) trying to duplicate the good ones and wishing I could go back and re-do the bad ones. This is Bad – yes, with the capital “b.” Even if I’m not willing to trade my yesterdays I still cling to them much too tightly; they creep into my present and keep me from looking ahead. It’s depressing to wake up each morning and have your first thought be “How can I do ____ better than yesterday?” or “How do I fix ____ so that I can get the same result as before?”

Coming out of my depression – jettisoning a little of my anxiety – my senior year of high school helped me at least imagine a future, dispelling the twisted notion that I had no future; something which caused me to be amazed that I was alive to see sixteen, eighteen, first prom, high school graduation. What had all been so vague was now reality. My reality. 

Oh help.

I can see the future a little better now; I know it’s there, if nothing else. I fill it up with my wishes and regrets for yesterday, then get angry and tear them all off the wall. But I can think about it now; the future is concrete for me. I know I will finish college. I know I will (hopefully) go to grad school, maybe get my Ph.D. I know I want to get married to a man I love; to have kids by the time I’m thirty; to be a stay-at-home or part-time mom. I know what I want now, and that is, in its own way, a kind of giant sticky note on the wall of my life.

I underestimate and undervalue myself by clutching at my yesterdays and trading my tomorrows. There’s a poem, a famous one, which goes something like this:

If you love something,

Set it free.

If it was meant to be

It will come back to you.

I don’t love my tomorrows or my yesterdays; love is too narrow for how I feel about them. But I do love myself, and what are we as humans – yes, even teacup humans – if not the cumulative wisdom of our yesterdays and the aspirant hopes of our tomorrows? I think I need to set my yesterdays and tomorrows free, to stop clinging to them and pushing them away, and let them settle around me like the rain of colored sticky notes falling from my shelves.

And here, by the way, is the first Trading Yesterday song I ever heard: 

She is the Sunlight 

Did I bend your brain?

WolfGrrl

Sunday Sunrise

I love sunrises.
I love sunsets too, but (although not recently) I see more sunrises as a rule, especially as the year turns and the sun rises later and later each day. Watching that first light dawn over the edge of the world must be one of the most amazing vistas in the universe; for moments like that I'd think all the rigorous training to be an astronaut would be worth it. I certainly enjoy seeing it from where I stand, on the track or at my window, my feet against the earth but my eyes - and maybe my heart - high, high above.

Sunday sunrises are some of the most beautiful of all, mostly because Sunday is already a peaceful day; no one really schedules events on Sunday (at least in my little world). My mother usually goes to one of her churches; my father has pancakes for breakfast. My sister sleeps until noon and I - when I'm at home I'm the first one up, the first to stand alone and watch the light come back to the world. Something about being alone, being a part of that hushed calm where no one is driving around, only a few souls are out jogging or walking their dogs in the fresh, cool morning, is incredibly stimulating. It's as though the world is simple, clear, and clean. I know a lot of this is cultural construct, and that Sunday mornings aren't physically different from say, Wednesday mornings. But, still...

I'm used to feeling small and powerless; honestly, if I wasn't apathetic I think I'd just be pathetic, but there's something about dawn (and dusk) that takes that sense of isolating distance away from me and says, "No, you are a part of something. Look. Feel." Humans are small compared to the Universe - to the sky and the stars and even our own spinning green-and-blue planet. And I'm small when compared to other humans. But I don't have to be. I can be big too; I can be mighty. Sunrise invigorates me the way sunsets soothe me; I can only describe it as being lifted out of myself and set free to swim off into those banners of color and light and cloud, reaching for worlds I can't see but must be there. Haha, I guess it makes me a little fanciful too; maybe I'm just that way naturally.

Anyway, I have to go write my English paper now (due in a week; horrors!) but I'll leave you with one of my many favorite songs; a sunrise song, if you will.

Good Morning Beautiful

Bella giornata!
WolfGrrl

Free-Falling into Fall

I wish, just once, that I could be completely content with myself. There are times when I almost make it, but there's always that nagging doubt in the back of my mind, the little voice in my ear that whispers insidiously when I look in the mirror. I can't escape myself, and I'm still trying to figure out why I want to.

I don't think I'm a bad person (I don't know I'm a good person, either, but I don't feel like a bad one). Many people praise me for being "poised" and "together" but I usually feel that the outward image is a flawed and inaccurate reflection of my inner self. My only comforts are: 1) Everyone else feels like this too; and 2) It can be changed. Everything can be changed. Like the saying goes, Nothing is certain but Death and Taxes.
And I don't even pay taxes.

Today is the first day of October. When I was planning for school in the summer, I always phrased things like this: "Once I'm at school, it'll be different" or "Once college starts back up and I have classes I will/won't..." Well guess what? School started - has been going strong for a while now - and I still have all the same issues and problems I did this summer, and last year, and the year before that. They didn't magically disappear when my public life resumed. Joy. Rapture. (Is the sarcasm coming through? I don't want to be off-putting, but it's so hard to judge intonation in words.)

As a teacup human I'm naturally quite small; this means my center of gravity is lower and I'm more stable. Well, as my profile says I'm not particularly graceful (strike one against stability) and now it seems my emotional stability is a sham as well. This accounts for the title; I feel like I'm free-falling through life, smashing into various people and objects and ideas along the way. Occasionally this process knocks some sense into me or jars something loose in my brain; you'll find these posts sporadically (my "epiphany" posts). But on the whole the process of free-falling isn't very comfortable. Or stable. And I love stability. (Is this a teacup human thing or a human thing? Ideas?)

Several of my friends have complained to me lately that they feel as though they're "wasting their lives" and that they "don't know what they're doing." Well, neither do I. Do any of us? In the past few years I've heard a lot about what it means to be "normal" and that there really isn't any such thing (anthropology helps dispel such illusions, let me tell you). Great. So we're all abnormal? Maybe I should wish for normality instead of world peace next time they interview me for the Miss Universe pageant. I'll bet a world of normal people wouldn't have wars, or genocide, or mass starvation or prostitution.

So what do we do, my friends and I? Are we lost? Tolkien says that "Not all who wander are lost" but that doesn't help much; if we're not lost are we supposed to be wandering? Am I wandering or falling? For the first time in my life I feel strong enough to make plans for the future, and confident enough to hope that somehow I'll fulfill those plans. And yet smaller, more immediate things continually elude me. You're not supposed to chuck all your eggs into one basket, but how am I supposed to carry them all when juggling becomes too risky?

Mmph. 
WolfGrrl