happiness is hard
(hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me)
((part three))


on espn radio this morning, colin cowherd cited a 9 year-old study on happiness done by a phd at a chicago university (sorry...i am too lazy to look for something to cite. i am just going to trust that cowherd wasn't making it up.). the study was simple to execute. it went like this. ten couples were randomly selected for a week-long trip to the beach on the university in question's dime. the only catch was this. the phd would place a short phone call to the man and woman of each couple once every waking hour. each hour over the course of the 12 hour period, each participant would rank their happiness on a scale of 1-10. that's it. outside of that one factor, the couples were told to enjoy themselves as best they could. once the vacation ended, the phd allowed three months to pass. he then asked all ten couples to come in, one couple by one, for a one hour evaluation of their experience. as part of the sit down, each participant was asked to rank their happiness for the entire week. to a couple and to a (wo)man, the ranking of the week on the whole was significantly higher than each person's respective average over the course of the 84 phone calls during the actual vacation. the phd concluded what he already suspected, that we, as humans are good at revisioning history and even better at pushing uncomfortable things in our past to the back of our minds so that positive experiences have more room in the front.

after his story, cowherd used the anecdote as a way of bringing up michael jordan and the myth of his awesomeness. if anyone talks about jordan these days, it's all hyperbole. "greatest ever". "never missed a clutch shot." "dunked once over jesus." that kind of stuff. gone from our collective consciousness are all the stinker games he played. all of the last second shots that he took that clanked off and away from the rim sending the bulls into the tunnel hanging their heads in defeat. all of the first six or seven years of his career when he could barely get out of the first round.

such is sports. if lebron can carry the heat to a title this year, looking back twenty years from now, you'll be led to believe that his career started with the 2010-11 season. his struggles and growth will be forgotten, because struggles and growth only make for good stories in the olympics.

such is life, especially when it comes to happiness. oh, happy day. is there a more relative qualifier than the word "happy"? some things that currently make me happy like facebook and twitter and fantasy baseball probably make others roll their eyes or recoil. some things that makes others happy like cooking or doing yardwork or searching for pictures of osama bin laden's shot up face online kinda make my stomach turn over. in life, in our life, though, we know happy when we see it. and we know happy when we feel it. it's no surprise to me to think that our chicago phd called one of his group right after they realized they stayed in the sun for three hours too long and they gave that hour a 2 on their scale because they were burned to hell. what is ever surprising and always disappointing is that we, and by we i mean i, can't interject some perspective into any given moment to realize and own that there are often many, many more reasons for us to be happy versus sad/mad/frustrated.

when i think ahead to my family's disney vacation that is just over a month away, i want to keep colin cowherd's anecdote in the front of my mind. will there be frustrations along the way and during the week? i am sure there will be, several in fact. but, what would happen if i could condition myself with the idea that, no matter what, this will be the BEST. VACATION. EVER beforehand and let that idea vaccinate all my negative thoughts with something akin to a preemptive strike?

my wife and friends know that i can be a fickle little baby. just today, i was totally pissed that amy and katie showed up to uab to run 10 minutes later than we planned. TEN MINUTES. that's it! but i let it ruin the next half hour and i ran with a chip on my shoulder the whole time. never mind that i ran my fifth, yes FIFTH mile in under 8 minutes, which i am pretty sure is the first time i've ran a mile in less than 8 minutes since i started this madness three months ago. never mind that i've lost over 25 pounds and am probably in the best shape of my life at 34. never mind all of that shit. they were TEN MINUTES late. i am such an asshole.

the point is this. i want to get better. and i need to get better. if not for me, for my family and the little kumquat that deserves a father that is at least the same amount of sane as hannah and caroline have had thus far.

i want to be able to own that, goddammit, i should be and AM happy most of the time. why wouldn't i be?

i am challenging myself now. every day for the rest of the month of may, i will log here or write down to log later how i would rank each day in terms of my own personal happiness. the notes will be short and sweet. we'll see if conducting my own personal trial helps my own personal effort to not be such a whiny bitch all of the time.

note: having said all of this, i fully expect caroline to tangle a sucker in her hair on the way home just to test my ass.