Zen and the Happiness Project

On Fridays I plan to write about some of the books I’ve found helpful in my continuing attempts at finding the Lost Kingdom of Zen. Today’s choice: Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project”.
Info about The Happiness Project

A few years ago, as I was just figuring out that I might need to try and improve my mental health a speck (*cough, understatement), I discovered Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project.  This book details Rubin’s yearlong study/quest to improve her own personal happiness, and to determine if in fact certain practices CAN increase happiness.

Spoiler alert: Yes. Certain practices CAN increase happiness. Yay!

I like projects. I like research. I knew I would like this book, and I did.  I re-read it at the beginning of last year as part of my quest to get some zen COME HELL OR HIGH WATER…er, I mean, work peacefully at becoming happy and chill and zentastic instead of just frantically waiting for the other shoe to drop as we entered a new season of less frequent MRIs and hopefully less medical smite, after a decade plus of hospital time galore, topped off with several months in 2016 of highly improbable medical ugh. 

Obviously, the work continues, as I am now repeating, “I did not just jinx us. I did not just jinx us. I did not just jinx us.”

Ergh. Zen.

ANYWAY, there are a lot of things in Rubin’s book that have really stuck with me since I first read it. When I decided to write ABOUT the book as part of this blog, I resisted the urge to go back and flip through the pages. What are the lessons/ideas that STAYED with me? THESE were the things that I should include in any writings, because really—the things I remember without looking back at the book are the things that stuck with me the most.
There are many. I highly recommend this book.

Probably the most important one, the one I reference the most in daily zen-pursuit, is “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.

Reading through Rubin’s meticulous and conversational record of her research methods, I was a speck intimidated by HER perfection (she would probably argue that point, but really—she is intensely talented and driven; her process inspires me). Still—this has become a mantra that I repeat OFTEN.

I am perhaps a bit of a perfectionist. 

Sorry, I should have told you to sit down before I unleashed that shocker on you.

Sadly, I am not the “house in perfect order/always perfectly coiffed/entertaining goddess/paint the cookies with replicas of the Sistine Chapel ceiling” kind of perfectionist. I just get paralyzed by things NOT being perfect, and turn into a speed bump. Especially as I navigated years of medical ugh, I got buried by my life because I just couldn’t figure out the perfect way to hold everything together—and so everything sort of got figuratively MacGyvered or ignored.

This does not create zen.

Although really, how awkward would it be to eat a Sistine Chapel ceiling cookie?

Taking to heart Rubin’s mantra “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” has really, really helped me get more done in my life and NOT be constantly stressed with how not perfect things are. So not every seam was perfect in my daughter’s memory quilt I sewed for Christmas—but it was good. Really good. So I didn’t waste time ripping out tiny imperfections my visually impaired kid would never notice. So the PowerPoint I put together to help my students who need printed out aids for note taking doesn’t have cool animation or interesting graphics—it is good, and serves the purpose for which it’s designed.

Honestly, I frequently say “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” out loud, when I am doing anything creative especially. Perfectionism is the opposite of zen. And for far, far too long I have been sort of tangled in an impossible perfectionistic paralysis.  Just for this one mantra, reading The Happiness Project was a win.

If only just to make myself get that second blog entry out in the first week or January—"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" is a win. Still have 1 hour and 46 minutes left in the day! Woo! I will get to put a gold star in my bullet journal…another Happiness Project insight for next week. J  

If you are so inclined, pick up a copy and check it out for yourself—or listen to Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Gretchen Rubin on the most recent Super Soul Sunday podcast.  That’s a great way to get a quick version of some of the key points of the book.

Just Don’t Let the Perfect be the Enemy of the Good!

Where to find the Super Soul Podcast

Perspectives in Sparkly Blue

“these wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just some things that time cannot erase”
My Immortal, Evanescence

Perspective.

The last year or so have been pretty challenging here, and not necessarily in the obvious ways we very publically share. Without turning this into a moment of Oprah (unless someone wants to give me my own Zeppelin? No? darn. ) , recent days and weeks and months have not been the most woohoo at the Casa Camiolo. That is what it is. But in this week, which is the holiest of our church year, the pain that I can’t seem to shake has been particularly intense. And for whatever reason, the Yeatsian season of our life is wearing at me … things fall apart/the centre cannot hold …

So it’s been a bad week. Cue the old American Idol Go Home song and I’d have myself an afterschool special . Yes, I am THAT old. ; )

I have been trying to deep clean the layers of stuff that mark, like an archaeological strata, the seasons of my life. We have sorted out the last bit of extra hats from when one of my children needed hats to cover her scarred and patchy head—some will go to other hospital kids, some that were more worn will go to charity. I got rid of Lyrics of the Middle Ages. Love the Middle Ages, hated that class, really hated that poetry. Heck, I even threw out the old instant oatmeal that I could not remember buying…the date on the one box was Jersey Board of Health worthy, Yikes! (I swear, the kids USED to like oatmeal!). We’ve purged some of the Kid On Chemo! Stuffed animal collection, sand-decorated candle holders from a long ago Good Mom craft project, and bags of clothing that just needed to go.

In a particularly difficult moment yesterday I tackled the drawer on my little nightstand. Loose change, several safety pins, a thimble (?? No clue where THAT came from), 42 holy cards (I have religious object guilt, I can NEVER throw away a holy card or a funeral card), a random inspirational book, and a pair of nail scissors managed to all live peacefully together in there. I also found a paper on which I had printed out one of my favorite depressing poems.

Yes, I have favorite depressing poems. Sometimes poems just say things more effectively and less offensively (oops), and when I am having a moment of despair and isolation, Gerard Manley Hopkins is my main man. His poetry of faith and despair and hope and hey nature is cool have gotten me through many a tough time (particularly during the Kid on Chemo season).

So there was this paper, printed out

I WAKE and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say 5
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; 10
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Yes, it’s a perky piece. I can relate to insomnia and the “Is anybody OUT THERE?” vibe.

But there, at the top, just touching the top line of the poem, one of my children had stuck a sparkly blue smiley face sticker.

I know the poem well (it’s been living in that drawer for 6 years!)…but the smiley face sticker was a new moment. I found that festive little smile, left by my loving child, to be such a contrast of hope to the words of that poem, the words of my heart.

I refolded the paper, and put it back in the now marginally more organized drawer.

The day was still pretty rotten with patches of yikes, I won’t lie. But in the back of my mind, I can still see that little smiley, and I can imagine my little bud putting it there and tucking it back into my drawer…and really, at the end of the day, isn’t that the perspective of Holy Week? Piles of uber-yikes, of feeling utterly alone and lost and lamenting…and there, over the horizon, there is joy, just the smallest hint of joy, stuck there by somebody who loves us.

Have a blessed Easter, all