Category Archives: Life’s lessons

Sharing the happy

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Most of you are probably wondering what that Happy Book thing is on the left sidebar of my web site. I hope you are wondering enough to read on.

First, let me start by asking you if you are familiar with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a novel by Ann Brashares (and later a movie by the same name). The premise is that four best friends, spending their summer away from each other, decide to share a pair of pants to keep them connected. Each keeps the pants for a short while and then send to the next friend.

Second, The Happy Book, written by Rachel Kempster and Meg Leder is a book about being happy. It is an activity book that encourages us to discover or re-discover the things in life that make us happy. They (the authors) say their book is more fun that a basket of kittens!

Third, one of those happenstance, must be fate kinda moments in life, I happened to log into Facebook right at the moment when a friend shared a link to Jamie Ridler’s Creative Living Blog, and since I wasn’t too busy with anything else I clicked on the link and read that Jamie had interviewed the authors of The Happy Book and…

Combine these three elements and what you have is Jamie’s idea to send a Happy Book around the world for people to share their happy things!

What a cool idea, thought I, so I signed up immediately, wanting to be one of the few to get in on this happiness sharing thing!

Jamie would accept 26 names, come up with a mailing list, mail the book to the first recipient who can keep it for a week and do whatever happiness she wants in it. Then she mails it to the next person who gets to the same and so on! Considering the mail time involved, it will probably take about a year for the book to make a round trip.

Well, first so many people wanted to do this, that Jamie decided to start 4 books on their trips around the world! I am in the Glee group and I am number 14 on the list. When the book gets to me I can do any or as many of the activities that I want. I can insert pictures or doodles or use crayons or whatever makes me happy! I can share with my family and friends, if I like, but when my week is up, I send it to the next person. If we run out of pages, we’ll just add more!

I know none of the people in the Glee group in real life. But, I know I am going to enjoy perusing what the thirteen happy people entered before me. And, maybe my happy will add some joy to the people after me!

Jamie mailed the books on January 15 to the first recipient in each group. I should receive it, somewhere near the end of July. It will be Jamie’s job to help us keep the book on schedule and she has set up a blog site  for us to follow our book through its journey.

That’s it! I’m in a sisterhood of a traveling happy book and that makes me happy!

Everyone likes to be happy, yes? Let’s use the comment section of this post to share things that makes us happy! Send lots of happy comments, okey dokey? I’ll go first…

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My good fortune

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If you are a regular reader of my blog, you might remember that I mentioned a dream I had in late December. In it, I was ice skating. There were other skaters, skating on this frozen pond in a clearing in the woods. There were bonfires and people drinking mugs of hot chocolate. Everyone was happy and laughing. The snow was falling and I was skating perfect figure eights. I remember feeling incredible joy. 

I’ve been giving this dream a lot of thought and have concluded there is a message of great import in it for me.

Since I do not know how to ice skate, I think the dream is a metaphor for me to try new things. And, I think I was ice skating and not skydiving because the message is that I need not be afraid. (Not to make light of ice skating injuries, but, really, what’s the worse that might actually happen? [That is a rhetorical question and one I am not asking you to answer.])

The message is that if I am willing to try, I just might succeed and have a damn good time doing it!

Since this dream and my conclusion of it, I’ve been looking for meaning in all kinds of little things happening around me.

For instance, let me share something that happened to me a week or so ago. Brian and I went to the Chinese buffet for dinner. After dinner, I went to the ladies room to wash my hands and when I returned Brian was opening his fortune cookie. I picked up the remaining one, the one meant for me, and began opening it, while he read his fortune. “Your fondest dream will come true within this year,” his said. And, his lucky numbers are 8, 13, 23, 30, 33, 38.

I broke mine open only to discover that mine did not have a fortune in it. What? No fortune? This has never happened to me before. What can that possibly mean?

Figuring there are numerous reasons myths about why a person would not receive a fortune in his fortune cookie, I decided to go searching on the internet.  (This is never a good thing for me to do. I typically get hung up on all the extraneous info and end up spending hours on something that should have taken only minutes. Which is the case here, too.) 

To make a long story short, the general consensus in the world of fortune cookie myths is that it is very bad to get a fortune cookie with no fortune inside. The answer that I liked best, though, is this one on wiki-answers in response to someone very worried about his lack of a fortune in his cookie:

The Ying and Yang fortune cookie company has a telepathic employee who knows who is going to get each and every fortune cookie made. When she came to your cookie, she started typing up your fortune, but since it was so large, she ran out of room. She got a letter-sized piece of paper and began typing again. When she finished, she couldn’t figure out how to insert it into the cookie quickly, without cracking the cookie before getting wrapped and falling into the shipping bag at the end of the conveyor belt. If you call the company, it has your fortune sitting next to the phone, waiting for you to call, because the telepathic woman knows that you will indeed call, having telepathic abilities and all.

Haha! I also read that many people believe that the entire fortune cookie must be eaten in order for the fortune to come true. Or, believe that you should not eat the fortune cookie if the fortune seems unlucky. Or, that the entire cookie must be eaten before reading the fortune (ooh, which means that if you got an unlucky fortune, you are screwed). Or, that the fortune will not come true if read aloud, or read at all. Then there are rules on how to select your cookie. Do you close your eyes, pick one for someone else at the table, or choose a cookie that appears to be pointing at you?

I always let everyone select their cookie by whatever method they choose, and then I take the last one. It is that last remaining cookie that holds my fortune.

I’ve decided that  not getting a fortune in my fortune cookie is the luckiest of all possibilities. It means I get to create my own fortune!

What do you believe about fortune cookies?

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A puzzling dilemma, part 2

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I know you must be dying to know what my friend’s friend did about the puzzle book she accidentally stole from the store last week. (If you are new to this blog, go here to see the story: http://tinyurl.com/yzu4jty.

Before I tell you, let me say that I was very impressed with the comments I received about what she should do. The results are 50/50. Some of you believe she should take the book back and pay, others said not to bother.

I’ve been pondering this moral dilemma. Honestly, I do not think it would be that big a deal if my friend’s friend did not take the book back. If she were my friend, I would not think any less of her if she chose to do nothing. Now, I would certainly feel differently if she had stolen it on purpose or if her actions hurt anyone, say, if the employee of the store lost his job or, if it was a small mom and pop store that would miss the dollar associated with that inventory.

Once I got to thinking about it, I realized that, for me, there are degrees of culpability. Do you remember back in the early 90s when the movie, “Indecent Proposal,” came out? Everyone had an opinion on whether it was wrong for Demi Moore to have sex with Robert Redford for a million dollars.  People debated the morality of being married and having sex outside the marriage. Some argued that it is a sin. Others said that since her husband agreed to it, that it was ok. So, I guess the first question is whether or not you believe there was a moral lapse on the part of this couple. Apparently, it would have been worse, if she did this behind Woody Harrelson’s back. And, what about the amount of money involved? I remember quite a few people saying they would have sex with Robert Redford for a million bucks. But, what if the amount was a lot less? Would they do it for $10,000? What if wasn’t Redford, but someone much more distasteful to the eyes? Would it take 2 million to do it then?

If there aren’t degrees of culpability, then one could argue that if a couple would do this for a million dollars, they would also do it for a dollar. 

So what does this have to do with my friend’s friend? Nothing, really. I’m told she carried the book into the store unnoticed, got in line and paid for it. No questions were asked, so she didn’t offer any explanations. It made her feel right, somehow. So I am told.

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