Happiness is a Choice

One night when I was no more than ten, after a very grumpy day, my mother told me a story as she was tucking me in that went something like this: There were two boys in prison where they were forced to perform all kinds of difficult chores. One day they were brought to the stables and shown one stall that was filled with manure all the way to the ceiling and told to empty it. One boy gleefully grabbed his shovel, jumped right in and began shoveling with all the energy he had. The other boy scowled and began making fun of the shoveling boy, "Whatsa matter with you? Do you like horse crap, you gonna eat it, or what?" The other boy stopped shoveling long enough to exclaim, "Look at all this manure! There's gotta be one heck of a horse in their somewhere, and I am gonna find him!" My mom went on to say, "you need to be like that first little boy and find the good in everything." I remember lying there in bed that night, amused by the absurdity of the boy's optimism but resolving to be just like him. And as Robert Frost said, "that has made all the difference."

From time to time in life we can get off track in one way or another, slowly drifting from things we know to be true, without realizing how off course we are getting. We need a good friend, a piece of scripture, or the Spirit's nudging to get us moving in the right direction again. Over the last two years, I have slowly but steadily gotten more and more depressed about the current state of the world. I had forgotten to choose joy, and it was debilitating. But then a friendly voice on the radio, pointed me back to truth with his Happiness Hour. Dennis Prager with his insistence that happiness is a moral obligation we owe to those around us, and his constant reminders that happiness in no way is reliant on our circumstances has helped me get back on course. So thank you mom for setting me down the path of happiness and thank you Dennis for reminding me the way back to that path.

Two Great Sentences, One First-Tier Painting

"Though most settlements of the pale were arranged along the road like the branches of a tree, not Koidanyev, because of its relation to the river. From the main highway a spur led directly to its heart. You entered upon this road and left on it. The road was bisected by the river, against which the citizens of Koidanyev had retaliated by bisecting the river with a bridge."

- From Jacob Bayer and the Telephone, a short story by Mark Helprin


I am rereading The Pacific this week and I had to stop when I came across this sentence so that I could run around the house and read it to everyone. I know it is basically a fancy way of saying there is a bridge across the river, but it cracks me up. The word "retaliated", the assigning of a motive, is what seals the deal. It is simple, absurd, and it works. Reading Helprin is like eating an incredible piece of chocolate, you just savor it and slowly run it back and forth in your mind over and over. Wonderful!

"The most difficult of the dinner parties I ruin are usually around Christmas, and always those of the younger members of the firm, who, no matter how well they have done, have yet to find their place because they have yet to fall from grace and restore themselves. They know I have built and rebuilt, that, quite apart from my military history, I have, in corporate terms come back from the dead. That very thing, though I did not ask for it, is what they fear the most to get and fear the most in me.
It is why, while I sit still and merely smile, they hold forth in a volume of words that would blow up a tire. You would think that because they talk as enthusiastically as talking dogs, they would win. While they say everything, I say nothing. I am shown the second-tier paintings, and harried children who can play Mendelssohn, and from the corner of my eye I can see the ineluctable Range Rovers, the Viking stoves, and the flower boxes perfectly tended by silent Peruvians with broken hearts."

-From Reconstruction, a short story by Mark Helprin

I remember my dad telling me a story about a preacher who quoted C.S. Lewis in every sermon and eventually, the elders of the church told him to quit quoting Lewis in every sermon or he would be fired. The next Sunday he couldn't help himself, heavily quoted Mr. Lewis, and that was the last sermon he ever gave at that particular church. I feel kind of like that preacher tonight. I just can't help myself, but at least I am not alone; the silent Peruvians bear mute witness to Helprin's genius.

Note: this is my one hundredth post. It took me a little longer to get here than I had hoped, but here's to one hundred more. Thanks for reading.

The Beach at Palavas, Gustave Courbet, 1854

And My Oscar Goes To...

Best Movie of 2009: Bright Star



If Hollywood wants to both make a lot of money and the world a better place I desperately suggest adapting the following books:
1. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
3. Memoir From Antproof Case by Mark Helprin
4. Freddy and Frederika by Mark Helprin
5. Any of the short stories by Mark Helprin found in The Pacific
6. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

When Perfection Comes

"But where there are prophcies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away...and now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

- From Saint Paul's first letter to the Church in Corinth, Greece.

Today

This morning it was very windy, cold and rainy up in North Texas. I work outside most of the time and this morning I forgot my underarmour turtleneck so I was a bit chilly and miserable until I noticed that the grass looked a lot like lichen and the clanging of the conveyor belt running rock up out of the quarry sounded a lot like the slap of the block against the mast on a boat rocking in the waves. This of course could only mean one thing - I was Torgie, a Norwegian miner working in the granite mines on the windswept North Sea coast. And if I was indeed Torgie, a Norwegian miner on the windswept North Sea coast then that could mean one thing, and one thing only - a ferry ride across the fjord at the end of my shift would drop me off a few short blocks from my IKEA furnished flat where I would put on a turtleneck and wool cap before eating a bowl of chowder and a plate of lingonberries! Yesssss!