Happiness and Abuse

When you read the title of this section, you may say to yourself: Please don’t tell us that there is any happiness in being abused as a child or an adult. Please don’t try to sugar coat the agony, trauma, devastation that comes from violence either physical or emotional.

I won’t.

Although I have never experienced serious physical or mental abuse I have known enough people who have. Some people are not crippled by their experienced – scarred, yes, but not crippled. Most of them have survived because they have found hope for the future through their love and friendships with people in the present. They have found one or more people who will trust them, listen to them, encourage them, and support them to move onto a life-time of better experiences.

Other people, however, are crippled for life by the abuse they have experienced and some end up within mental institutions never to expect to experience hope or trust again. Their stories are tragic. Moments of happiness may be all that is available to them unless they are blessed by friendships with people who see beyond the superficial sense of hopelessness to go deeper to the core of the person’s ability to crave and offer love and friendship. You and I do not have to limit ourselves to our family and circle of friends to make a difference in someone’s life. We can go out and actively search someone who needs our friendship. Our friendship will not erase their memories of being abused, but over time our friendship and the friendship of others may well be a greater source of motivation and hope than the abuse was a cause of de-motivation or of giving up.

Sometimes we cannot help our own family and friends deal with their history of abuse because they will not let us or because we live too far away from each other. In those circumstances, we can use our understanding of what we or others have endured in the way of abuse to search out those who are isolated within their own lives or within actual institutions who can benefit from our presence, our patience and our love.

There is a North American movement called Citizen Advocacy that started with the writings of Professor Wolf Wolfensberger of the Training Institute at Syracuse University in New York State. This movement is based on a simple premise: match valued members in society with those who are devalued because of their history, their disabilities, their income level or other form of discrimination. This matching is one of the most effective ways of changing a vulnerable person’s life forever. This ongoing, committed contact changes not only the vulnerable person’s perception of themselves but also society’s perception of the person. The advocate brings all of their knowledge, connections and compassion with them in ways that physically, emotionally and spiritually enhances both their own lives and the person for whom they advocate. I have seen children who were considered ‘unfit for adoption’ find loving homes. I have seen people wracked with decades of abuse and violence find a home and ultimately satisfying work through such a matching.

I cite only this one example of what is possible to show that no matter the trauma we face, there are ways to deal with it, over time, that can be healing in some ways. As with all the situations we examine in this book, each requires a return to the fundamental beliefs and experiences of happiness, peacefulness, love, joy, wonder, calmness and excitement. I am not talking about the happiness that comes from an ice cream cone in the heat of summer (although that is nice too!). I’m talking about reaching to the core of a person’s emotions. The more severe the trauma, the longer it may take. A mother who loses her husband and children in a house fire will not begin rebuilding her life the next day as if nothing significant had happened. A child who was abused by a trusted adult may not overcome their fears within weeks, months or even years. All of life’s hardest experiences require similar responses. The craving we see in society ‘to belong,’ ‘to matter’ and ‘to make a difference stem from our need to experience positive emotions rather than live the isolating life of self-doubt, guilt, fear and recrimination.

Is there happiness in any of this? Of course there is. There is happiness when a visitor comes to someone who has not seen a loving face for days. There is joy when an abused child finds out there are adults who thrive on their presence and who would fight any battle to secure the child’s happiness again. There is happiness when a battered spouse, after years of abuse, finds they can take control over their lives when previous self-doubt promised them only relief through suicide.

In our most difficult times (and we all experience these in one form or another), happiness may be limited to seconds or minutes––but they exist. Their mere existence gives us hope that more happiness is possible. If it was possible before, it may be possible again. We do not even need reassurance that it will happen again – just the hope that it will return is sometimes enough during our darkest hours.

Happiness and Competitiveness

Everyone likes to be a winner! I have never heard anyone shout out with glee We lost! When you listen to professional and amateur athletes talk about their biggest game, it is rarely one they lost. When you listen to friends talk about their high school or college memories of the sport, they often talk about when they played their best.

However, if you listen for any length of time, you will also hear these athletes talk about the tough games they lost, the ‘bad’ calls made by a referee, the ‘bad weather,’ the ‘jet lag’ before a game, the ‘bad food’ that upset their stomachs, etc. etc. They start to make jokes about these ‘horror’ games and end up laughing, teasing, complaining some more, and moving on to the next game.

We remember the bad with the good. Some of our best lessons are learned during a game that was lost; not won. Many coaches will tell their athletes that they are not taking enough risks during a game; not making enough mistakes to get that big break that leads to a victory.

Steven Nash is one of basketball’s greatest players. He had a television ad for a computer company that included some of his playing philosophy. One of which is about excellence and says something like, ‘Practice the day after your greatest game.’ In other words, he never rests on his laurels but keeps trying to get better. Trying to repeat what he did well in the best game of his life while learning what he can do better in the next game.

The point? Happiness and competitiveness are not just about winning. Although players may initially feel sad, upset, angry, frustrated, disappointed, hurt, betrayed, or more after a big loss, they return to the game in their heads to figure out what to do next time. The best athletes don’t concentrate on the negative aspects of losing – they concentrate on what to do better next time around. They are the winners in life’s game as well because they take all set backs with that same sense of ‘today was bad so let’s figure out what to do better tomorrow.’

The best example of this for me was listening to a national athlete talk about playing in a tournament in New Zealand. The athletes, being amateur athletes, didn’t have enough money to stay in a hotel so they were billeted with New Zealand players’ families. He talks with pride about how tough the games were, how hard everyone played (on both teams) to win and the joys and disappointments at the end of each game.  Then he added, But after the game, we knew we had to go home with these guys and eat with their families so we put the game behind us. We shared food and drink, laughter and teasing, the male bravado of ‘We’ll get you next time’ and had a thoroughly enjoyable time sharing in their lives with their families. That was the essence of that trip. We learned to concentrate and play hard and then, after a few minutes of disappointment if we lost, moved on to a celebration of the other team and their families. It was the best tournament I ever played in.

This sense of happiness and competitiveness is true in all competitive relationships. Whether it is sports, other types of games, and competitive relationships at work, play and at home. If you spend all of your time competing with colleagues at work, you will have little fun with them. Someone who gets ‘promoted above you’ can either be your champion at a higher level or your enemy. The happy moments you shared together, the non-competitive aspects of working on a team with each other, together with your inner competitiveness to do a better job personally, are all tools that will help you enjoy and thrive in your work. It is good to be competitive. It is harmful to compete to the point where people don’t want to be in the same place with you any more.

I am one of the least competitive people I know – sort of. I don’t like to lose any more than the next person but my athletic skills are minimal so I don’t often win. It is the same in work situations and at home with my family. I don’t want to be competitive with the people I love. I want to support their efforts at excellence not compete against them. I compete with myself. I win when I do something better than I did it before. I lose when I don’t/can’t give it my all. That competitive drive exists in me but is channelled differently.

That said, if I’m winning at cards, I don’t usually let up just to be ‘nice.’ If I am competing for a contract, I don’t give up and let the other company ‘win’ because I don’t like competition. That is not what happiness and competition is about. It is about knowing when to compete and when not to compete. It is about knowing when to enjoy the win without making those who lost feel so bad that you lose relationships over it. The person you beat today in an unkind way, whether in a sport or at work, may be the person you most need when you shift teams or jobs. How many athletes end up playing with a former ‘enemy.’ Play to win but don’t win to harm.

In my working relationships I have a personal motto: anyone I help today may one day help me or help someone else. It is not about getting something back each time you help someone. It is about setting a trend that if I have helped you with something, then maybe you will help someone else down the road. The people who have helped me in my personal and professional lives have not all been ‘paid back.’ That is impossible. However, their help means I am more able to help others. It is an evolving cycle like the rings of water that move out when a drop hits the pond. When we moved to Canada our next-door neighbor was Dr. Shannon, grandfather of actress Polly Shannon. We didn’t speak English or French but he and his family welcomed us and helped us in whatever ways they could. They didn’t do it to get some future reward. They did it because it was the right thing to do and it felt good for all of us.

There have been times when I have helped someone only to be hurt by them later on. Some have ignored my request for help. A very few have betrayed my trust. This hurt. It hurt even more when their actions affected my family. Sometimes when I think back to these times, the hurt is almost as fresh as when it happened.

If I took these situations to be what ‘the real world was like’ then I would ignore all the times I have been helped or have helped others. Those situations were also part of the real world. I cannot deal with everyone as if they are going to hurt me. The odds are that most people are thankful for any help you can offer, just as you are thankful for any help they give in return. The few times it ‘backfires’ does not make the rule. It is all the times your small and large efforts to help someone in a non-competitive way that shines the light on the joys of working with, rather than against, others.

Happiness and Divorce

In 1980 my mother died. Soon after I spent an afternoon with a dear friend whose parents had recently divorced. We exchanged ‘notes’ on the experiences we were going through. We both had unanswered questions of why, what could we have done differently and what will happen next.

We both concluded that her experiences were more difficult than mine. My questions had to do with cancer and why my mother, what treatments should she have had or not had and how will we deal with her loss. But my situation had an ending to it. My mother died.

My friend’s situation was different. There was no ending in sight. Perhaps her parents would reconcile; perhaps not. Perhaps the one parent could overcome the genuine sense of betrayal and years of life spent in a lie. Perhaps both parents would find someone new to love who my friend could accept. There were so many thoughts that began with ‘perhaps’ and no thoughts that began with certainty.

Neither of us would wish each other’s experiences on the other. They were too painful. But in our pain we understood that our experiences were different because I had an ending and a new beginning (however painful) while she had to deal with uncertainty over and over again.

What is the most difficult part of dying for many people? If you ask enough people you will find their greatest difficulty was the uncertainty while awaiting a diagnosis of what was wrong with them. At first my mother thought she was having a mental breakdown because no specialist would acknowledge her symptoms as anything else but anxiety. When she was told of her cancer there was partial relief because finally others recognized what she had feared for months. She did not want to die but she did feel relief at knowing what lay ahead.

This is where people going through a difficult divorce share the experience of those who are dying. They can relate to the uncertainty. They can relate to feeling something inside without finding anyone who will recognize and appreciate what is happening to them.

Can there be any happiness in any of this? By now, you know that my answer is, of course. Again, depending on the depth of hurt and pain involved, it may be only moments of happiness, peacefulness, joy, wonder, calmness or excitement. Sometimes it is expressed as bad jokes like those on the show M*A*S*H. Sometimes it is felt through holding a baby in your arms. Even as you wonder what will happen to your baby and the family, there is a comfort in the trusting heart beat next to yours. Sometimes is comes after a terrible nightmare when you wake up and wonder if it was real only to discover that it was not. Sometimes that moment of calmness comes when friends, who have experienced their own difficult divorce, come and tell you that your pain is real and that it won’t go away for a while but that they will help you through this.

You know this is true because if you have been divorced, you know that you have brought some happiness and joy to friends going through the same thing. You know that your presence, your experiences, your calmness, and perhaps even your renewed anger at the injustice of it all, helps your friend.

Moments of happiness do not remove pain–they help you through it. Moments of peacefulness or joy do not diminish what you are experiencing–they move you through time so that you can cope. Moments of happiness are not meant to cure all ills or to let you know that you are being silly to suffer so much–they help your recognize your own humanity and remind you that you are not alone–never completely alone.

Some people think that if you have even moments of happiness in times of separation or divorce that you are clearly not suffering as much as you should or that the trauma is really not so bad. It may give some people you know and love an excuse to be less supportive if they see a smile on your face. They may say, Oh she’s doing fine. She doesn’t need me.

However, having more moments of happiness may do the opposite. Having more moments of happiness may draw these same people closer to you as they will be less afraid to be supportive. People fear strong emotions. They fear they will not know what to do. If they see moments of happiness in you, they are more likely to think that they can be helpful. They recognize in you someone who can overcome this difficult time with the right kinds of supports from loving family and friends–and they are right.

Happiness and Evil

There are many people who will tell you that humans are all naturally evil–more naturally evil than good. When you look at the daily news, see how people treat each other in buses or on the roads, listen to how some children treat their parents and vice versa, you can see that it is not hard to argue that people often do bad things before they think to do something good.

Others argue that humans are born good and they learn to do wrong through their environment. They remind you to spend time with a new-born baby to see the genuine and complete joy they experience by being held, by getting their food and by laughing at sights and sounds around them.

The argument about whether or not people are born naturally to take the easy way by cheating, stealing and harming others or not, is unimportant to me. Whichever is true, the consequences of evil are the same. People do bad things. People do good things. What we can look at is how what we believe and what we do encourages people to do a bit more good than they otherwise would.

Barry Neil and Susie Kaufman have argued in several insightful books that everyone of us is doing the best we can right now with what we know. We know we are doing things that hurt others or ourselves, but we cannot think of an alternative way to behave that will make us feel as good. So we continue to smoke, drink to excess, take medications and other drugs inappropriately, or we don’t exercise. We continue to argue with colleagues at work to get the job done in the way we want it done. We continue to put our work or personal life ahead of our spouse and children even though we know that hurts them. We know better but for us, the alternative is worse. We are doing our best and will not change until either our knowledge, skills or circumstances change.

It is the Kaufmans’ belief that people do not make bad decisions but only decisions they think are best right now. They have found that people may change their negative behavior when they look at their own beliefs and find a way to get the same results by being happy. They have worked with children and adults with disabilities, with people who have criminal records for violence, and with people who feel out of control. When some of these people became less judgmental of themselves and of others they were able to feel happier, more productive, more loving and less stressed. The Kaufmans’ work (actually loving play) with children who have various disabilities have produced wonderful results for the children, their parents and families.

I recommend their books to you as specific strategies for choosing to be happy more often. They tell stories of children who have been abused or raped, or adults with little or no self-esteem who found ways to be happy in their lives. They tell how some of these people have chosen to change their beliefs and make a difference in how they act. These stories do not guarantee changes for everyone but they are another set of beliefs that do help some people.

Is evil natural? Perhaps. What is more important for me is what we can do to lessen the evil in the world. If people like Dr. Viktor Frankl can find moments of happiness in a concentration camp, then surely most of us can find it in our everyday lives–and more importantly help others to find it too.

Is doing good natural? Perhaps. There are many examples in our lives of people who go beyond typical responses of hate, hurt and harm to help others. Let us learn from them. Let us role model what we learn so that this positive alternative becomes more of a norm than it is now. It is in times of crisis that we often find what is natural in people. During war time, many people did extraordinarily wonderful things to help and protect others. This was especially true at the personal level when people knew each other. When people were strangers and bundled in large groups, it was easier to make them the enemy; the kind of person who was better off dead than alive. We need to re-personalize all human relationships so that no one can be made to be so ‘different’ that killing them is seen as a good thing.

I have a friend who easily acknowledges that he doesn’t like people of a certain culture, as well as those who speak French and those who smoke. He was also very uncomfortable being in the same room with people who have disabilities. This same man will stop on the road or highway whenever someone needs assistance. It doesn’t matter their culture, language or whether they are smoking, he stops to help. He has never met an individual person with these characteristics that he doesn’t get along with but he still dislikes these various groups of people as a whole.

I once introduced him to another friend of mine who happened to have this culture, speak French as his first language and who smokes. Add to that, this friend’s son has what other people label as severe disabilities. I introduced them because my first friend had skills that could help the second friend. Within a short time of working together on home renovations, the men became close friends and have become life-long friends since.

It is getting to know people personally; sharing in their happiness and their dreams for themselves and their families that overcomes prejudice. There is a great song from World War I called Christmas in the Trenches. It is based on the true story of how German and English soldiers put down their guns on Christmas Eve in the trenches of Belgium to sing the same Christmas carols (in different languages of course), share chocolate and alcohol, play a game of soccer, and show photos of their loved ones back home. They got to know each other personally. When they returned to war, they rifle aim was very different because, as the song says, Whose family have I got in my sights? It is hard to kill a person you know and with whom you have no argument. It is much easier to kill a stranger.

Is evil more natural than good? I do not know. The more important questions are, do you do more good than bad? How can you tip the scales even more in the direction of doing good?

Happiness and Family

Not everyone in the world has a family. Countless people have lost their families through war, hunger, poverty, hatred, and illness. Many people talk about a family of friends as a replacement for their own families.

People who do not have their own families near them have lost a major part of their history; their belonging to a historical unit. No one can replace that. Recognizing that loss is not the same thing as always being unhappy that you no longer have a family.

My parents died in the early 1980s. I miss them terribly. I think of them every day even though few people ever mention their names in my company any more. I miss not hearing about them. I miss not being part of their family anymore. I used to be very unhappy about them not being here...so unhappy that I missed opportunities to share happiness with people who were still alive and with me now. I do not make that mistake anymore. Cherish the love around you. You don’t forget those who have died but neither must you forget those still here with you now.

I have very little family in Canada and have been very fortunate to have my mother’s cousin living only two hours away. Although our families were close growing up, we have become even closer. I call her Aunt and her husband Uncle and our children call them Oma and Opa. Their children, my 2nd cousins, and their own families have been extraordinarily warm in including my family in such major events as Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving dinners and the major birthdays and anniversaries. They have all opened their hearts and their family to us and we are genuinely grateful for their thoughtfulness and kindness and their wonderful sense of humor. We share hundreds of memories of laughter, joy, great food and of being together through good times and bad. Their own hardships confirm my belief that cherishing the ones still with you does nothing to diminish your love of those loved ones who have died.

Another person has helped fill a family void through her thoughtfulness and sense of common history. I helped my aunt in Holland take care of her father (my grandfather) when he was ill and helped him live at home until he died. She has opened up her heart and home to my wife and later our son and daughter. We have stayed with her for one-to-three month visits and she helped teach our children to ride a bike, explore Holland’s beautiful nature and surroundings. The mere mention of her pancakes is enough to bring a smile to my children’s faces. She has pretended to enjoy watching soccer games with our son and encouraged my daughter’s creativity by opening up a ‘secret’ room in the attic where she could use her wildest imagination uninterrupted. Her home is a safe haven in a busy and often complex world. We learn a great deal from her and she from us. This mutual gift binds us eternally. Happiness is our bond as well as the help we offer each other in times of need. She is a kindred spirit and a joy to be with even though she lives much too far away!

A family of friends is not a replacement for a family. They are a different kind of family and one that is also irreplaceable as well. Different people will enter and leave that family of friends but each one leaves memories behind and each one reminds us that being loved, appreciated, recognized and needed are important elements to being happy.

My best friend since Grade Nine has taught me a great deal about what a family of friends is all about. We are as different as two friends can be. We differ in our work, our politics, our religion, our cultural history, and our physical abilities. What we share is a friendship of love and acceptance. We both would like to take on some of the qualities of the other. We also have a friendship of being there for the other. When my mother was rushed to the hospital for the last time while I was in Quebec City, he was there with my father until I could arrive. My sister's best friend in Canada was also there (a similar, wonderful friendship). They were my father's strength until my sister and I could arrive. My friend hates hospitals more than I do but he put his fears and anxieties aside to be there for my father and later, for me. He was a shoulder to cry on, literally–a friend to lean on.

Another type of memory happened when I turned 35.  Janet, my wife, surprised me with a birthday party. She arranged to have people go to a downtown Toronto bar where I was billed as the entertainment for the night. When I got there (supposedly to help celebrate another friend’s birthday) I was speechless. As the evening went on and I saw so many happy faces and people sharing in my birthday a friend came up to me and said, Your parents would have loved to have been here for this. They would have been so happy for you.

She was right of course. They would have been so happy and proud. In one sense they were there in the faces of our relatives and friends. They were there in a spiritual sense that was powerful and comforting. More than a few times that night I wished that they could have been there physically to share in my excitement and joy. I was not unhappy that they were not there however. You just had to look around the room to see how lucky I was and how blessed I felt. The memories of that evening will help me through difficult times for years to come. The memory of those people's smiles and laughter showed me the power and influence of a family of friends. Certainly such a family will change with time but not in importance. Thank you to all who shared in that night!

    Happiness and Fear

Many authors have written that the opposite of love is not hate but fear. People do the worst things imaginable out of fear. Some of these fears include a fear of: poverty, rejection, dying, loosing loved ones, God, power and authority, and the fear of not being valued. When we trace some of the horrors of history it may be helpful to examine what some people call evil and see if the true root of that evil is actually fear.

For those of you who know me you know that I have written about and for people who are dying. We can learn so much from people who have a limited time left with us. Rose Levit, in her book about her daughter, Ellen: A Short Life Long Remembered quotes from a letter Ellen wrote to a friend:

    When there is fear, there is no love. Along with fear comes distrust, suspicion, hate. With the absence of fear you have freedom–love. What is life –it is such a complex thing and yet at the same time so simple–it's silly to pin a definition on it. If you can understand all these complex things–fear, freedom, love–and still at the same time keep your mind simple–and love the beauty of a sunny day, just because it is a sunny day–then you can truly be free.

Fears are the greatest block to being happy. Overcoming fears requires courage and persistence. It requires a belief system that understands the power we give our own fears. It requires time, perspective and a strong philosophy to fight when we are weakest. It helps to spend some of our time when we are strongest to understand why we need the fear. When we find out why we need fear we may be able to replace it with an equally powerful feeling of self-love and happiness.

I have a tremendous fear of hospitals and sickness. I have seen perhaps too much of both to believe that I would have control over my health and happiness while I was sick. It is a fear I am overcoming with time, effort, perspective and support just as I got over my almost crippling fear that my parents would die young. They did die young but I continue to thrive through the memory of their love and support and the love of my wife and children.

I am reminded that pain and suffering sometimes leads to happiness or that pain and suffering do not rule out happiness. These emotions are not always at opposite ends of our emotions. Falling in love, getting married, raising children, accomplishing professional challenges, remaining devoted to our beliefs, giving of ourselves in civic and charitable work all may involve some suffering. Children get sick, our spouses are not always perfect (either are we!), our work does not always go well, and so on. Would we give up some of that suffering if we knew we would never fall in love, if we would never see the trust and love in a child's eye, if we would never see the love shared during a time of grief? I do not think so.

Happiness does not exclude other feelings. Happiness can give some sense of perspective and help us use all of our emotions to their full benefit. Fear prevents any of our emotions from helping ourselves or others. We have all overcome certain fears. We can overcome others.

    Happiness and God

I do not belong to a specific church or religion. My spiritual beliefs are rooted in Judeo-Christian philosophies as well as the wisdom found in ancient texts. I have seen the wonderful comfort, support and direction that organized religion has given so many people. I have great respect for spiritual leaders and followers who use their belief to do good.

Faith is invaluable. Mother Theresa has said that her primary spiritual role was to help Catholics be better Catholics, Hindus better Hindus and Buddhists better Buddhists. The spirit of those sentiments is what I try to follow.

There is a little book by a young man named Fynn. He called it Mister God This is Anna. It is a wonderful book about a real little girl's faith in God and her constant search for wonder in the slums of London in the 1930s. It summarizes better than anything I have read what I believe in. When studying French in Quebec City in 1980, the teacher passed around a blank page and asked us each to write down our favorite book. The woman who became my wife wrote down: Mister God This is Anna!

Let me give you a few examples of this young girl’s wisdom:

    The difference from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside. (p. 13)

    And God said love me, love them, and love it, and don't forget to love yourself. (p 33)  This sentence is what world religions talk about. Loving yourself is one of the hardest things to do. Believing in God as a friend might help you see yourself as God does.

    Anna was not only deeply in love with Mister God; she was proud of him. Anna's pride in Mister God grew and grew to such dimensions that in some idiot moment I wonder if Mister God ever went pink with pleasure. Whatever feelings people have about Mister God over the many centuries, I'm very sure of one thing, nobody has ever liked Mister God more than Anna. (p. 50) [Many people talk about God, many people believe in God. Fewer people believe God and see God as a friend they can like and love.]

A childlike, not childish, belief in God, or whatever you might call a divine creator is a simple belief–not necessarily an easy one to practice. It requires us to examine our beliefs and expectations of our faith and concentrate on the most basic and important aspects of our faith. It requires us to remember childlike wonder and faith. It challenges us to break through the many shoulds and should nots to find out what is really important.

Anna believe that people spent too much time talking about the Bible and too little time acting upon the lessons within the Bible. She felt that people missed out on a profound and wonderful friendship with Mister God. She believed that God is the only friend we have who knows us from the inside out and who loves us no matter what we do. Anna’s childlike belief in God is different than what many of us learned from our spiritual leaders. If we read many of the things that the great spiritual teachers have said we would find that they, and Anna, have similar beliefs about the power of a child’s faith in God.

I have heard of a scholar who translated the Dead Sea Scrolls from the original Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke). His translations were different than the ones we are used to reading. What interested me most was how he translated the 10 Commandments. When I first learned the commandments in elementary school I thought it strange that we would need special rules to tell us not to steal, lie or kill. These were obvious. The thought of actually killing someone had not even entered my mind until then.

This translator, (I wish I knew his name) said that the commandments were not meant as rules at all. He said the original text began with, If you love me, then... In other words, the text said that if you loved God you would not think to lie, steal or kill. Rather than the 10 Commandments, the 10 phrases became consequences of a deep and profound love of God. That makes sense to me and, I suspect, would make sense to many young children. If you do not believe in God, the thought of these rules becoming consequences still holds. If you love this planet, the human family we belong to, your own family and friends, and yourself, then you will not steal from others, kill people or the environment, nor lie to harm others.

You would be filled with love and goodness and act accordingly. Just as in classical philosophy, when you know what the good life is you will know how to act. When you are filled with love of God or nature, of others and of yourself you will know right from wrong. This is a simple idea that takes a lot of practice and faith. I am working on it.

    Happiness and Grief

Of all the concepts about happiness that I found most difficult was the idea that you could grieve someone's death and still be happy. It seemed too strange an idea. It was certainly not one I was interested in learning when I was going through the grief of both my parents deaths and my grandfather's death, all within five years. My thoughts changed as I spent some time thinking about how happiness and grief could work together. I will need to give you a little bit of personal history first from a series of Christmases.

In 1979 I was a student in Quebec City. My sister was returning to Toronto from Germany with her new husband and we were going to have our first family Christmas as an extended family. I was poor as many students are and did not know what I could get my parents to tell them how proud I was of them and how much I loved them and how glad I was that our family would be all together again.

Poverty brings out the poetry in people so I wrote my parents a song; one of the first songs I ever wrote. Several of the lines are:

    We always know we are never alone.

     If we suffer or if we are lonely,

     It is because we haven't given our love wholly.

     We always know we are never alone, because you are here.

It seems ironic now that I chose those words because, as history unfolded, that was my last present to my mother. She died the following April.

The first Christmas after my mother died I was in Holland helping my grandfather who was ill. It was a special time with a special man. I missed being with my father for our first Christmas without my mother but we had both agreed that I was needed more in Holland. My grandfather died the following July.

The next few Christmases were special with my father. We missed some of the beauty of those days, however, because of the sadness we felt at missing my mother. My mother was my kindred spirit. We did not have to talk a lot with each other because we often knew how the other felt. I was a mommy's boy in the most loving interpretation of that phrase. I missed her (and continue to miss her) like few others. So did my father.

In 1983 my future wife and I had a family Christmas with my father. It was a wonderful and special time that I am so grateful for. It was only four years since our last complete family Christmas but it was a time for my Dad, my fiancée and I that I will treasure always. My father and I lived together and we had become very close during the time after my mother was ill. We both loved her very much. We both lost our best friend and her loss brought us closer together. He became a best friend, mentor and advisor whose constant encouragement helped me through the failure of my first business. He was the kind of father that I hoped to be to my children. We did not know it that Christmas, but it was our last Christmas together.

The point in telling you all of this is an obvious one. You will have heard this point many times in your life–live each day as if it were your last one with the people you love. In missing my mother, then my grandfather and now my father I sometimes find that I miss the beauty and special love of those people I do share Christmas with now. In thinking too much about wonderful memories of the past, I have sometimes missed the opportunity to create new memories and to value the family of relatives and friends who are still with me.

We need time to grieve someone's death and their absence from special holidays and events. We need to take the time to feel our loss and to recognize that we do this grieving to help ourselves, not to help the person who has died. At the same time that we grieve we can also take a loving look around the rest of our family, friends, and people we work with. We can imagine ourselves 5, 10 or 50 years later. How do we want to remember these special holidays and events? How do we want to remember the people with whom we did celebrate? Perhaps they will not be there in 5 or 10 years. In our grief do we stop ourselves from sharing some happiness with those who we may grieve years later? If my grandfather had grieved his wife’s death intensely for the decades remaining of his life, I would never have met him or discovered a kindred spirit.

Looking into the future may not be possible when experiencing intense grief. There will come a time, however, when looking into the future is possible again.

What I am suggesting is not easy to do. The idea of concentrating on the present when our grief is so raw is not easy. It will take effort. All of us have so much to be grateful for that we should not waste our limited time on earth living and remembering only the past. Enjoy creating the memories of these special times and everyday so that you can use those memories at another time when you will need them.

We always know that we are never alone. My parents may not be physically with me at Christmas or any other time of year but my parents are always with me and I am truly never alone. They gave me a wonderful gift over many years of living together and I did not fully recognize until that last Christmas together in 1979. That last Christmas with my father in 1983 reminded me of the gift they gave me of happy memories of childhood, the memories of their love and pride, and the memories of their happiness with me. They continually teach me to be a better husband, father, friend, neighbor and human being.