Happiness and Job Loss

When my father found out he had life-threatening emphysema, he was fired from his job as a property manager. It was not quite that brutal. The right words of concern were expressed: You shouldn’t tax your energy at work anymore. Go home and be with your family. He received a ‘package’ but lost his reason for getting up in the morning. Nothing devastated him as much as losing his job and regular contact with the people with whom he worked. His worth was defined, in his mind, but the productive work he could still do. He was denied the ability to show usefulness at a time when self-worth was most at question. His death was hastened, I believe, by his losing his job.

Is that putting job loss too strongly? If you ask people who lose their jobs what it feels like they will use many of the same words that people use who are going through grief. They will describe physical symptoms of chest pain, breathing difficulty, muscle strain, nausea, sleeplessness and more. People trying to be helpful will say things like, You can always get another job or Don’t let them get to you – show them they were wrong. These are good sentiments but not helpful ones when you are going through the loss of your personal identity.

The reactions of people who lose their jobs will not be the same of course. Losing a job you didn’t like but knowing that someone else is ready to hire you is one thing. It is not the same as someone who has worked for 12 years for the same company doing their best work but still is downsized. Job loss can be physically and emotionally painful. Even if you quit a job on principle, the resulting feelings of loss are real.

So why do so many people a year or two after job loss say, That was the best thing that ever happened to me. Why do other people say That was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

Age and life experience may have a lot to do with this. The likelihood that you can find work again or start your own business may help people while others are paralyzed by a society that sees older workers as a handicap. Sometimes it is just luck or friends that help people find something better to do than they were doing. Sometimes it is the trauma of the loss that forces people to remember what their career goals used to be and return to some that now appear more likely to succeed.

It is not just about perspective. Sometimes losing your job forces you to recognize that you were in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Sometimes losing your job reinforces that your job skills are not as transferable as you had hoped and that you may need retraining. Sometimes, you reach a certain age and know that very few jobs exist for someone of your experience and salary expectations.

Is there happiness in any of this? Of course, but again the situation and your personality will determine how long your moments of happiness, peacefulness, joy, bliss, calmness and excitement will be. Your financial needs will determine how much fear and anxiety job loss creates. You may go through the loss of your home (if you can’t keep up the payments) or other possessions. You may need to move to a different town or city. You may need to change your career altogether and live with less. Or you may discover that you have what it takes to work on your own and, perhaps, earn more than you ever did before.

I cannot tell you which circumstance will be true for you. I do know there are people who can help with career planning, financial planning, job searches and more. I know that an attitude of hopefulness and happiness is more likely to help you succeed at a job interview than one of hopelessness and unhappiness. I know that my parents did not have the jobs they wanted but as uneducated immigrants without much English they were limited in their choices but not limited in how they did their work.

Anytime you come into contact with people (and what job does not) you have an opportunity for happiness. My parents taught me that no job is menial if you can bring some joy to people’s lives. You don’t hang your head when you wash an apartment lobby floor–you raise it, you look people in the eye because you are doing an honest day’s work and you try to bring a smile to their face. When you succeed, your job has achieved a higher level of importance in the day-to-day lives of others and of yourself.

As apartment building Superintendents, my parents came into contact with many people. They touched people’s lives and were touched in return. One young boy would not go to school unless my father (who was usually in the lobby at school time) helped put on his coat. Some people would not make life decisions without first listening to my parents’ inherent wisdom. Their job title did not represent the importance of their lives to other people.

Happiness, then, at a time of job loss is found in finding ways to connect with other people. Your typical response at losing your job may to isolate yourself and overindulge in food, drink or drugs. That initial response may be necessary given how you have dealt with other losses in your life, but to survive, this period of isolation must be a short one. You must connect with people who can bring a momentary smile to your face. Connect with people who value your company. Connect with people who have overcome a similar fate. Search out others who are going through the same thing now and share the experience of rising above the loss together.

One of the reasons some people say that job loss was the best thing that ever happened to them is because the loss forced them to be more alert to their day-to-day life, to the people within that life and the circumstances surrounding them. They had to deal with spouses and children and their fears. They had to re-examine their dreams to see if any could now come true. They found out that living for today doesn’t mean ignoring the past or the future but to be truly alive to all the day’s experiences – to look a child in the face and to ask if you can share part of that day with them that you normally would not have had time for when you were working.

Job loss or job change is one of the best times to sit down with a financial planner and examine how you really want to live your life from this day forward. In my case, when I resigned a well paying job on principle, I discovered that family was more important than working full time so I began to save more for retirement and have that nest egg in the background whenever I turned down a full-time position. I have worked part-time for over 20 years now (with many financial ups and downs) but I never look back with regret because I have memories of time spent with my wife, children, other family and friends. These are invaluable memories that money can never replace. We do with less. We own less. We go out less and yet our lives feel so much richer and enjoyable. It may not be for you, but the process is the same. Find out how you want to live and use job loss or career change as an opportunity to fulfil your dreams.

    Happiness and Organizations

I once taught a course in laughter and play in a large institution. I was told afterward the Board of Directors had heard about the successful workshop and were not the least bit happy. They said  there was no room for this happiness and laughter stuff in their organization. After all they did ‘serious’ business there and could not let laughter get in the way of productivity and service.

I treat my business, teaching and writing very seriously. I try not to make it too solemn though. I believe people need to express their happiness, excitement, or joy at work. I also believe they need to express their disappointment, anger or unhappiness. I certainly try not to take myself too seriously. We are on this planet a very short time and if we live in this ’real world’ too solemnly we will end our lives regretting may missed opportunities.

An organization is not a living thing. When we swear loyalty to our workplace or country, we should not be swearing allegiance to a thing. People make up organizations. All organizations recognize that fact in their senior management's policies and public relations. Many organizations that talk loudest about how much they value their staff behave in inconsistent ways which speaks much more loudly than their words.

Just as people need a set of beliefs and morals to guide their decisions, so do organizations. Many organizations now use mission statements, strategic and operational plans to outline their beliefs and actions. I am willing to bet that if I interviewed 1,000 managers and staff in a random selection of organizations, that most of them would not be able to quote their mission statement and most would certainly not sit in meetings and use their missions statement as a guideline to help them make day-to-day decisions. Many mission statements may have ‘respect for customers and staff’ as one of their philosophic principles but when it comes to making decisions how many quote this respect for customers and staff before making important decisions?

It is not that organizations, or rather the people that manage them, purposefully do bad things to customers and staff. They have grown into organizations that value policies and procedures created in one era without regard to current circumstances. They need help to remember what their mission is and to act accordingly.

Almost worse than ‘bad organizations,’ I think, are ones that are content to be average ones. Average organizations argue that they are no worse at treating people than other organizations. Sadly, they may be right. There is much talk about a search for excellence or benchmarking excellence but it usually translates into a search for financial success often at the cost of devaluing people. Average organizations allow negligence, poor working relationships and apathy to exist. Out of these conditions comes many of the evil things that occur in the world. Nazi politicians and military people did not start the euthanasia projects in Germany. They were started by scientists and psychiatrists who took average health care organizations, and over time, convinced enough average people, to accept the massive genocide of their fellow Germans. These Germans were initially people with disabilities and disfiguring characteristics, then when most of those had been killed, people with mental illnesses were added to the list and those with opposing political views. It was only after so many of these people died that the Nazis turned to the annihilation of German Jews and Jews in conquered countries.

In modern times, average organizations are harder to turn around if the leadership has weak foresight and a weak understanding of how they have control over the working environment. Individuals do have control over how they react to situations, their work environment and their boss but people can also be worn down – their morale weakens when their morals are constantly tested. Average organizations, and therefore, average managers and staff must recognize their power – personally and professionally. If more managers who live in ‘the real world’ of bottom lines and financial accountability concentrated some of their efforts on being happier a bit more often themselves, they would see a domino effect throughout the whole organization.

Happiness is ‘real world.’ People who are happy in their work are more productive, are more responsive to the needs of clients and customers, are more supportive of management, and are more consistent in how they make decisions. Funny thing too, happy people tend to be better at financial accountability.

    Happiness and Poverty/Starvation

Many of us have travelled or seen documentaries of places where there is great poverty and starvation. Do we have the right to be happy while others suffer? Is our happiness something that we take from other people so they have none themselves? Is there a limited amount of happiness in the world and am I having more than my fair share? Or is happiness something inside of us that we can choose to use for personal satisfaction and/or for helping others? Is our happiness better than the happiness that we might find in a very poor section of Calcutta?

Poverty, starvation, death by the millions each year are not things we can change by feeling guilty or unhappy. These are horrible events that we can change. We can actually end world poverty. Whether we are happy or not is not the real question. The question is what is it we need to feel in order to make a difference? People with a religious calling are not the only people able to make a difference. People who feel guilty or anger at injustice are not the only ones who can improve the world.

What is a wrong response, however, is to use so much of our energy to feel angry and sad at the overwhelming injustices in the world to the point where we have no energy left to make changes. We may be great water cooler problem solvers but it still takes real action, or supporting others who are making the changes necessary, to change the world.

Happiness can be a wonderful motivator to help us change our world. We can be happy as we help people near to us or help those we may never see. There are many ways we can help: financially, through volunteer work, through spiritual work, through our career choices, through our political and spiritual connections, through prayer, and, of course, through friendship and love. All of these are possible while you are happy or unhappy. The choice truly is yours. It is not even an either or situation. You can just choose to be happier more often than you are now when dealing with world issues.

    Happiness and the Real World

Aaah, the ‘real world.’ These two words may be the greatest blocks to our being happier. People use these two words as freely as they use love. They cannot define the real world except to say that it is complex, difficult, hard and filled with insolvable problems. Some of these people see that happiness is possible in the real world but only for short periods of time. After all there is work to do, injustices to right, money to save and old age to worry about.

I think that some people who live in the real world have confused fun with happiness. As I said before, fun is something you feel during an activity and fun activities are things you may not be able to do all day, every day. Just think for a minute about some of the glamorous movie stars you have read about. They go to huge parties, drink and eat the best there is, and live in glorious mansions where servants do all the hard work. Wherever they go people recognize them, praise them and ask them for autographs. Their home towns want to have parades in their honor, they receive awards, and they can afford surgery to improve their noses, stomachs and thighs so they do not have to worry about getting old like you and I do.

Some people would argue that these glamorous stars do not live in the real world either. They are having fun all the time while the rest of us have to work for a living. Let us look at these stars a bit more carefully.

When they are working on a play or film they often have to get up at five or six in the morning and work late into the evening. They have to be glamorous when what they may really want is a normal life where they can go and do what they please without having to have security guards and newspeople following them around. They have an extremely high rate of divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, troubled children and, as many autobiographies reveal, a deep sense of loneliness.

These may be the people who are having fun in all those magazine pictures but they are often a far way from being happy.

The real world can be lonely, frightening and boring. It does not have to be. Anyone who has survived incest, abuse, war, poverty, or other difficult events in their lives know that those events are only part of the real world. These same people have also experienced love, warmth, friendship, laughter and joy. Those are also feelings that we have in the real world.

My father had an understanding of the real world. He was a teenage farm boy during World War II. On the morning of the Nazi invasion he looked up from milking a cow to see a young soldier standing behind him with a rifle pointed at him. Attention! the soldier yelled. My dad nearly wet his pants. He was 15 years old. Later in the war he was caught smuggling, with his older brother, goods across the border (they lived only a few miles from the German border). I am not sure if my father's gift of gab came to him that day or before, but they talked their way out of a firing squad!

After the war Holland was still a colonial power and Indonesia was one of their colonies. My father was drafted to fight there for two years when he was 22-24 years old. He had lost much of his youth to war.

After he returned from Indonesia he married my mother and three children later (my oldest sister died of measles before I was born) our family immigrated to Canada without speaking a word of English between us. My father broke his arm within 10 weeks of our arrival so, without workers' compensation and unemployment insurance at the time, we lost most of our savings. They were hard years for my parents yet they kept it from us. My sister and I were on an adventure!

Without stretching this story out too long, the next few decades were filled with hard work and trying to raise two children in a new country. My parents became apartment building superintendents so that they could be close to home and still work together. When my mother became too ill to work anymore my dad was promoted to a property manager. Seven years later his wife died in their bedroom at home and our lives changed dramatically.

When my father became ill he felt badly about two things. The first was that he felt it was unfair for his son to have to experience the death of both parents and his grandfather all within five years. That really hurt him. The second thing that upset my father was not that he was dying or that he had lost his job but that he could not come to my wedding in 7 months. We talked a lot about that. We did not pretend that he would be able to go and we did not pretend that he was getting well when he was not. Because we did not pretend we were able to get his help in planning part of the wedding. He was able to give my wife a wedding present–a treasured necklace my mother used to wear. He was able to talk to me about his hopes and dreams for my future. He was able to hug me and kiss me and tell me he would miss me but that I would be okay. He never doubted my abilities and continued to encourage my dreams to write and teach.

This chapter is about the real world. My dad knew a lot about the real world. He was not an idealist and saw much of the horror and injustices in the world. He recognized that he could only affect small parts of that world. He knew that I would miss him and my mother terribly when it came time for the wedding. He knew he could not be there to help me through the happiest, and potentially, saddest days of my life. My fiancé had never met my mother and now she would not see my father at our wedding.

My sister and my father were kindred spirits of a sort. They understood how the other thought and they were both great sentimentalists (it runs in the family!). I suspect that my sister suggested it to my father or at least helped him to find a way to help me at my wedding. She wrote a wedding card for us on his behalf. Whether they were his words directly or she wrote what she thought he wanted to say, the card is invaluable. I received it the night before my wedding. For a short time my parents were with me in that motel room in Qualicum Beach. The words were perfect. Exactly what I needed to hear. They were his famous hugs but in words. I cried like a baby and was comforted by those tears. The next day I walked on a Vancouver Island east-coast beach and thought of my parents, our family and our history. That card helped me immensely. Later at my wedding I had the time of my life. I married the right person. My sister, her family, my special aunt (who gave me away that day) and some wonderful cousins from Holland were there. I could not have been happier. My parents were there too, thanks to that card. The real world did not have to be sad that day. The real world was a happy world that day. My wife, our families and special friends there there and throughout the world, and my dad made sure it was.

If we examine anyone's life and try to give a percentage to how often they were happy and how often they were unhappy what do you think the average percentages would be? Do you want to be an average person in our real world? What percentage of the time are you happy? Do you want to increase that percentage? What is stopping you? Some interesting questions, eh? Like my father, perhaps you can think of ways to help other people be happier more often and in doing that you will be happier too.

 

Happiness and Self-Image

When you look in the mirror, are you happy with how you look?

I was in a course once where the teacher asked everyone who was happy with how they looked to raise their hand. After a very long minute or so of giggles and silence, one brave soul raised his hand and said, I was happy with how I looked 10 years ago when I worked in construction! Everyone laughed along with him to relieve the real tension on the room. None of us were pleased with how we looked.

Why is that? The quick answer is that none of us fit the body ideal that corporations have determined we need to follow–young, too thin, the perfect nose and gleaming white teeth, sexy, wide-eyed, with gorgeous hair and skin. Why this model of what defines beauty? Well if our role model of beauty was more of what we actually looked like, where would those companies be that promote beauty products, plastic surgery, weight loss programs, and some fountain of youth alternative health products?

We define an unattainable model of beauty so that we have to spend billions of dollars per year trying to look somewhat closer to that ideal. In fact, globally, we spend about $38 billion on hair care products, $24 billion on skin care, $18 billion on makeup, and $15 billion on perfumes. That is $95 billion dollars on just products.1 Add to that courses, weight loss programs, surgery and the like and we spend more on how we look than many countries spend annually on all of their social, health and education programs combined!

It is stupid. We know that it is stupid. We try to teach our children it is stupid. And yet…what they see are adults trying to look younger, act younger, and avoid becoming the wise people in the community by acting like teenagers with a budget! What else explains the money we waste acquiring clothes, makeup, shoes and stuff to look and feel good? What if women had a few more pounds and curves and loved it? What if men thought that balding was a sign of becoming wiser rather than impotent? What if the size of penises and breasts did not define sexual attractiveness? What if we trusted nature a little more and beauty corporations a little less? What if we spent the money we wasted on beauty products and used it to travel the world (a better use of our economic power) and make a difference in the lives of others (an even better use of our economic power!) What if we treated our elders with respect rather than condescension? What if our children learned to treat us with more respect rather than condescension?

What if…?

Realistically though, are we likely to individually go against all the public demands of who is beautiful and who is not? Probably not! I’ll still try to lose some weight and build muscles. I’ll still buy clothes I think my wife will like me in. But I will also do more!

I will try to become happier, more often, with how I look and I will remember, more often, that some of the sexiest people we know do not fit the modern culture’s view of beauty. Why is that? I know that I have often been attracted to women who do not fit the norm but who are stunning nonetheless. You probably can look at the Hollywood models and see beauty but also be aroused and attracted by men or women at the local store, school, neighborhood as well. Why?

Why is someone like a Bill Cosby or Bill Clinton attractive to so many women even though they don’t always fit the ideal of a young, athletic, perfect-skin-and-hair kind of guy? Why does Queen Latifa or Gloria Steinman  turn men’s heads? Why are the people you like to ogle in magazines not the kind of person you want to take home to meet yor mother?

It is because, corny as it sounds, we know that someone’s personality, their sense of power, their own positive self-image, their humor, knowledge and graces are all attractions to us. If someone sees themselves as attractive more often, more people are attracted to them–regardless of how much they weigh, how tall they are, what age they are, whether they are bald or have cellulite.  Some of the sexiest women I know may be defined as overweight or pear shaped yet how they dress and carry themselves are immensely attractive to men because these women dress, behave and reflect an outer and inner beauty as they define it. I know men who are balding, older, and not particularly fit who attract others to them because they are funny, good listeners, and thoughtful. Their bodies pour out inner and outer qualities that we admire and aspire to.

Ultimately, those people who reflect an inner quality of self-acceptance and inner peace radiate a sense of themselves that attracts almost everyone around them. Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders certainly do not dress or carry themselves as corporate ideal body models, but they do attract people to them.

The reverse is also true that beauty, as defined by corporations, does not lead to more happiness for everyone. There are many biographies written of the beautiful people to show that although they enjoyed some of their celebrity, and certainly their wealth, they missed out on happy marriages, children who loved them, people who trusted them and whom they could trust. That does not mean that all beautiful people, as defined by our culture, are unhappy. Many find happiness not because of their beauty but in spite of it. They find spouses and friends who see them for who they are rather than what our culture tells them they should be.

So when you look in the mirror, what should you do to feel happier about how you look? Here is my top ten list, for what it is worth:

1. 1.Stop looking in the mirror so often. Who you see is not who other people see anyway. You rarely see your profile yet most of the people you meet see a great deal of it. What you see in the mirror is a reflection, therefore, the opposite of what most people see. Check you hair, make sure there are no broccoli florets hanging from your mouth and move on. At most, you need to check yourself in the mirror only a few times a day. Obsess about something more important to your happiness.
   

2. 2.Accentuate what you find attractive about yourself without spending a lot of money doing it. I know a woman who can go to a used clothing store, pick out a lovely blouse, change the buttons with some other ones she has a home and have a beautiful new blouse. She is a senior executive in a large corporation who hates wasting money!
   

3. 3.Tell the people you love you need some positive reinforcements about how you look. Tell them you need more hugs and compliments (genuine ones–not superficial ones) to show you they think you are attractive. The difference on the face of a friend who perceived herself as unattractive once she met her future husband who thinks she is stunning has been wonderful to see. We see ourselves often through the eyes of those we love and who love us. Help them see you better and return the favor.
   

4. 4.Spend time with older people. Not only can you learn from them, they will always see you as younger and fun to be with! They value your company rather than judge how you look (at least most of them will!)
   

5. 5.Recognize that signs of aging in your body are not a reflection of who you are. It is a natural process. Glorify in it. Stay healthy and become fitter so you can enjoy your body even more. Enjoy your physical sensations–all of them.
   

6. 6.Look at your young children and you will see the beauty in them. Recognize that your elders (parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents) see you in the same light. Your young children also see Mom or Dad and not your physical strengths and weaknesses. They don’t look at your external or internal beauty alone–they combine them and see the person that is you just as you do with your children. Look at yourself through their eyes.
   

7. 7.Spend time with a pet–who else sees you in all your glory with unconditional love (as long as you love and feed them!).
   

8. 8.Make a genuine effort to read less glamor magazines, gossip magazines (I used to be addicted to The National Enquirer), television and movies. This is where corporations spend the most money to convince you that you need their help to look beautiful. It isn’t true!
   

9. 9.Spend more time with people who like who they are rather than with people who are never satisfied with who they are or what they look like.
   

10. 10.Lastly, and most importantly, learn to be happier more often. There are few things as attractive in a person as their happiness and general sense of feeling good about being who they are. They attract us because we want to be more like them–not their looks, but their character and their sense of who they are; their self-image.
    

Happiness and Self-Talk

We constantly sabotage our lives, our work, our relationships, and our self-image by what we say to ourselves. Whether we do it quietly in our minds or out loud in anger, it has the same effect. For example, how many times have you said to yourself: You dummy. How could you be so stupid! This could be after forgetting your house keys or misplacing your wallet or forgetting an important birthday or anniversary? I recently forgot the name of a person I have known for over 15 years. My mind was elsewhere and trying to remember that name was a huge frustration.

Some of our self-talk is more harmful. A friend in high school was told by a teacher that: You are  just not smart enough for university dear. Better go to college and pick something easy like working with children. You’d be good at that.

My friend listened rather than rebelled. Her own self-talk had already told her that she was not very smart even though she was a leader at school and in her volunteer work. This teacher confirmed my friend’s self-talk, rather than created it. She did go to college and found out she liked learning more than she thought. She was also good at it! She worked in Early Childhood Education for a few years but decided she wanted to learn more. So she went to university and got her Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. Not satisfied yet, she went on to her Masters and finally her Ph.D. She is now an internationally known speaker and therapist in children’s grief.

You can bet that her self-talk did not improve overnight. It took years of effort to overcome negativity but she did it. Knowing her through those years I also know that she was happy for much of it as she followed her dream, overcame difficulties in several areas and became able to help many young people deal with their grief. She laughed often, comforted more often and shared her experiences and learning with colleagues from around the world.

So what do you say to yourself? What doubts or negative judgements prevent you from being happy more often?

I still catch myself using self-talk that is defeatist and harmful. We all do it. I knew a senior executive of a large manufacturing firm who was retiring. He was the chief operating officer and had a large, lovely office in downtown Toronto. I asked him what had worried him during his career. His answer: I always worried that someone would find out I did not know as much as they thought I knew. Even in his position, with his power and influence and his excellent service to that company for decades, his self-talk had told him he was never good enough.

A woman I have known for over 25 years has constantly told herself and others around her that she is in pain, is unhappy, is worried and that her life has had little value–for over 25 years. She raised her children, did part-time work and volunteer work, has been a dear friend to many and helped many others, but mostly without a smile. She has missed out so much and no amount of support or encouragement has convinced her otherwise. It has been sad to watch.

Compare that to another woman I have known for over 50 years who was orphaned at a young age, institutionalized in a mental hospital because the system could not find her a home, who was kept in the institution for longer than normal because she was a good cleaner (free labor), who married late and had 5 children, one who died very young. Her life has been hard. Yet her joys have been many and she is always ready to give you a smile and a wonderful bear hug of love. She lights up a room through her enthusiasm for her children and grandchildren. For her 80th birthday, her children arranged for a surprise party that overwhelmed her with joy and happiness. The photos of the day still provide her immense happiness even as her own health has been precarious. She has moments of despair and unhappiness like the rest of us. But she also has a ‘lift yourself up by the bootstraps’ kind of attitude that will tolerate unhappiness for only so long. Then it is back to figuring out how she can help others.

It is not the events in our lives that determine how we talk to ourselves. It is not the hurts we have felt nor the love that we experience that determines what we say to ourselves. It is not just an attitude of the glass half full or half empty that makes us talk in a certain way.

We choose what we say to ourselves. We must now choose to listen more carefully to what we say and decide if we want to change our self-talk.

It is what we choose to say to ourselves that comes back to either harm us or provide us genuine moments of happiness, joy, gratitude, peacefulness and love. We choose whether our self-talk leads to moments of loneliness, fear and neglect or moments of connection, compassion and personal value.

You can make a concerted effort to listen to your conscious self-talk. Does what you say to yourself or others start with Yes but.... when you are thinking of something or listening to someone’s ideas? If you do, then you are likely not thinking about what someone has just said or an idea you have thought of. You are thinking instead of all the reasons that the idea is wrong or ill advized. You discount an opportunity to learn and be open to a different viewpoint. You miss an opportunity to be happier.

Catch yourself saying positive and encouraging self-talk and purposely choose to do it more often. Will you be happier for it? Of course.

Happiness and Sickness

One of my greatest fears is sickness. I have had other fears that I have overcome (e.g., a fear of public speaking and a fear of writing). I have other fears too but they are, frankly, less likely to happen, such as a fear of torture or being imprisoned. My line of work and where I live make it unlikely that I will ever be tortured or imprisoned.

However, most of us get seriously ill at some point. People often lose a sense of control when they are sick. People around them either do everything for them, including making all the decisions, or they stay away all together. Can you be happy and sick at the same time?

Well if you agree with anything I have said so far, then you might answer yes in your head but I'm not so sure in your stomach. That is how I answer the question too. I suppose what I am trying to do now is to see how I might be able to convince my stomach that it is all right to be sick and happy at the same time.

How would I feel if I found out that I had terminal cancer? How would I feel if I found out my wife, children or sister had a disease that could kill them? I spend more than the average amounts of time thinking about these questions. The nature of a lot of my public speaking in hospice care forces me to look at my fears more often than I would like sometimes.

I sometimes look at the questions and say that I would do all right if I would not have to involve other people and make them sad. Or I will look at the questions and think that I could handle the disease but not the tests and treatments for the disease. Sometimes I hope that all my loved ones die first so that they will not have to go through the suffering of my death. Before you think that is very nice of me to want to avoid other people having to suffer I must confess that I think it would be easier to face someone else's death than to watch them suffer through my dying. Very selfish actually.

So what do I do? I try to start by recognizing that everyone gets sick. Some people get well and some do not. Billions of people have been born on this earth and billions have died. I try to put my possible illness in that perspective. I am not the first person to experience illness and I am not the first person who has faced death. My fears are not reduced by this awareness because I have not faced my own serious illness yet. I know that I will need a substantial amount of control over my treatment and over how I will live until I die. I know that all but one of my illnesses will not kill me, therefore, I will need to plan things for after my illnesses to help me get through it. I know I will need to be needed and valued if I am very sick. I know I will need to be busy as much as possible. I know I will need to talk, listen, write, laugh, and cry. I know I will need happiness in my life and time to be unhappy and worry. I know that everything I think I will need and want may be different once I am sick.

What I know is that I need to work some of my fears out before I get sick or before other people close to me get sick. I know that even if I do not prepare that I will make it through. How do I know that?

I was 21 years old when I returned from doing volunteer work in Latin America. I was unprepared for the return culture shock I experienced. I felt out of control, immensely unhappy, sad, angry, obsessively worried, lonely and scared. Anxiety attacks were my constant companion. I tried to fill my time with teaching but during any free time, especially weekends, I thought I was going crazy.

My mother was sick at the time with angina. There were times when she was in terrible pain but she stoically accepted it and tried to live around it. There was a specific day when I thought that I could not handle living anymore. My mind and body (I had terrible stomach problems) seemed to exist outside of me, outside of my control. My mother was resting in bed on this day and I went to her in a panic. I said I thought I was going crazy. I asked her what I should do and whether or not she thought I would make it.

She gave the answer you would expect from a mother–that things would turn out okay in time. I asked her how she knew. I will never forget her answer. It was powerful beyond words. She had been physically abused as a child, had lived through the German occupation of her town, had seen her father's business and family home crumble before her eyes as the bombs dropped, she had seen her boyfriend go off to fight in Indonesia from 1947-49 (my dad), she had immigrated to Canada without speaking a word of English, she was a feminist before the word was popular, and she had raised two children while knowing that she would not live a long time (she died when she was 53). All of those experiences came through her powerful, compassionate brown eyes. When I asked her how she knew I would be okay she said, I know with such quiet conviction that I believed her instantly. It was a simple answer to a complex question and I believed her. She knew what it was to suffer. She knew from personal experience that if she could survive, so could I. She knew from personal experience that if she could find happiness, so could I. From then on I knew I would be okay. It took nearly 2 years but I became okay again. Ironically it was just in time to help her before she died.

How do I know I will survive all but one illness even though I am terribly afraid of them? I just do.

Happiness and Suicide

I have spent time with people who have wanted to die. Some wanted to die because they were already dying of a terminal illness. Others wanted to die because they saw no hope in their daily life or future. I was most helpful when I did not argue with them about why their decision was wrong. I tried to listen to their worries and anxieties, their hopes and dreams and their reasoning.

Some were close (within hours) of acting on their decision to die. Some based their decision on what many would consider a rational, logical sequence of beliefs. Given similar circumstances, many of us would have come up with similar conclusions.

In each case, the person decided not to go ahead. For some it was a religious fear of going to hell. For most it was that living one more day of their life seemed the better option than an eternity of uncertainty. For others it was because they recognized and felt that people still needed them to be a parent, friend, sibling or child. They still had things to do.

I once asked a friend of mine who has spent most of his adult life in one institution or another (because he has a mild developmental disability) whether he was ever suicidal. He had gone through over 20 years of life in a mental institution including some shock treatments, the removal of all of his personal property (easier to keep track that way), the loss of all of his teeth (don’t have to brush them then) and much more. He was isolated from his family since the institution was not in the city where his family lived. He was placed in the institution because the parents were convinced by well-meaning professionals that it would be best for him and for them.

So given all of this history I asked him one day if he had ever been suicidal. He is twenty years older than me and looked at me like I was a stupid child. Harry, I’m not crazy you know! His life has been anything but wonderful for him but it was still worth living. I gave him a lot of credit for his insights into what makes life worth living. Many of them were similar to what Viktor Frankl mentions at the beginning of this book–and yet, my friend is the one labelled intellectually disabled!

I asked a physician who has many patients with ALS (Lou Gerhig’s Disease) if any of his more than 200 patients were suicidal. He said that some were when they first came to him. They wanted a sense of control over their lives that an acceptance of suicide gave them. If they always had an ‘out’ they could tolerate so much more. Some of the patients said that they wanted to live until they needed to go onto a respirator. They didn’t want to live with one of those. Until, that is, it came time to decide whether they would go on a respirator or not. All of them chose the respirator because they had a child’s wedding to attend, a granddaughter’s baptism to witness, a bit more tidying up of their affairs to do. Each of his patients, however, never feared that talking about suicidal thoughts would cause the doctor to turn away or diagnose them as ‘depressed’ and force medication on them.

In my case, the roller coaster ride of helping people through suicidal times reinforces this idea for me. Any of these people may have chosen to die and I would not have physically stopped them. Some decisions must be left to the people themselves. However, I did not want them to make such a decision without someone nearby who loved them and who would listen to their stories. I did not prevent any suicides. I gave people a sympathetic ear and time to think out loud some of what most worried them.

Would I have ‘failed’ them, if they had chosen death. No, I don’t think so. Would I have failed them if I had turned away because it was too painful to help? Yes, I think so. Isolation and a lack of compassionate people around you, I believe, is one of the greatest reasons why people want to die–not the only reason, mind you–but one of the greatest.

Should I have forced them to seek psychiatric help against their will? Not in these cases. There are people who need that kind of support, but these people were not in that category. Several were already under a psychiatrist’s care and forced treatment in a locked ward would only have made things worse.

Why, then, do seemingly okay people with loving families and friends around them, want to die? I am not a therapist or mental health expert. I have been a friend and what I have learned is this–in the end, all human decisions are based on perceptions (some that are clearly inaccurate to other people but not to the person who holds them). Given certain perceptions, logical conclusions are drawn in their minds that are usually combined with sleeplessness, over use of medications, alcohol or drugs, that lead to thoughts of suicide, an attempted suicide or an actual suicide. If someone is there to notice the changes in a person’s personality, their sleep habits, their giving away all their possessions and similar ‘clues’, then that person may be helped and they may not die. Sadly, it doesn’t always work out that way.

Is there room for happiness in any of this? Of course there is. With the people I have mentioned, there were still moments of laughter, off-color death humor, and stories told and retold. Some felt some relief that someone would listen without telling them what to do. They were allowed the freedom to express their thoughts and feelings without a time limit. In all these cases, humor, laughter, and reflection on moments of past happiness led to new ‘happy’ memories for us. These moments were not enough, in themselves, to convince someone that suicide was not right for them–but they helped. They helped them and they helped me. They passed time so there was more opportunity to reflect on alternatives.

I am grateful for these opportunities to be there with those struggling with the most fundamental question on the meaning of life. I do not wish this situation on anyone as it is a painful one in many ways, but it is also life affirming–it refocuses my own perceptions of why life is worth living. It helps me reaffirm my love for so many wonderful people in my life. It allows me time to slow down enough (one can’t hurry these kinds of discussions) to examine my own beliefs and values. It allowed me time for one more hug, one more laugh and one more shared tear of friendship together.

Happiness and War/Hate

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I had a friend who was 86 years old. I sometimes asked her difficult questions to learn from her wisdom. We had different religious beliefs, she and I, but we shared a love of God, a love of others and we both worked at loving ourselves better.

I asked her one day what she thought of war. He answer was immediate and powerful. Oh I don't war, child. I had never heard it put more clearly than that. I don't war. In the English language, the word war is a noun, a thing. We make war or we declare war. What my friend did was use the word as a verb, an action. She did not war. Her idea was a simple one; a profound one. Yet, a difficult idea to follow into action.

I mentioned that I thought, as do many others, that the opposite of love is not hate but fear. If that is true then hate and wars are results of fear. What is it we fear that allows us to hate millions of people and fight a war. On a trip to Europe I did a lot of bicycling with my aunt. We rode over 250 miles in two weeks and it was wonderful. One day we rode by a war cemetery. There are more than a few of them in The Netherlands. This was a German war cemetery. The gate to get in was deceiving as most of the cemeteries are relatively small and extremely well kept by the Dutch people. This cemetery was also very well kept. It was, however, huge. There were 31,585 soldiers buried in that cemetery. They had all died in the final months of the war. They were young men, mostly drafted, to fight a war I doubt they understood or supported. They would have much preferred to be home with their families and sweethearts than in the muddy fields of Holland that spring, 1944.

When I stood in the middle of that cemetery I could see graves as far as the eye could see in all directions. To say I felt sadness and anger at the wastefulness does not begin to tell the story.

Years before that I had visited Dachau with my father and sister. I had only seen pictures of concentration camps. The feelings I felt walking under the entrance seen by millions of people in photos and film were powerful and sad. There was a monument there built in memory of the people who had died in the camp. The monument had a large sign which read, Never Again. I was so angry when I read it. Angry because it implied that the killing and suffering had stopped. It has not. There are people throughout the world today who suffer for political, economic or religious reasons. There is the constant warfare somewhere in the world, often in more places than one. We are no more humane today as a species than we were in World War II.  We have never stopped killing, torturing, raping and slaughtering our fellow human beings. We have only moved the location and limited, so far, the fighting to smaller regions. We have never learned the lessons of history.

How then can I think of war and hate in the same breath as happiness. Just these few examples above show you some of the horror that exists in the name of democracy and freedom. Twenty million people died in World War II–20,000,000.

When I asked my parents and grandfather about the war I was surprised to hear that they still went dancing on a Saturday night or out for a date by the river. People still had children and farmed their lands. Companies still worked and taxes were still paid. Their government was run by Germans and their town was occupied by both the English and the Germans at different times. They knew that many of the soldiers were just young boys originally keen on adventure but quickly homesick for their families and girlfriends. They talked to these soldiers while my Dad also helped smuggle people out of Germany. For him it was an adventure as a young farm boy who knew the back woods of their border town with Germany so well. No special ideology here. Young men and women who lived through five years of uncertainty; both the uncertainty of war but also the uncertainty of growing into adults.

There was happiness and fear together. Families still celebrated holidays and special days. People still had parties and went to church. People who tended to be happy by nature continued that way. People who tended to be unhappy continued that way too.

What is the modern lesson about war, hatred and happiness? It is the same as what I said about poverty and happiness, I think. We do not have to be unhappy, angry or overwhelmed by war and hatred to make changes. People can remain happy or become happier and have the extra energy it takes to prevent more torture, hatred and war.

Happiness can be a measuring stick against which people can see how stupid war is. Those 31,585 soldiers in the cemetery in the town of Ysselsteyn will never be happy again on this earth. That was taken from them. Did we need to rob the happiness of the women and men in the Persian Gulf to protect oil fields? Did Holland really need to send thousands of soldiers, including my father, to Indonesia to fight a losing battle for independence just so that the rich Dutch corporations could get their assets out of the country? Did we have to have over 50,000 North American soldiers die in Viet Nam to prevent the communists from ruling the world? Did the 50,000 men who died in 3 days of hand-to-hand fighting in Gettysburg during the American Civil War need to die to determine whether the North or the South should win?

The end of the 1980s helped us answer those questions. Historic changes in Europe have proven that revolutions do not have to involve the deaths of millions of people. When the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Iron Curtain was removed without bloodshed, we saw change dramatic change without violence. Yes there are economic prices to pay and people will be inconvenienced by all these changes. Might some of these changes have happened sooner if twenty million had not died in World War II? What would have happened if there was a much greater peaceful resistance against Hitler? There would still have been people murdered. There would still have been violence and strife. But would as many sons and daughters, husbands and wives and parents have died?

Would less people have suffered and died (a utilitarian view)? Would Russia and the United States not have become so powerful and extended a cold war with the enormous cost of nuclear and other arms build up? Why are these questions not answered before we allow our leaders to send yet another generation of children to war.

I used to be a stronger supporter of using force to defend freedom. I am becoming more interested in knowing how peaceful resistance toward deadly military aggression could change our history. Are the lessons of Eastern Europe important enough to show us that no leader or leaders can hold their populations in fear and degradation for ever?

In Holland, during World War II, the SS visited a hospital to demand that the doctors and administrators release the name of any disabled or mentally ill patients. The doctors and administrators did not know what would be done with their patients but they could guess. They might not have guessed the extent of the Nazi death camps, but they had heard rumors. So they refused to prepare such a list for the SS. They were warned that if they refused, some of them would be killed. These brave and stubborn doctors and administrators refused none the less and a few were, in fact, killed. The SS could easily have gone room to room to find the patients they were looking for but they wanted compliance. When they did not get it, they left the hospital and the rest of the doctors and administrators alone and the patients were safe.

Yes, some people died in this example–some very highly valued men who could easily have taken a different route. Their non-violence, however, led to many more being saved. What can we learn from this? What did we learn from the non-violence of Mahatma Ghandi in India or Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States or Nelson Mandela for most of his life in South Africa or resistance in the Eastern communist countries?

Non-violence may, or may not, take longer that violent war but the deaths are measurably fewer. If we tried this at a state and international level, rather than at the individual level, would we be able to prevent evil dictators from mass genocide without having to kill even more people to stop them? I think so. I hope we try in my life time.

I would like to think that one day I will have more answers to these questions for myself. For now I would like to be supportive of the individual soldiers who fight our leaders' battles while, at the same time borrowing from my friend's words that I don't war. This takes some real changing in thinking for me but I think it will work. What do our leaders fear so much that they want us to hate other world leaders and declare war against them? How much of their fear is economically driven? How much of the fear has to do with getting elected? Why are there so many companies making a fortune from wars? Do they help start wars so that they can continue to make money? After all, where do these non-democratic leaders who want to take over the world get their weapons? I hope to understand this better and to use happiness and fear as yardsticks for why we and our leaders allow this stupidity, this deadly stupidity, to go on.