Lessons about happiness from an expert

Everyone wants to be happy. But it seems fewer people actually are. So, I’m going to try to change that by calling on a happiness expert – Happy Gilmore.

Happy Gilmore is the name of a 1996 movie comedy starring Adam Sandler, but its also the name of the lead character, a misguided hockey player trying to save his Grandma’s house from the IRS by becoming a pro golfer. Along the way he encounters a golf coach who’s missing a hand because an alligator bit it off. He also competes against a much better golfer by the name of Shooter MacGavin, and he gets into a slugfest with the old TV game show host Bob Barker.

So what can we learn from Happy that will make us happier in our own lives? I think there are three things we can learn.

The first, and probably the most important, is that we need to control our emotions. There’s a scene in the movie where Happy is standing at a bar and is being taunted by his arch nemesis Shooter MacGavin. Happy breaks a beer bottle and threatens Shooter while gripping the neck of the broken bottle.

Suddenly, Happy’s almost angelic girlfriend, Virginia, shows up and asks Happy what he is doing holding a broken bottle in his hand while his temper is flaring. Happy puts on a happy face and says, “I am just looking for the other half of it. Here’s a piece and here’s another piece.”

Sometimes we are going to be taunted by people and events that are going to be difficult to deal with. It’s easy to lose our temper. But the wiser choice is to learn to hold our tongue. It’s been said that grace is keeping your head when everyone else is losing theirs.

Let’s be graceful. And let’s keep our tempers in check. A day later or even an hour after we’re mad, we often look back at it and laugh or admit that it wasn’t worth getting mad about.

Second, we need to be ourselves and quit trying to be what others want us to be. For Happy, he was an unconventional golfer. In fact, he admitted that he was really a hockey player. Actually, he was a bad hockey player but a pretty good, unconventional golfer.

He could drive the ball farther than anyone on the pro circuit because he hit the golf ball the same way he would hit a hockey puck. He also didn’t use a regular putter. He used one the size of a hockey stick. Who knows…maybe it fit his hands better or made him more comfortable on the greens. The results are what counts and at the end of the movie, it’s a putt with the big putter that ricochets around a bunch of twisted pipes and bounces off a Volkswagen to win the tournament and save Grandma’s house.

I know all about this one. I stand out from the crowd because I write right-handed and do everything else left-handed. It would be no easier for me to learn to write left-handed than it would to learn to throw a baseball right-handed. We are what we are. Let’s accept that.

We need to keep our temper in check, we need to genuinely like ourselves the way God made us and we need to keep the right sense of perspective.

There’s a scene where Happy and his caddy – formerly a bum – are looking out at the fairway from a tee box.

Happy says, “Looks like a slight hill.” His caddy adds, “Yeah, and there’s a slant to the left.” Happy replies “Naw, it just looks that way because you only have one shoe on.”

It’s hard not to laugh at that. But how many of us are like the caddy. We’ve seen things from only one perspective so long that it looks right to us.

That is, until someone comes a long and turns our world on end because they look at things a little differently.

I have an older brother who use to make a lot of money as a welder in the oil fields in central Montana. As a welder, he worked around some of the toughest men in a tough industry. That’s why they call them roughnecks.

Today, my brother watches high school kids in a study hall in western Montana – many of whom are sent there because they are disruptive in class. In the world of high school, they are the worst of the worst. To my brother, they are about as troublesome as a lone cloud on a sunny day.

While teachers and administrators in the school think these kids are unruly or incorrigible, to my brother, they are no different from him when he was their age. And because he likes them, guess what? They like him to.

That’s why the principal of the high school asked my brother to leave his position at a middle school to take a similar job at a high school. I’m sure the teachers look at my brother and wonder if he isn’t looking at the world with one shoe off, but for Randy, he’s looking at the kids the way he wished high school teachers had looked at him. 

Who knows, these kids might end up getting married, buying a home, starting a business and raising a family….just like Randy did. And, really isn’t that what life’s about? High school is not an end, it’s a beginning.

So let’s learn from Happy. We’ll be happier if we control our emotions, accept ourselves as we are, and learn to accept other points of view as being as valid as our own. 

A Christmas we would never forget

Before I get to Christmas 2007, let me tell you about what happened in May that year. Dad had fallen down and a heart specialist recommended that he get a pacemaker. So we made arrangements with a surgeon at MedCenter One in Bismarck to implant the device.

On the appointed day, we took dad to the hospital for the procedure. They wanted him to come in at 6 a.m....before he ate breakfast.

As he's waiting for the surgeon to arrive, a nurse begins to ask dad several questions about his medical history. She asked him if he ever had a broken bone, ever had hepatitis, did he have high blood pressure, etc. Dad politely told her that he never had any of those things, although he was sitting in front of her with two broken fingers from when he fell. So I chimed in and told her the correct answers. Yes, he was a hepatitis survivor and he did have high blood pressure and a few other ailments.

Finally, she asked dad if he'd been to any foreign countries in the past couple of years or had any blood transfusions. Anyway, dad looked at me, then he turned toward the nurse.

"I want to tell you 'No', but that fella over there keeps piping up and contradicts my answers," he said.

His answer struck my funny bone and I began to laugh. Pretty soon, he was laughing also. So was the nurse.

Dad's memory isn't what it used to be, and some times the results can be very humorous. But it's not all his memory either. Like other people his age, he doesn't see and hear as well as he used to...and his patience has completely worn out.

So now let's jump back to Christmas 2006, his first holiday season in Mandan. Actually, it was Christmas Eve service and all the lights were turned out at the United Methodist Church as we were singing "Silent Night" by candlelight.

Much to the delight of my boys and my utter terror, dad was getting dangerously close to the hymnal with his lighted candle. As it turned out, he didn't start the pages on fire, but he did manage to drop a lot of candle wax into the music. I was wondering if the hymnal would ever be opened again after the book was closed on all that hot wax.

Now skip ahead a few months and we're at a country church where a funeral for one of Belinda's uncles is taking place. As often happens at these little churches, the priests who have served the parish all came back to play a role in the memorial service.

Some of the priests looked like they were older and more feeble than dad who was sitting in the second pew...right behind the deceased's brothers and sister -- also known as Belinda's mom and uncles. As one of the priests fumbled for his place in his old black, dog-eared prayer book, Mr. Patience -- standing next to me -- started drumming his fingers on the back of the pew in front of us.

In a few more seconds, his fuse had completely burned out and he said, in a nice loud, irritated tone, "He can't find it. He can't find it. He can't find what he's looking for."

You know, it's hard to laugh in church, especially at a funeral. But it's even harder to stop laughing.

Now come with me to Christmas Eve 2007. The Methodist church was packed and it seems that everyone had something to do. For my family, we were charged with lighting the Advent candles. As it was the last night before Christmas, there were five candles to light.

After our experience the year before, we didn't think it wise to have dad touch any candles. So we asked him if he would read the Scripture. It was from the second chapter of Luke. You are familiar with it as it's the same Scripture that Linus reads on the Charlie Brown Christmas Special every year.

There was Scott, Belinda, Grandpa and me. We decided to practice this whole lighting the candles, reading the Scripture, saying the prayer affair before the actual service and it's a lucky thing we did.

I had the second chapter of Luke printed out in nice big print for dad to read. And then he came to the part where Joseph is traveling from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem, the town of David with his betrothed, Mary, who was expecting a child. This is where dad decided to read between the lines as he blurted out, "I bet that wasn't even his child."

Now for you heathens who have never read the Nativity story, dad was right. It's isn't Joseph's child. It's the baby Jesus, the son of God. But still...you don't want any ad-libbing during the lighting of the Advent wreath...especially if the extra words sounds like some sort of conspiracy theory hatched by road agents in ancient Judah.

So the question was this: do we trust dad to read the Scripture and hope that he remembers my warning about just sticking to the script, or do we trust him with a lighted candle in front of a packed church?

The answer was to give him the reading. And he did it wonderfully. The worshipers that night were very complimentary about how well dad had handled that passage of Scripture, especially the name of the governor of Syria -- "Quirinius."

Dad got the accolades he deserved....but if the crowd had only been there 30 minutes earlier for practice, it would have been a Christmas no one would have ever forgot.

Based on a true story...sort of

When Picasso was born, his mother would tell him and the other kitties stories from her life - in hopes her stories would protect her children when they were adopted by other people and taken to other homes. One of her stories dealt with mice.

She called them "darters." Little Picasso purred to his mommy, "Why do you call them that?"

"Because, honey, they like to dart in an out of holes in the walls, or from under hiding places and they are very tough to catch, but..." she smiled, "...they are fun to play with. You can bat them around and play with them until they are dead."

Picasso had never seen a mouse and he was nearing his first birthday, but the story his mother told him had stuck with him. He looked every where for a mouse, but alas, none was to be found at the Van Dyke's home. That is until one holiday - Veteran's Day - when Steve was sleeping in.

Picasso was sleeping at the foot of Steve's bed when he saw something that he had never seen before. Sticking out at the bottom of the covers was a round, pinkish mouse.

At first, Picasso wasn't sure it was a mouse so he went over and smelled it. It had an odor. So he licked it.

Suddenly the mouse darted under the covers.

With the quick movement, Picasso was more confident than ever that what he had seen darting under the blanket was a mouse. So he reached his paw under the covers and started batting at it.

This seemed to wake up Steve, who looked down at the foot of the bed to see this golden cat swiping at his big toe.

Thinking nothing of it, Steve went back to sleep...after all, it was a holiday.

As his feet were growing warm under the blankets, he again stuck his left toe out to get a little air.

Suddenly, the kitty sprung to life and pounced on the mouse, biting, licking and pawing at the darter.

Steve woke up from his dream and realized that Picasso was a "gullible" cat because he acted on only a small bit of information that his mother had told him. However, now the adventures of Picasso would be know throughout the world as "Gullible's Travels."