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."

Bloom where you’re planted

All summer long I’ve been looking at these marigolds growing in the middle of my garden. A couple of weeks ago, I put my garden to bed for the winter when I dug up my potatoes, beets and carrots…the last vegetables growing, but I left the marigolds because they are very hearty and will take a couple of frosts before they stop blooming. Also, because I know that if I leave them in my garden, they’ll drop some seeds and grow next year. I’m not exactly sure where they will grow next year but I know that the scent of the marigolds drive off wanted insects and other pests. For instance, we live near the edge of Mandan but rabbits, gophers and squirrels don’t bother our garden. I’m about half convinced it’s because of the marigolds.

But the marigolds are but one flower I have in my yard. I’m also a lover of tulips. They are a sure sign of spring when their green heads start popping through the frozen ground. Come May, the tulips are bright yellow, orange and red…but they need to be cared for.

So on a sunny Saturday afternoon, my son Derek and I got busy and dug up the tulip beds. There are a few things you do.

First, you dig up the four to six inches of dirt that covers them. Second you remove the tulip bulbs. Then you dig a little deeper and add fertilizer. You put a little dirt over the fertilizer and rake the bed flat. Next you separate the bulbs and plant them. Then cover them back up. Then you wait for spring to arrive. 

So let’s review how this can help us as we grow and mature.

First, there’s the dirt. Where ever we are working or living, we need to make sure that the climate and goals of those around us are a match for us.

Let me give you an example. I began my career with newspapers, but after working 20 years in public relations for an energy company and a telephone cooperative, I had a hard time returning to the job of being a newspaper reporter in 2002. It wasn’t that I had forgotten how to write, but there was just so much more that I wanted to do than just be a reporter. It’s a bit like asking a gourmet chef to be in charge of the salad bar at Bonanza. Because the “dirt” wasn’t right, I looked elsewhere for opportunities and landed my current position with a trade association and returned to public relations.

Next you need to separate the bulbs. By this I mean you need to look at your current position and see what else you can do to attain a higher position, if that’s what you seek.  I remember doing exactly that when I worked for a regional utility. I was the editor of the employee magazine but I really wanted to be the manager of the department. So I looked at what other things I could be doing.

Well, there was talking to the press and writing speeches for executives. Also, there were leadership duties such as communications planning. In all, I had drawn one circle in the middle of a piece of paper that said, magazine editor. Then I drew about eight circles,  which contained other things that I could be doing and should be doing if I wanted to advance.

That’s what I mean by separating the bulbs. Tulips start with one bulb but in a couple of years, there can be a cluster of bulbs around that initial one. If you don’t separate them, the one in the middle will begin to die and pretty soon the bulbs will simply turn to dirt. So just as separating bulbs is essential, it’s also necessary to see what else you can do to help you advance.

Remember, your advancement also will help your employer. After all, the person you hope to replace will eventually retire and your company wants someone who can do as good a job or even a better job than person now holding the postion.

Finally, you need to fertilize. And for people, that comes from training. An honest assessment has to be taken. What do I need to be trained on for me to advance. For me it was public speaking and getting over my severe fear of public speaking.

You might not recognize it today, but I assure you that I was petrified to speak in front of an audience or a camera…knowing that hundreds or perhaps thousands would be listening to me.

So I joined Toastmasters…back in 1989. The first meeting I attended was incredibly unnerving. It was the Flickertail Toastmasters Club and they had a speaker cancel on them at the last minute so I was asked to give my “Ice Breaker”. I thought I would die. But I didn’t. And gradually, I started getting better and overcame my nervousness.

I’m lucky that I found Toastmasters because it has made a world of difference to me.

So the next time you see marigolds or tulips or whatever flower you like growing in a bed of dark loam, remember that flower is urging you to bloom where you’re planted. Plant your roots in good dirt and spread your blossoms toward the sun. 

So long Nibby, welcome Picasso

Nibby was definitely Grandpa's cat. He would come when Grandpa wanted him. He would follow him to bed, sleep with Grandpa until he fell asleep and then Nibby would stay up all night looking out the window, jumping on our bed or several other things that only cats understand. Before Grandpa woke up in the morning, Nibby would sneak back onto his bed so that Grandpa would be sure to think that Nibby slept there all night.

And if you dared even to try to move Nibby from Grandpa's bed or a chair or off the counter, Grandpa was always there to defend his poor helpless cat. Many a time, Grandpa's relatives got a tongue-lashing for something we might or might not have done to Nibby.

So when Nibby got sick and was put to sleep this week, I didn't really think I would get choked up with emotion. After all, this was a one-person cat, and I never was that one person. Nibby was a nice looking black-and-white male tom cat, but he wasn't what you would call affectionate. He was independent. Tough. And always made me feel that I was intruding on his turf.

Still, when I brought him into the vet's office last Tuesday afternoon, my eyes filled with tears and I could barely speak to the receptionist. Grandpa, on the other hand, was looking for the Men's room and seemed oblivious to the task at hand.

A couple of days later and I was starting to forget about Nibby and the tears that were shed...that is, until we got a letter from the vet's office. It was a condolence card but it also had a card with inked paw prints and the name "Nibby" calligraphed underneath. I saw the card and thought, "Is this some cruel joke...I'm tearing up again."

Yeah, I fed Nibby and hunted for him when Grandpa would let him outside and he'd run away...but I couldn't say I was ever close to him.

So when Grandpa said on Tuesday that he didn't want another cat, I had mixed emotions. On one hand, I wondered if he would miss his companionship that he had with Nibby. But on the other hand, Nibby never liked anyone but Grandpa so it wasn't hard to say that you really wanted another cat like Nibby.

But as the days passed, it soon became apparent that Grandpa had not forgotten his cat. Even though I had moved the kitty box, kitty food and dishes out to the garage, Grandpa still was relentless in his search for his cat and wondering where Nibby was.

So what was clear to Belinda, Scott and Derek, soon became clear to me. We had to find Grandpa another cat.

On Friday afternoon, Scott and his cousin Janelle drove to the animal shelter to scope out the cats. Scott called me at work and told me they had three choices but Picasso was definitely their first choice. At 3 p.m. on Friday, I met Grandpa, Belinda and Janelle at the shelter and I agreed that Picasso was definitely a good selection. He loved to be held and purred when cuddled.

Plus there was a story that came with Picasso. He had been found in a garbage can and given to the shelter. It seems that his previous owners had abandoned him. They put him in a cardboard box and threw him away.

How heart-wrenching...and yet it felt like what we had gone through. No, we hadn't been thrown away. But we felt a loneliness and emptyness after Nibby died. So it seemed like a match made in heaven. We would provide a good home for Picasso and just maybe Picasso would fill the void left behind by Nibby. Grandpa might yet again have a cat that will follow him to bed, put him to sleep and then jump on our bed to wake us up in the middle of the night.

No, Picasso isn't the classy dude Nibby was. Nibby always looked like he showed up in a black and white tuxedo. But Picasso seems to have a much better attitude than the somewhat peevish and very spoiled Nibby.

Anyway, we got a call at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday that if we wanted to adopt Picasso, we could come to the animal shelter in an hour and pick him up. In the mean time, I went to the garage and fetched the kitty box and washed the kitty dishes and put fresh water and fresh food in them.

Grandpa walked by me and spied what I was doing. He said, "It looks better already."

So in the period of a few days, it seems like our family has fallen into a great abyss only to emerge...hopefully better than before.

The land of Dancing Cabbages

When I look back now, I'm surprised I got to keep my job at Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative, especially after my first two weeks on the job. People think I have a hearing problem now, but it turns out I couldn't hear when I was younger either.

It was January 1983 and I was 23-years-old. I had worked at couple of weekly newspapers and had just landed a job as a community relations coordinator for a telephone cooperative headquartered in Circle, Montana. I really didn't know what the job entailed so wasn't surprised when someone from the accounting department asked me to look through a stack of expense reports and pull out any that had to do with Dancing Cabbage.

I didn't give it a lot of thought because I had just gone through the Christmas season and knew that Cabbage Patch dolls were all the rage so Dancing Cabbages shouldn't come as a surprise either....although I had never heard of them before that day.

When the day was over I told the person who had asked for my help that I hadn't come across even one report with Dancing Cabbages. She looked at me with a quizzical appearance and asked me to repeat myself.  So I did. She then laughed and said that I would have to go through reports again the next day because she wasn't looking for Dancing Cabbages. She was looking for expense reports for a former employee of the cooperative, a man whose name was Dan Sincavage.

That episode was just the precursor. The next occurred in the middle of the week when I was asked to drive an old four-wheel drive pickup to interview an old couple who lived southeast of Baker, Montana...almost where the states of Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota meet.

When I reached their ranch, I spied a big pile of manure across the road from their home. After conducting the interview, I asked the old man if he would mind loading up the pickup with manure because I hoped to start a garden in the spring and the manure would fertilize the soil that I planned to spade up in March or April.

I was living in an apartment in Glendive, and the landlord had told me that he wouldn't care if I planted a small garden behind the parking lot.

The old rancher was very generous with his manure and he used a tractor to pile it nice and high in the back of the pickup. The old couple thanked me for coming to visit and asked me to stop by again if I was ever on their road because of travels for the cooperative.

As I left their ranch, I was delighted with myself. Not only had I gotten the interview and photos for the cooperative's monthly magazine, but I also had this load of fertilizer. And then somewhere between Baker and Glendive, my mood changed. The gray sky opened up and it began to rain, and then it began to snow. By the time I pulled into my parking lot, the manure had turned to a large frozen mass.

The next day, I drove the pickup -- manure and all -- to Circle. However, thinking that I could somehow sneak by without getting caught, I parked the pickup on the edge of town and walked the two blocks to the center of town and the headquarters of the co-op.

It was getting late into the afternoon and I thought I had been successful. But then my boss called me into his office and asked me to swing the pickup around as there were some bills that he wanted me to load into the back of the pickup and take to the post office in Circle, which was also about two blocks away.

Needless to say, he wasn't too keen on the idea of me using a cooperative-owned vehicle to haul a load of manure for this garden that I intended to start in the spring.

In fact, he told me that the next time he saw the pickup, the manure had better be gone and I had better have the back-end cleaned out.

As it turned out, this was a Friday so I drove back to Glendive in the pickup and then I drove to Roundup to visit my folks for the weekend. My dad gave me a small pick that he used for hunting rocks so that I could chop out the frozen manure before I drove the pickup back to Circle on Monday.

So on a cold Sunday night in January, I backed up the pickup full of manure to a spot where I hoped to plant a garden. I threw a trouble light over a tree limb and I picked at the manure until I had chopped up the frozen top layer. Then with a shovel, I was able to remove all of the rest of the manure. It probably took a couple of hours before every last inch of manure had been removed from the back of the pickup.

As I look back now, these episodes are funny. But at the time, they were serious glitches in good judgement. Luckily, my supervisor was an understanding fellow and later we became good friends. However, at the time, I was wondering if I was going to be able to work long enough to cash my first check.

These stories came to mind because a guy I know was telling me about a job opening in Circle, Montana, and wanted to know if I might be interested. I asked him what it entailed and he said I would be the manager of a gas station. With my luck in Circle, I had to quickly decline. Otherwise I might blow up the whole town.

Fighting a summer cold

How much ambition do I have today? Zero. Nada.

I've been fighting ragweed allergies this week and I think they've now turned into a cold. By tomorrow or the next day, it might manifest itself into bronchitis as I'm already wheezy and spitting up phlegm.

I took a Saturday afternoon nap, which isn't unusual. What is unusual is that I slept for three and a half hours. Also, I missed watching the Yankees win on TV. I knew they were playing but if I had watched them, I would have fallen asleep in the chair. So I decided to fall asleep in bed.

Tomorrow, we have a full calendar of events so I'm really hoping to feel better. But if not, there is always the walk-in clinic.

I planned on writing some more about my hacking cough, fever, runny eyes so you know exactly how I feel...but if you've ever seen a commercial for Dristan, you understand how I feel.

When I was growing up, I think my dad was addicted to Dristan. Now I don't think they even make it any more. Household medicines have changed over the years. We used to have either aspirin or children's aspirin. Now there's Tylenol and Advil and a bunch of knock-offs.

For colds, we use to take either Dristan or Contact. Both of them would dry out my sinuses and generally ended up with a nosebleed. I don't think they make Contact either...at least we don't buy it if they do.

I've never been very good at swallowing pills, so I always try to find the smallest pills I can take. Today, I went to the pharmacy to buy a multi-vitamin. I asked the cashier what was the smallest multi-vitamin he had. He opened a box and took out the pill bottle. Then he unscrewed the lid. Of course, there was a seal on the top of the bottle.

"I don't know," he admitted.

So I bought the bottle he held in his hand. It not only said it was a multi-vitamin but also formulated especially for men. I can't imagine what special ingredients it might have contained just for men, but it was enough to sway me to buy them.

When I got them home and popped the seal with a sharp knife, the pills were huge....three times bigger than the little red vitamin pills I had been taken. So I thought there must be something interesting in the vitamins. Of course, you're way ahead of me on this one. Most of the pill is simply inert ingredients. I guess it won't kill me, but I would just like to take a small pill without having to gag every morning. And the vitamins stink. I won't be smelling them before I take them.

The other bad thing for me about having a cold, or a cough or a runny nose...is that my dad seems to catch everything that is brought into the house.

So my outlook for this cold goes like this...I'll probably go to the walk-in clinic tomorrow and I'll probably have to take dad to the walk-in clinic later during the week.