On Happiness

Happiness has been in the news lately. My own town of Somerville, MA is the first city in the USA to include questions about happiness in its local census. One of the research goals is to find out what local factors may be related to a person’s state of well-being. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/us/01happiness.html. In England and France similar questions are being asked.

Gretchen Rubin in her best selling book, The Happiness Project, and a similarly named blog http://www.happiness-project.com/ shares her ten personal commandments for happiness and a slew of articles that translate her abstract principles into the practical.

Last week, in our local paper, Richard Griffin expanded the concept into “Elements for bringing happiness in later life.” http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/news/x311054268/Griffin-Apply-Somervilles-happiness-survey-to-later-life#axzz1PImWVPem.

I remember what a sensation Charles M. Schultz’ Happiness is a Warm Puppy (1962) caused. It was a book of sweet aphorisms all beginning with “Happiness is…” (first edition available on Ebay for $130), We all came up with our own versions. It’s natural that satire would also result from this sappy concept. Apparently, the Beatles song, “Happiness is a warm gun,” was inspired by the cover of a gun magazine (probably not satire). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_Is_a_Warm_Gun.

But an interest in happiness is rooted in our own “Declaration of Independence.” We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/text.html

Is happiness always a desirable state? According a research brief in the June 2011 Monitor (American Psychological Association, http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/06/inbrief.aspx ), “Happiness may not fend off depression in Asian cultures as it does in Western cultures” because happiness may be seen as a “precursor to jealousy and disharmony with friends and family.”

Research also suggests that genetics plays a part in about half of our ability to be happy. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/11/the-happiness-i.html. That still leaves the other half.

And then there is spiritual enlightenment. http://www.chopra.com/happinessrx.

I believe I am one of those people who tend more towards happiness, at least in this third halfof my life. I am told I was a very happy baby, I recall a generally happy childhood, followed by a supremely miserable adolescence, and a very up and down early adulthood. My best friend and I even charted our level of contentment from day to day. Our moods were generally a result of how well the boys we had our eye on responded to us. I eventually landed the target of my affection and fell in love (and then out of love); she did not. But she seems very happy now.

As a consequence of my natural disposition and relative good fortune (partly the result of good planning, partly of luck and geneti cs) I don’t find myself thinking about how I could be happier. I gravitate towards things that give me pleasure and meaning and away from things that bore me or irritate me. To some degree I put off the undesirable, from the daunting, such as the need to downsize, to the more mundane and every day, such as doctors’ appointments, housecleaning, and maintaining my email inbox. Spending time with good friends and family gives me great happiness, and those people need not be all sunshine and light themselves as long as they engage in life and take responsibility for their own actions. I am happy when I challenge myself and continue to grow as a person.

Thus, I am embarking on a new stage of my writing career that may take me away from this blog for awhile or severely limit my ability to create new entries. For the next year I will be part of a pilot program for novelists—those of us with a completed draft. We will share and receive critiques from our fellow students and instructors, analyze books already in print, and read about writing, among other activities. There may be times that the stress of reading nine draft novels not of our choosing in 10 weeks (in the summer no less), or hearing harsh words, or having assignments will not induce a state of happiness, especially on top of life’s other duties (such as paid work). I may wonder why I brought this burden on myself. But I do believe that in the end I will be happier for having stretched myself. And I might even find out whether getting a novel published will lead to that ultimate state of American nirvana, known as success.

On Dancing without the Stars

Over the last couple of months, I’ve taken a semi-hiatus from writing. It hasn’t been a complete separation—more like a vacation where you stay in touch with your colleagues through email. I’ve kept up with my blog, participated in my bi-weekly writers' group, and completed some rough editing on a draft of a novel. But I’ve rediscovered my 80s dancing persona. Actually, it started with folk dancing in college and the years immediately following, with a twice weekly habit the year I lived in London. I even went to Maine Folk Dance Camp, where in my mid-20s, I was one of the younger attendees.

In the late 70s, I saw "Saturday Night Fever" and fell in love with disco. After 30 classes, satin jeans, and practice sessions at Faces, a now decaying club on Route 2, I had to concede that disco had lost its steam, so I switched to swing—-reminiscent of my grade school jitterbug days. And then on it went, through foxtrot, cha-cha, rumba, waltz, meringue, samba, mambo, salsa, all the way through Argentine Tango V. I'm sorry to say that most of that kinesthetic knowledge has faded in the two intervening decades. Other than the basics of ballroom, the only dance that really stuck was swing.

A few years ago, a writing friend introduced me to a local dive frequented by middle-aged patrons listening to middle aged bands at a sensible hour on the weekend. But it was a rocking good time. The ladies and I would get up to dance to the bluesy, r&B, country, honkey-tonk, or doo-wop sounds. Every once in awhile, my husband would come along, and we would trot out the old swing moves-—often the only ones on the floor to do so. Over time, more couples joined us, and we were no longer an anomoly. But I went only every couple of weeks, sometimes skipping weeks in a row.

Until this February when I became the dancing queen. It coincided with my fitness kick—-my weekly butt-killiing sessions with a trainer, my losing five pounds, my cutting out all sugar except for my daily square of chocolate. But the exercise factor became a side benefit of the more central fun factor. And the fun factor was a result of that great epiphany of one’s middle years—that the space between us and death is narrowiing.

So to the Saturday sessions I added the more mellow late Sunday afternoon set (for which you didn’t need earplugs but you definitely needed a glass of wine), the twice monthly Saturday afternoon with an Irish-Cajun band at a long-standing Cambridge pub (where a waltz or a polka is a possibility and a beer, a necessity), and then Wednesdays in the gospel-like atmosphere of the “Church of Fred” in an even tinier bar where the lead singer sashays down the narrow aisle, and we all chant the chorus. The repertoire becomes as familiar as the faces of the other regulars.

Only the first bar has something ressembling a dance floor. In the others, space is at a premium, but we push back a few chairs and make do. Sometimes, there are later night sessions at actual music venues with cover charges, or heaven forbid, the odd foray to a real dance, where everyone knows how to do two-step and zydeco and the dancers flow counter-clockwise around the room. There are casual and surprising opportunities to dance. Two weekends ago my town held a “Porchfest,” with 75 bands playing on front porches to the sidewalk audiences. And just this past weekend we attended a music festival where we danced a marathon eight hours.

All this activity doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing, but oh, the stories I am gathering and the characters I have met, liked the grizzled fellow with a missing tooth and alcoholic breath but some cool dance moves. Although I will always love dancing as long as I am physically able, I suspect that my recent frenzy will die down one day—maybe soon or maybe later. For now, my explanations of how I spend my time in my advancing years elicit surprise, sometimes envy. It makes more sense in these "Dancing with the Stars" days. But to those of you who remain skeptical, pick your venue from the above and join me. You, too, may become a convert. And if not, I can get you home early enough to use your evening in another way.

On the Joys of Texting

I never thought I would be a convert to texting. Just a couple of months ago I scorned it, not so much as a form of communication, but because of the way it seems to take over some people’s lives. Since when did it become permissable to be in someone else’s physical company and be so absorbed talking to an invisible presence on the other side of cyber space? Since when did my generation become such fuddy-duddies? Remember how our parents rolled their eyes at our transistor radios, at our endless phone conversations?

And then my cell phone stopped working. I decided to replace it with a phone with a keyboard—not a very smart phone, but just one with a little extra functionality. It would be good for making arrangements, I figured. So I paid the extra bucks for a texting plan.

One evening not long after I succumbed, I was in New York on business and decided to eat out in a restaurant I had visited before. It was a one menu, steak-frites French bistro on Lexington frequented mostly by twosomes and threesomes. I noted a lone woman across for me, her face buried in a book. I felt sorry for her. I’d had a demanding day and was content to sit with my glass of house red, waiting for my dinner and eavesdropping on the couple next to me. Then I had the urge to share my experience in an un obtrusive way. Remembering that a colleague/friend had recommended this place to me, I decided to text her, and we had the following conversation.

--I’m sitting in the steak-frites place by myself and thought of you. Tiring day at x, and oh the noise level. Now enjoying my much needed glass of wine. Dinner is served. So goodbye.

--Oh! So glad you are there! Wish I were there, too. Bon appetit!

--I ate a few extra fries and mustard coated steak on your behalf. May consider dessert…

--Yum-I can almost taste. Dreaming of profiteroles.

--Tx for the inspiration. Profiteroles it was. Pure contentment. Stresses of the day all gone! Back to the room for “What not to Wear.”

--That is a perfect evening after a loud day. Enjoy the rest of your trip.

Hardly deep, yet I felt unusually satisfied with the exchange. I felt less alone.

My texting audience is still minimal and consists mainly of a tiny handful of younger friends and friends with grown children whose only mode of speaking to their parents is the text message. I still use it mainly to make or confirm plans, to announce arrival times. But it’s also good for a rant.

While traveling this last week, I had an annoying flight delay of three hours in DC. I texted another friend, who was also away from home.

--Stuck in airport til 10pm. F**k. If u r free at any point, pls phone & entertain me!

Note that I have begun to use some texting shorthand, despite a full keyboard. The message resulted in a voice mail to me due to my being in a temporary dead zone, but I was able to return the call and have a nice chat to fill the time. Later, when my flight was cancelled, I felt an even stronger need to rage to the same friend (who also began texting about the same time as me, despite a phone without a full keyboard.)

--Adventures in flying. While knocking back 2nd scotch, flight cancelled unbeknownst to me. Spent hellish hour rebooking. On plane.

I got some sympathy, too. Short but sweet.

--Ouch!

Today’s messages consisted of advising a family member from London about places to visit on Cape Cod in the rain. Texting on the international number is cheaper than phoning.

Why not phone or email, my non-texting friends would ask? Typing on a tiny keypad seems so inefficient and unnecessary, almost primitive. Is this progress? And that would have been my reaction a few weeks ago. But if you don’t have a smartphone or Blackberry, you don’t have access to your email at all times. Compared to phoning, texting puts less pressure on the person to provide a lengthy response or to give an excuse if it’s not a good time to talk or they just don’t feel like talking. You can look at a text at your leisure, compose your pithy reply. Best of all, you have a written record of what you said, what they said, even if it’s not great literature.

I’ve come to enjoy the the phone’s tuneful announcement that a message awaits me. Although my husband teased me this evening about knocking out a text as we were sitting on the sofa together, I promise that I will not become a set of thumbs walking down the street, oblivious to my environment and the live person strolling next to me. I will not become a slave to the technology, just because it’s there. I promise! But maybe I can persuade my husband to add a text plan to his cell service so we can send each other little notes..

On a Recipe for Sustaining a Long-Term Relationship

• Be interested in each other’s lives, even the mundane at times.
• Encourage and support each other; sometimes all it takes is listening, sometimes a gentle push.
• Share a common core of enjoyable activities, but maintain or develop your own interests.
• Learn to enjoy a new activity that is important to the other person, even if it’s one you might not have chosen yourself.
• Respect each other’s privacy, need for space, and time alone or with other friends.
• Never go to bed angry.
• Be frequently affectionate with each other—lots of hugging, kissing, hand holding, and snuggling that doesn’t always signal sex, but just genuine caring.
• Amuse, entertain, and playfully tease each other; find ways to make each other laugh. A lot.
• Take an interest in the other person’s opinions—about current events, books read, movies or plays watched. Challenge each other intellectually.
• Go on at least one “date” a week outside the house.
• Find time for each other every day (no multi-tasking!)
• Appreciate each other sincerely—do not take the other person for granted. Tell that person you love them regularly, remind them of their great qualities, compliment them.
• Find a way to work out your financials—not necessariy merging everything into common accounts, especially if starting out later in life. Money should not become a target for argument.
• Discuss your hopes, dreams, and long term visions for your lives together—to keep yourselves on the same page as you get older.
• Figure out which battles are most worth fighting for and leave the rest alone.
• Give and take.
• Be honest, but not unkind.

On Maintaining the Garden of Friendship

As the weather warms and green shoots poke through the ground, I know it will soon be time to reconsider the garden. Regardless of what I choose to do, the perenniels will reemerge—some in perfection; others, overtaking and crowding out their neighbors; yet others, spindly and dying. I can sit back and see what happens, or I can take charge and decide what will make this a pleasing space. It will take work; I will have to cut back last year’s tangles, mulch, weed, and deadhead.

I can be ruthless and rip out plants that no longer work for me or have lived their useful lifespan, either leaving the space bare or replacing them. At first, I can’t be certain about the new choices. They look pretty enough in the catalogue, but who knows how they will turn out. They, especially, will need nurturing to reach their potential and flourish on their own. It’s a risk. Maybe I shouldn’t have junked the known quantity so quickly—the plant I destroyed. Maybe it was salvagable if I’d treated it differently.

Of course, there are the annuals—they are colorful all summer and bring me joy, but with their shallow roots, they need even more attention if they are to persist even the length of the season. Still, it’s the mix I like, and that’s the price I pay.

My friends are like the plants in my garden. There are those I have known for years and can count on to continue to be there for me (as I will for them). Although I can neglect them for periods of time, I cannot take them for granted.

Other friendships will die a natural death. We no longer have anything meaningful to give each other.

Then there are those I struggle with. These friendships may still have some life, but can I reap from them what I sow? Will I end up resenting them rather than being grateful?

The annuals of friendship are often associated with specific settings and add a sense of fun and belonging, but they can’t be counted on in difficult times. I’ll enjoy these for what they are, not investing much and not expecting much either.

Finally, there are the new friendships—few and far between these days. I think carefully about these and what they will add to my already rich bounty. They will take time from my existing friendships before I know their promise.

As someone who evaluates the merit of programs for a living, I have four simple criteria for considering the worth of my friends in my life. I know there are other characteristics we might expect from long-term friends, but the following can be applied even to newish friends.

Emotional Honesty: Can we be truthful with each other? Are we “real?” That does not mean we share every secret, but it does mean we do not disguise who we are and that we can be comfortable in our skins around each other.

Appreciation/Acknowledgement: Do we say nice, but sincere things to each other? Do we acknowledge the importance of the friendship?

Responsiveness: Is there a give and take to our communications? Do we listen and react to the other person and not keep the show focused on ourselves? Do we take an interest in each others’ lives?

Enthusiasm: Are we excited to hear from or see each other?

I look forward to cultivating both of my gardens, and by the end of May, I hope to invite friends—both old and new—to bear witness to the results.

On Remembering Beth: A Conversation between Belle and Pippa

March 16 was the eighth anniversary of the death of Beth Brett, sister to Belle and mother to Pippa. To commemorate this occasion Belle (who lives in Boston)and Pippa (a resident of Edinburgh, Scotland) held a conversation about Beth and the influences she had on each of them. Like Belle, Pippa is also a writer www.pippagoldschmidt.co.uk. The conversation took place at the Franconia Inn in Franconia, New Hampshire, where the family spent Christmas of 2000, the year before Beth was diagnosed with cancer. We all remember it as a happy time.

Which of Beth's qualities do you most admire and remember her for?

Belle: I would say her exuberance for life.

Pippa: Her determined and clear vision about what she wanted to do. It wasn't easy but she worked hard to run a creative business and make a living while still maintaining control.

Belle: She was an excellent model for running her own business. Another quality I admire her for is her prodigious creativity. She turned out sketch after sketch. Her output really hit home when we went through her archives after her death.

Pippa: Yes, part of my growing up was to be surrounded by sketches.

Belle: How did that example make you think about your own needs and capacilties?

Pippa: You need to be determined and work hard to shape vague ideas into something real and concrete. It also made me realize you can follow your own ideas and don't have to be subsumed into something else, and also that other people will find that interesting. If you work hard at shaping a vision, whether clothes or writing—it takes a lot of work to shape something that is uniquely yours.

What was the most influential thing?

Pippa: Seeing her work at it—the cost and effort. That has its own rewards and efforts—the doing of the thing. When I relate it back to my own work, the doing of the writing gets more and more interesting as I learn more about how to do it.

Belle: I would say a third quality I admire was Beth's capacity to be a really good friend. She could listen, but she was also interesting and funny. She had a natural spontaneous wit and was good with wordplay. She actually had the skill to be a writer. She fed off of others. Her stories about the ragtrade were hilarious. I would have been interested to see her memoir.

Pippa: She loved reading. We would quote chunks of Catcher in the Rye together.

Belle: What appealed to her about Catcher?

Pippa: The wordplay, the expressions. It was an honest, truthful portrayal about fitting into the outside world. It showed me the world of New York City in the fifties.

Belle: That book showed me I wsasn't repressed! So many of my female classmates thought it was disgusting, and I found it funny. It is difficult to achieve that kind of a distinct voice.

Pippa: We shared a lot of books. One book I read first was Jane Gardam's A Long Way from Verona about a young girl growing up in wartime. It is another book with a strong voice. Another book we all read was Frost in May by Antonio White. Dad brought it home. On the surface it was just a school story, but it's about trying to work out one's personal morality. It's beautifully written.

Any other qualities Beth had that stand out for you and serve as influences?

Pippa: Another quality she had was determination. She would stick with something in face of difficulties. Even when she had bad selling seasons she wouldn't give up on it. She had huge tenacity.

Belle: That's something I have trouble with as a writer. All that rejection.

Pippa: It's a mistake to see external rejection as failure. It has nothing to do with you as a writer. You have to look within yourself for success or failure.
Mum appreciated her own talent. That allows you to fare in times of difficulty. It was damn annoying and upsetting at times. But she never got stuck in a rut. She always found new ways be to be inventive. It's easy to feel comfortable with what you are doing and then become loathe to get away from your style. She was very alert to different ways of making a living.

Belle: You've had the advantage of already getting some external recognition as a writer, through being published and your in-house writing residency at the University of Edinburgh.

Pippa: I was surprised that people found my fiction writing related to science was the most interesting part of my writing. It did give me a niche, and the writer in residency consolidated that.

What was your trajectory as a writer?

Belle: I started creating stories as a child--they were more like graphic novels, which I drew. I just never wrote the words down, but spoke them out loud. And then in high school my two favorite assignments had to do with creative writing, but it took me a long while before I figured out that was something I wanted to do. I envied Beth because from a very young age she knew she wanted to be a fashion designer. In contrast, I was such a dilletante until recently.

Pippa: I tried to write as a student, but I didn't have the time or ability. At age 25, I did evening classes and wrote my first complete story at about 28. Then I began to do a lot of writing and at age 30 went on my first residential course/retreat. After Mum died, I stopped for awhile, but got back to it within a year. I was trying to work on a novel. I wrote sad stories.

Belle: After Beth passed away, my creativity dried up for a couple of years. Then I realized that life is short, there is no Godot, and I had to stop making excuses for myself.

Pippa: Mum expanded her own horizons until she couldn't do it anymore. She wrung every bit from life. When I was young and would say I was bored, Mum railed at me--do something! You have so many things! I would sit under her ironing board while she was working.

Belle: Why did you choose science?

Pippa: I think I wanted to differentiate myself from parents. It helps to avoid comparisons.

Belle: And the writing?

Pippa: Writing was a deep-seated passion. But you need such solitude for it. You also need experience doing different things in different ways before settling down.

Beth--Thanks for all you gave us. RIP.

On Writing What You Know

CN Nevets in a February 3 blog post talks about the concept of “writing what you know.” He concludes that “writing what you know or writing authentically means knowing enough about what you’re writing that even if you’ve never experieneced it yourself before, your readers will feel as if they have through your story.” He suggests that this kind of authenticity can come through understanding the emotions being conveyed, not being over confident with the details you pick up from your research, and knowing when facts or details may not be important or relevant.

In thinking about my own writing, I realized that I use the concept of “writing what you know” in slightly different ways.

Writing characters you know: In life, we meet people who are so distinctive that they were just born to be in novels. Their style of speech, their mannerisms, the roles they play offer us jumping off points for imagination. My novel set in Japan is populated with distinctive, secondary characters based on people I met while working there many years ago. However, neither the protagonist nor the antagonist, who occupy center stage, are based on real people.

Writing places you know: Many a writer makes his or her living setting much of their work in their hometowns or other familiar places. Think Anne Tyler and Baltimore, or Robert Parker and Boston in the Spencer for Hire series. In these books, place often becomes a character. I am most comfortable setting my work in places I have lived or visited, but because my knowledge may extend back to another era, I frequently find myself needing to do research to get the details right, such not having a character visit a place that didn’t yet exist.

Writing time periods you know: If you write stories set only in the current time, you still need to understand how the history of characters who are older or younger than you will have an impact on their world view. Those of us with any life experience know people of different ages and can generally try to represent those views. However, when writing about an earlier time in one’s life, the challenges are greater. Coupled with some good research, we may be able to capture the essence and even some of the details of those times, but it is easy to misremember our own pasts and how we acted or felt, and perhaps even harder to present characters not of our generation.

Writing about experiences you’ve had: As the basis for a whole story, writing from real life has its pitfalls because of the tendency to want to tell a story as it was (in which case, write a memoir!) Real experiences don’t always have the necessary plot or arc to maintain reader interest. Thus, the writer may need to veer off substantially from the way things actually happened. And just because something happened doesn’t make it believable. Real experiences can be used in a variety of ways in telling a story, and for me always serve as a trigger for my writing. In a recent short story, I used something I’d witnessed as the inciting incident of the plot. My Japan novel is liberally sprinkled with things that I actually experienced that give the story its texture, but they do not provide the spine of the story. In contrast, in my young adult novel, real events provide a structure on which to hang the plot although the plot is entirely fictional. Finally, in my novel about the adventures of two women in midlife, real experiences inspired many key plot points.

Writing emotions you know or understand. Building on Nevets point, above all else, I believe that the success of a story that is character driven rests on the authenticity of the emotions of those characters. Simply put, do we buy it, even if the story takes place in an unfamiliar world and time?