Happy Quote

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin. -- John Lubbock

This quote has become one of my main life mottoes. As regular readers and those who know me already know, I suffer from chronic depression. However, in general, I think I have a much better attitude than I did 10, 15, 20 years ago. Why? Because I have practiced. I'm not naturally talented at being happy, but I have practiced it. Now many aspects of it are like second nature. Aside from medication, part of the practice has been 'cognitive' -- that is, I just find better thinking patterns and practice them until they are more natural -- and part of it has been from sort of 'psychotherapy' -- that is, I find the causes of my unhappy thoughts and change or root them out. This has been brought to mind while I am here in Utah helping my tragedy-ridden friend again. I couldn't do what she does. I just couldn't handle it, I am sure. But SOME of our struggles have been remarkably similar, and it's been interesting to me to see how differently we deal with the struggles. She plows through them, working and working and working to make them better or manageable. I stink at that; I tend to phyisically collapse or withdraw from extreme stressors. But she is at the same time very angry and bitter about the circumstances, and I find that this is something that I have learned to be better about. I have learned and gained enough faith that the trials are for my good and I must find good in them, because Heavenly Father loves me and as long as I do my best, He will protect me from things that are actually eternally bad for me. That means that even though a situation sucks, I have to remember that it's not only going to be okay, but it is somehow the best thing for me. Even if I die; even if I suffer. This causes me to have to rethink many, many situations to match this background eternal truth. But rethinking these things has never led me wrong, as long as I keep the love and grace of the Saviour as my unyielding rock of Truth. My friend struggles with this. She has other ideas that take precedence over this truth, so she is very unhappy as she plows nobly through her trials. My heart bleeds for her. I could not do the great things she does. But I want her to be happy.

Trials

It has been an odd month. I won't go into details about the 3 people I know whom I have found out have cancer/probable cancer. But it's freaking me out. They are all young -- one is just eleven -- but it's making me feel old and scared and very, very mortal. The thing that has been getting to me the most, though, is an old friend who was in a snowboarding accident Christmas Eve and broke his back, among other things. They have been working to keep him alive since then (which has gone blessedly well) so we don't know many details on the status of the back, but so far he has not been able to feel anything from the waist down. For some reason this sort of thing gets to me more than even death itself. The thought of losing functionality absolutely terrifies me and it terrifies me vicariously in this situation. In fact, I don't want to talk about that much anymore.

This family is full of gems. The Mom is brilliant; she is my best friend from college and she is incredible with all she is able to do. The Dad, who had the accident, is also brilliant and an incredibly hard worker who only recently was able to get past the post-doc world and become faculty at the U of U. Their oldest child (who is far too old :) ) is a great help AND very smart, and the youngest child is a spitfire full of laughs. Their middle child unfortunately has some fairly severe handicaps, but I know this has brought blessings to the family through the struggles, and I think it has brought blessings to many others as well because the Mom fights so hard to make sure the legislature passes laws to help children like him. I mean, tell me, who has the strength and energy to raise 2 normal children AND a severely handicapped child AND lobby the state along with the other jobs she does on the side? She's incredible!

At any rate, I will be going down there in mid-January to help, but if anyone would like to contribute to gifts for this amazing family, please contact me at spamcatcher AT cableone DOT net in the next week or two and I will be happy to put any contributions into the kitty. The Dad is going to be in rehab for probably about a year, so any help would be greatly appreciated.