Josie’s birthday was last weekend. She’s twenty.
My baby…the one who came along at the end…the one who kept us young…who was supposed to stay little forever turned TWENTY.
She’s not even a teenager anymore!
This would freak me out if I weren’t a grandmother already. There’s something about grandkids that make the passing of time okay.
So Josie’s nearly old enough to drink legally…and she’s half way through her undergraduate years…that must means she’s that much closer to someday bringing me more grandkids.
I’ve always been greedy in this area.
When we were young, my friend Mary Lynne and I used to play the Game of Life but at the end, the winner was the one with the most kids. We didn’t care how we got them; adoption, guardianship, step kids, birth…it was all good. At the end of the game we were usually tied.
That’s exactly how it turned out in real life, too; we both have four kids and two grandkids (so far.)
We celebrated Josie’s birthday as we usually do. She wanted ribs, corn on the cob and cake. We invited her siblings, grandparents and God parents. It was a hot, steamy day and night, the food was spectacular and the company as good as it gets.
Tyler and Megan used the opportunity to leave the babies here and run off to a movie later on.
Hey, I got no problem with them getting their fun on once they’ve driven all the way into town. Babalouie crashed soon after they left the house. The portacrib was already set up and he didn’t make a peep when I laid him down.
Babydoll and I watched The Sound of Music.
Megan had taken her to see a live production of the show while they were in Sodak a week or so ago and she enjoyed it. Her favorite number was My Favorite Things but the only part she remembered was “When the dog bites…”
She fell asleep the moment that number was over.
I put her down on the futon in the basement, tucked her in and heard not a peep from her the rest of the night, either.
I didn’t watch the rest of the Sound of Music. As with most preschoolers, she’ll probably want to watch it again and again so I’ll wait until she’s here and watch it with her.
Before I know what hit me, Babydoll will be twenty.
It happens really fast.
Last night, I watched a movie called Hector’s Search for Happiness. It was good. It starred Simon Pegg, whom I always enjoy, as a psychiatrist who goes on a trip around the world trying to research what makes people happy.
As Dennis Prager says, Happiness is a real problem.
Everyone says they want to be happy but few know where to look for it. Part of the problem is that the modern world buys into the nonsense put forth by the idiots I’m reading about in the book The Architects of the Culture of Death.
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, all these great, modern thinkers didn’t know shit. They were all miserable, unhappy creatures crying “My mother hated me and I turned out great!”
They didn’t turn out great. A lonelier, unhappier, more toxic crowd I never hope to meet. To make matters worse, they all set out to prove the adage ‘misery loves company’ by convincing huge swaths of humanity that their miserable existence is all anyone can aspire to and only a dope believes in a higher plane of life.
This is insane but the cool kids still buy into it.
If you want to live your life in misery, spend it in pursuit of fun and pleasure. If it feels good, do it. If you want it, take it. If someone is in your way, remove them. Make your selfish desires the center and focus of your life. This is the recipe for unhappiness and it’s the only thing in the empty heart of the philosophy of Sanger, Marx,&co.
What these folks peddle is ‘philosophy’ like the marketing team for Skittles is peddling ‘nutrition’.
I know what the secret of happiness is.
It’s to love something other than yourself more than yourself.
It doesn’t have to be a person. For some individuals, art, literature, music, sports, the practice of medicine or religion takes them out of themselves enough to the degree that it makes them happy. For the vast majority of us, however, the key is to love other people. This is kind of ironic, since people tend to suck. If you can get past that, you're golden.
I'm not talking about 'falling in love' or romantic love, although that is certainly a great venue for happiness. The problem is that when sex is involved, too many of us become selfish; what has he/she done for me lately? Have I settled for this person? what if there's someone better out there? If every married couple actually loved their spouse more than themselves, there would be no such thing as an unhappy marriage, much less divorce.
I'm talking about unselfish love that asks for and expects nothing in return.
This can be friends, relatives, children, patients, students…the relationship hardly matters, it’s the unselfish love that brings happiness.
No philosopher ever summed it up better than this: “Love thy neighbor as thyself”.
Simple? Yes!
Easy? No. But it is the key to happiness and that makes it worth going for.