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HI EVERYONE! WE NEED YOU! It’s time for Project Happiness to have its identifying catch-phrases, taglines, descriptions, etc… and we want you to help us decide which ones are best! We are looking for… CATCHY (grabs people in) and CLEAR (describes what we’re about) and FUN!

 Follow this link to a quick 30 second survey (made on surveyMONKEY, which is so fun btw, see little surveymonkey icon to the left) to help us decide HOW we project ourselves out to the world- it’s a fun and easy way to be part of this movement… this HAPPINESS MOVEMENT! Pass it along to your friends too!  THANKS!

Last week Rolando and I went to Marshall Elementary in SF’s Mission District to work with the 3^rd graders like we do every Friday. Our topic was acceptance. We showed them the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 to introduce them to the idea of accepting of each other, of welcoming everyone, and of connecting with each other. After showing this clip, we talked about how hugs are a good way to show acceptance and to connect with other people.

Three of little boys who often try to act ‘too cool’ were snickering together. So I asked them what they were talking/giggling about, and one boy said, “We hate hugs. They are gross. We would never give a stranger or even a friend a hug.”

These three 3^rd grade boys are not atypical in disliking hugs (my little brother would rather get a punch from his brother than a hug from either of his sisters- see pic). So we pointed out all the ways in which hugging is good/ ‘cool,’ like between mother and son or brother and brother or teammates after they score, etc. After a long talk on hugs and opening up and accepting each other, it felt like we had gotten through to them a bit. But one never knows… until…

Our session ended, we said goodbye to the classroom, and as we were walking out the door that little boy who was the ringleader of the hugs-hating-club ran up to me and gave me this HUGE, LONG HUG, didn’t say a word, and then just ran back to his seat. It was precious! Making a difference one hug at a time…

http://www.smart-heart-living.com/hugs-and-heart.html

If ending our face-to-face interactions were as simple as it is in the digital sphere. I guess one can say that the ‘Talk to the hand’ fad predated the ‘un-friend’ option on Facebook. The velocity of the people we come in contact online with is so great. It’s a bit like standing on the train platform and knowing a bit about each person that passes.

The latest social networking site to explode into the scene is Twitter. FYI: The day Oprah joined, traffic jumped by over 40%, leading some users to see beyond the Fail Whale’s cuteness and express irritation. But who can stay angry at that cute whale? For the uninitiated, the cascading Tweets seem to come from a ‘room full of monkeys on type writers.’ With experience though, natural instincts begin to emerge and adapt to identify human characteristics.

Factors like frequency, DMing, retweeting, @ing (you might be witnessing the creation of a new word!) and the thumbnail used are all great indicators of personality. And just as important are the Tweets: quotes, news, and ideas, funny, sad? To be or not to be, that is the question but keep it under 140 characters or less!

The thing is…we haven’t reached the limit of what we know about each other because we create and recreate our experiences. After a while, all the chatter becomes part of an integrated dialogue, patterns emerge, common interests create digital chemistry and before you know it, you really care about that person.

The magic with Twitter or social sites is that weather you are selling handcrafted pecan treats, promoting a book, or promoting peace, we all depend on each other and now more than ever.

Over the weekend, a notion that has intrigued me ever since I read “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, now, nearly four years ago, re-introduced itself in my thoughts. It is on the necessary step to transcend the intellectual ideas about peace and enlightenment to embrace the experiential.

I was fresh out of Berkeley when I read the Power of Now, and the descent from the Ivory Tower into working life was very rough. I was experiencing extreme disillusionment by what I felt was the devolution of applying extremely refined intellectual skills into the Microsoft holy trinity; Excel, Word and Outlook.

I was experiencing the quarter life crisis but with all sincerity I could trace that crisis throughout high school and possibly even in middle school. The crisis in effect had been postponed at each successive advancement in my education. At the core of the crisis was simply the fear of withdrawing from institutionalized methods of defining identity.

I’ve found it’s easy to identify where individuals sort of reached their life’s crescendo when they say something along the lines of, “High school years are the best time of your life or there’s nothing like college life.”

Though my time in college was a monumental assessment and re-assesment of the social and individual ideas that defined my identity, in reading The Power of Now, I realized I had only engaged these ideas intellectually. It was not until I was out of the academic treadmill, that I had the opportunity to experience and implement ideas about justice and injustice, that I realized how unprepared I was.

Life is an experience, why shouldn’t education be experienced? This is the essential thinking behind project based learning, which the foundation of Project Happiness’ social emotional curriculum. Learning and teaching should not be intellectual pursuits but trans-disciplinary experiences. Take compassion for example, it must be experienced to truly be known.

The Alchemist: Susan Boyle

Even the name, Susan Boyle, when I read it on someone’s Facebook profile, caused an automatic disinterest, when I learned she was somehow associated with Britain’s Got Talent show, I downright crumpled the notion of following the link and wasting my precious time. The constant mentions in various media outlets, reinforced my interest. By mid-afternoon, as my second cup of coffee wore my mind into a modicum of unproductive window screen shuffling, I logged onto YouTube. The video viewer counter was at nearly 5 million views.

As the show’s quick editing flashed her eschewed smile, broken bird’s nest hair style, and British 1980’s mannerisms, I expected another cruel lynching. Here, once more, a video to lampoon the sweet well-intentioned that reality TV talent shows depend on. I braced myself for another William Hung moment I thought.

But the rest is history. WATCH THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE

As she delivered her notes, my emotions cascaded and invigorated the recess of my childhood memories. The moment was inspiring and humbling. It was the rupture of my cynical expectations and a recommitment to my species and to the possibilities within me.

It was a thrilling experience and one that I can only compare to the sensation of watching an impossible maneuver that changes the dynamics of a soccer game. But in my psyche, I am only able to compare Susan Boyle’s feat to the anonymous man who blocks the path of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. That iconic video, defines the end of the end of the Cold War, with its militarized suppression of individual rights.

The malaise that Susan Boyle ends is the personal/individual and collective cynicism, so vivid and vast in our imaginations, that we’ve started to tend to it as if it we were a prime flower in our gardens. At this time, with a global crisis rooted in apathy and cynicism, Susan Boyle has done more to revive optimism than a trillion dollars has done and this is true alchemy.

My Quick Strategy for Happiness

Recently when I am feeling a bit sluggish or contemplating the darker spectrum of things, I like to log into youtube and listen to these songs. I move on after a few weeks. For example a few months ago during Christmas, I was listening to American Boy by Estelle featuring Mr. West. 2008 Holiday memories are forever laced with that tune.

Human by The Killers: “Are we human or are we dancers?” I love the proposition each choice is awesome!

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

Don’t Panic by Coldplay: It’s so soothing. The lyrics can cut through some of the densest fog that descends over my mind.

By the way…I get extra jolly when I turn on the radio in my car and the song is playing! So rare when that happens these days.

Cassandra’s Curse

The dreaded doomsday scenario is now. Each day, by the hour, reports confirming the warning scientists and environmentalist have made for decades are broadcasted to populations and individuals responsible for and experiencing the consequences of our inactions or rather our bizarre actions.

The late George Carlin said it best when he poked fun of the sudden and immediate need to carry bottled water. Several years later and millions of pounds of plastic in landfills later, well here we are. It’s not like we didn’t know…the knowing is what makes it so tragic.

The ancient Greeks gave us a firm warning about this ‘quirk’ in human reason through Cassandra. Apollo grants her the gift of prophesy and when she shuns his love he cursed her so that no one would believe her. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, as Agamemnon returns triumphantly after sacking Troy, he is already dead, for Cassandra’s warnings are no match to Clytemnestra’s revenge. Cassandra herself enters and accepts Clytemnestra’s wrath, knowing she has no other fate.

The tragedy of knowing, yet being unable to change the future plays out magnificently in the film 12 Monkeys. If you haven’t, check it out. The plot functions around a time-travel loop between an apocalyptic past (our current present) and a subterranean future. Cole played magnificently by Bruce Willis, is the only rational intelligence but is physically confined in both the past and the future. The break in the loop comes with…just watch it.

George Carlin, Aeschylus, 12 Monkeys? Well, we all know the future and still seem unwilling to do anything about changing it. The magnitude of the tragedy we are writing, filming and talking about seems to be part of our human psyche, and so is our ability to endure it otherwise, our response would not be so apathetic.

 While flipping through “Ode” magazine last night (a magazine on positive change- http://www.odemagazine.com/), a title of an article caught my eye, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

I didn’t even read the article. The title alone had a strong impact on me. Seeing those words, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” reminded me of something I truly believe, which is: opportunity comes in the face of crisis.  

What opportunity can a crisis bring you? Opportunities to change, to learn, and to grow. Challenges and crises present the opportunity to search for new answers for ourselves, to take a step back, and to do some self-reflection. But this isn’t always easy. The only way I’ve ever experienced opportunity in the face of crisis is if I am looking for it, if I am open to see the good that can come out of the bad. This awareness of and openness to the opportunities that crises and challenges present is a practice- a practice anyone can choose to start right now!

There are two quotes that help my own practice, both from Jack Kornfield’s book, The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace: 

“Our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.”

“One mistake after another is really one opportunity after another.”

So look for the good, even in the bad, and look for opportunity, even in the face of challenge… this way you will “never let a crisis go to waste.”

My mind is still tickled by this. One of the kids at Marshall elementary when asked to draw doing that will bring her great happiness, drew a soccer ball, net and goalkeeper. The score board in her picture was 4-2. As we reviewed the pictures with the entire class, one of the kids pointed to her picture and said, “That was the score for your game!”

It took a few seconds for the other kids to realize what was going on. “It is magic?” Someone asked. Truthfully I was as astounded as they were. The teacher was also impressed. I replied, “I don’t know if it’s magic or not but do you think that what she drew on the other half of the paper will also come true?”

On the other half of the paper she drew herself at a university.