it would be easy, but we want to be happier than other people, which is difficult since we think them happier than they are”—Baron de Montesquieu
You wonder what Montesquieu, eighteenth century Enlightenment philosopher, would make of the pursuit of happiness in this Facebook age. Today when friends showcase their luxurious cruise and cute puppy, their “What, Me Worry?” faces and accomplished children, we the befriended, with our less-than-luminous lives, may feel just a tad shabby.
I have read “The Story of Ferdinand,” a children’s story, to my grandchildren several times. It is about a bull in Spain that preferred smelling flowers under his cork tree to snorting and butting heads and fighting other bulls. One day five men came and picked out what looked to them to be the biggest, baddest bull of all, and took him to Madrid to chase and bore a matador. On the day of the bullfight, when Ferdinand the Fiercest got in the ring and saw the flowers in all the lovely ladies’ hair, he got as close to them as he could, quietly sat down, and enjoyed sniffing the pleasant smells. Ferdinand would not fight, no matter how many times the Picadores stuck him with spears, so they packed him home to his beloved cork tree. The last page of the story shows Ferdinand smelling flowers, accompanied with these final words: “He is very happy.”11
Written by Munro Leaf and published in 1936, this story was burned in Nazi Germany because being true to oneself—not conforming to the herd—was not tolerated, much less advocated.
In “Disiderata,” Max Ehrman wrote: “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”
Why allow Photoshopped images and spotless profiles spun by Facebook friends get you down?
January 15
Some of the new words in dictionaries are “google” used as a verb and “sexting” for sending sexually explicit pictures over a cell phone. If I could coin one word to become part of our vocabulary, it would be hopenomics.
The word economics comes from two Greek words, oikos meaning house and nomos meaning law. An economist was originally one who “laid down the law” in managing the treasures of a household (or city or nation). The emphasis in the word is on stewardship—distributing assets wisely, responsibly, and resourcefully.
Most of us mean to be conscientious economists. We draw up budgets, pay off credit cards, give children allowances, and diversify investments. We intend to care for our assets wisely and responsibly. What would it look like if we applied commensurate intentionality and acumen to hope?
What if parents majored in keeping a sparkle in their children’s eyes over signing them up for everything and setting the bar for parental approval sky-high? What if marriages majored in thoughtfulness and affirmation of each other over acquiring the next thing and rising one more rung on the social ladder? What if teachers were free to fire students’ imaginations and encourage critical, creative thinking over teaching them to memorize answers for the next test? What if preachers majored in lifting up parishioners’ spirits and fortifying them for Monday struggles and inspiring them to serve suffering humanity over indoctrination on parochial niceties and dissing those who disagree?
Hopenomics, simply put, values people over things, integrity over appearances, goodness over rightness, and lifting others up over pulling them down. Hopenomics also requires us to ask, according to the Great Law of the Iroquois, how our actions today will affect the well-being of children seven generations out.
January 16
A friend and I visited Gethsemani Abbey, down in the heart of Kentucky. A mural at the entrance depicted St. Benedict’s face and hands and greeted us with his words: “Let All Guests That Come Be Received Like Christ.”
The monk who met us exuded hospitality. We asked if we could take his picture. “Sure.” We pushed a little more: “What about taking pictures during the prayer service?” “Sure,” he said, “We’re used to cameras flashing and clicking. Doesn’t bother us at all. Fire at will.”
After the prayer service, we walked through the cemetery. There, amidst many white crosses two feet tall, was the grave of Thomas Merton, maybe the most widely read and venerated monk of our times. His white cross was two feet tall. A small brass plaque on the cross simply read: “Fr. Louis Merton, Died Dec. 10, 1968.” Visitors had draped two rosaries around his cross.
We learned that the Trappist monks at Gethsemani rise every morning at 3:00 a. m. and have a cup of coffee before the first of seven prayer services interspersed through the work day. Their primary work that supports the Abbey these days is the production and mail-order sale of homemade foods.
Several years ago an eighty-nine-year-old priest leading visitors on a tour there commented: “This place has no practical value. It’s about as valuable as ballet. Or opera. Or a rainbow. Or a peacock. Or daffodils. What practical value do they have?”
We value most things because of what they can do for us. They are means to an end. We use them. Some things are valuable to us just for being there. Gethsemane stands as a symbol of hospitality and simplicity, especially for the city slickers among us who are preoccupied with getting and spending.
We bought a box of Trappist bourbon fudge and some Trappist cheese and headed back to the bustling city.
January 17
I was having breakfast with a relative who recently had to move into a nursing home. As we ate, he eagerly gave me, in hushed tones, the lowdown on some of the other residents.
“See that woman in the black dress at the next table? I think she’s German, and she finds something critical to say about the food or the service at every meal.”
“Hear that man talking real loud? I think he was a preacher, and he loves to hear the sound of his own voice.”
“That short woman at the table behind you—she’s losing her mind, and at every meal she tells the ladies at her table that her daughter is rummaging through all her papers and that her son dug up her husband and moved him to another place.”
For some strange reason, as I scanned the sample of humanity in that dining room, my mind flashed back to a retaining wall I once saw in Delphi, Greece, on the approach to the Temple of Apollo. Every single stone in the fifteen-feet-tall wall that Delphic masons built to support the temple’s terrace is a different shape and size. Yet all the stones fit together perfectly, like the pieces of a picture puzzle. You could not insert a piece of paper into any seam. For twenty-five hundred years, earthquakes have not been able to bring down this wall of irregular stones surrounded by regular foundations that have all crumbled.
There is something to be said for being mixed up with irregular stones—people not like us. We learn more from people unlike us, people who don’t ditto what we say. Rubber stampers do not enlarge or enrich us; they only reinforce our prejudices.
And sometimes the irregulars among us can help us grow in gratitude, in the awareness that there but for the grace of God go the rest of us.
January 18
Birds do it. Dogs and frogs do it. Snakes and cicadas do it too.
Molting—casting off the outer garment—is more perilous for some animals than for others. Lobsters shed their entire skeleton up to twenty-five times in the first five years of life. Because the lobster’s skeleton is on the outside and
