Happiness Quotient Headquarters

January 31, 2008 3 Comments

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Thank you for coming and enjoy your visit!

If you happen to be passing through the French quarter, you might run into my brother, the Lucky Dog salesman. Known for being quirky, free-spirited, and bordering on eccentric, Lucky Dog salesmen are a unique bunch. It has been said that Ignatius J. Reilly of The Confederancy of Dunces, one of the most loveably odd characters in modern fiction, was modeled after a Lucky Dog salesman. So look on the corner near Pat O’Brien’s or maybe the one in front of the stately white St. Louis Cathedral. One of the purveyors of Lucky Dog hot dogs could be my brother, John, back from the refuge taken in California in the days after Hurricane Katrina. At the time, we didn’t hear from John for about a week. He had said he was going to the Lucky Dog office (where they have cots for those who have worked long hours). But we heard nothing and feared he hadn’t made it. Fortunately (or maybe not), he had changed his mind at the last minute, and he became one of the thousands who survived together eating army rations in the Superdome.

Like John and his hot dog cart, New Orleans is back open for business. Preservation Hall has still been preserved. Café Du Monde still serves beignets (which are addictively sinful donut-like pillows covered in confectioner’s sugar). However, entire areas (many low-income) have yet to be rebuilt and sit as sad reminders of the toll on the city’s most vulnerable citizens. But Mardi Gras goes on jubilantly again and again. Beads will be hanging from the trees on St. Charles after the parade like they have for decades. It is a city that took quite a shiner, laid flat on the mat for a bit, but has roused itself again, even exclaiming cavalierly “ les bons temps rouler (Let the good times roll!”) New Orleans has always drawn interesting people to it, sometimes those with shady pasts or those who are down on their luck. It has always had a bandage for the broken-hearted and offered hope to those who needed a second chance. And now it is the city herself still needing a few bandages years later but thriving on hope and a certain joie de vivre. It is a city full of music, much of it the sound of many marching to a different drummer.

Historically, we are not very good predictors of our own ability to bounce back from adversity. We are besieged with anxiety and hypervigilance. Yet researchers are finding that resilience, in humans, is more the rule than the exception. They have found that people can rebound quite remarkably from amazing challenges. Being able to adapt gives you a great evolutionary advantage, so adapt we do. The disadvantage may be that we adapt too easily to our pleasures which often become tedious and short-lived. The advantage is that pain can usually only last so long.

The American Psychological Association has developed suggestions for fostering resilience. Here is a very brief version taken from their handout called “The Road to Resilience.”

1. Make connections.

2. Avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems.

3. Accept that change is a part of living.

4. Move toward your goals.

5. Take decisive actions.

6. Look for opportunities for self-discovery.

7. Nurture a positive view of yourself.

8. Keep things in perspective.

9. Maintain a hopeful outlook.

10. Take care of yourself.

The great Southern writer, William Faulkner, once wrote in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize:

“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

I believe these are some of the most elegant and uplifting words ever written in the English language, so beautiful, in fact, that one only wishes that humanity will live up to the faith that Faulkner placed in us. The doomsayers are everywhere, reminding us that the stock market is tanking, the Mayan calendar is ending in 2012, and we are under constant threat from an “Axis of Evil.” Despite all this, I want to believe that Faulkner knew something about human nature. Perhaps, the real “axis of evil” lies within us in the “Three Poisons” described by the Buddhists: greed, anger, and foolishness. The most basic is foolishness which is used to mean ignorance of the true meaning of life, blindness to the reality of our interrelatedness to others. I am hoping that this interconnectedness, coupled with the spirit of compassion and sacrifice and endurance Faulkner so poetically described, is the key to prevailing.

Notice that the first tip listed above for building resilience urges connections with others. Daily life brings us emotional hurricanes of different magnitudes. To survive, we must reach out to each other. Each day we choose our focus: greed, anger, or foolishness (ignorance) which distances us from each other —or compassion, sacrifice, and endurance which bonds us with each other. Either way, in a very real sense, we are all in the same boat. Hopefully, someone remembers to bring the beignets.

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Self-Development, Travel

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