Mockingbird Karma: Is It Possible, Or Okay, To Enjoy Life When You Are Not Happy?

Good morning and hello.

When I was young, I was happy all the time. Nothing could bring me down for long. I'm not sure why I was so happy all the time, but I was. At some point, something changed. It may have been a result of some life-changing stuff that happened. I can't be sure. But at some point, I stopped being so happy all the time.

These days, it seems like I'm never happy. Maybe I used up my 'happy' when I was young? I don't know. But I don't seem to have that constant happy feeling like I used to have. Don't get me wrong, I still have happy moments. I can enjoy joking with family or friends, or laughing at a funny TV show. But when I'm still, in a quiet moment, I am not radiating happiness like I once was.

For a long time I wondered why I can't seem to be happy anymore. Why do I always feel subdued, unhappy, unsettled? Why can't I get my 'happiness mojo' back? And so of course, I felt like something was wrong with me. I mean, if I'm not happy all the time, there must be something wrong with me, right? Or maybe not...

I've been reading about Buddhism for several years now, at least. And sometimes I have a thought, a revelation almost, that I realize comes from all that reading. This one is: There is NOTHING WRONG with simply being, without happiness. One of the main precepts in Buddhism has to do with misery and our confounded attempts to escape it. When we just 'sit' in our misery, instead of escaping it, we get a chance to know it, to explore it. By knowing our unhappiness, we have the opportunity to take away its power. We can accept it and go on with life. Thus taking away the misery associated with the source.

The wandering point here is that we don't have to be happy all the time, and we cause our own suffering by pursuing a false happiness, or trying to escape a false misery. We just, simply ARE.

Mockingbird Karma: Is Your Speech Truly Free?

For every candidate in this presidential election, you can easily find people who will swear that candidate will ruin this country. Sadly, we are doing more damage ourselves, individually, every day.

We do this in many ways like bullying, discriminating, hating, controlling, oppressing and more. I hate to admit, I'm as guilty as anyone in some ways.

We say we have freedom of speech in this country, for example. But the way we treat people who express thoughts or ideas we don't like is nothing short of bullying. How will children know it's bad if they see adults doing it every day?

Tip of the iceberg.

Mockingbird Karma: What's It All About Pippin?

I'm 52 years old. I still can't figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Perhaps that is why I don't feel all that grown up. I've often speculated, privately, that having children is one of those things that makes you feel truly 'grown up'. I'm not sure, as I've never had kids.

I saw the play "Pippin" many years ago in New York City. A place that I loved visiting with my grandparents when we would visit them on Long Island. My take away from the play was the line "What's it all about, Pippin?" Pippin was a young boy who did not know what life was all about. HAH! Even as I write that I realize, nobody really does.

I think we all have to figure out for ourselves what our lives are supposed to be about. What is purpose and all that. I've done some reading and so forth, I've cogitated on it a lot. I think the root might be

Mockingbird Karma: Eatium Tedium - Dealing With Unhealthy Urges At Work

Work, work, work… blah, blah, blah… More candy, more munchies, more tedium eatium! Hahaha. That’s my new phrase… because I eat in a lame attempt to counteract the incredible boredom and tedium I feel in my job. Tedium Eatium! Ta-Da!

Meanwhile, what am I not learning in this moment? Well, I’m not IN the moment, that’s for sure. (Wait, let me get some M&M’s before I continue.) I struggle to find meaning in my life, in the world… All the while, so busy looking, checking my phone, and so on, that I miss the moments I am in. Maybe it’s nice to just sit at my work desk and lose myself in the music while I crunch the boring little numbers on the screen. You know what, that may be the case, but…

I am SCARED TO DEATH to stop looking and wake up 25 years from now as an old crippled man who’s spent his life working these stupid little numbers while his

Mockingbird Karma: Where Do I Start? Examination Of A Dinner Out.

It has been some days now, and I struggle with an un-quiet mind. My dearest and I had dinner out with a neighbor couple last night. We met at a restaurant. There was wine consumed. I didn’t drink that night. This was a first social engagement with this couple. We had spoken casually while passing on the street with our dog. But nothing more than that so far. Now we’ve broken the ice.

Secretly, a small part of me has always wished I was friendly with all my neighbors. Like you see on TV shows and all that. Or like other people I’ve known have been. My wife, in her lifetime before me, has had those kinds of relationships with her neighbors. But the fact is, for me, I’m just not that kind of neighbor.

But I was sociable last night. I made small talk. We talked about them and so on. I hope it was not written on my face, that I

Mockingbird Karma: Doing The Work, So Many Challenges

Today was a pretty good day, for the most part. I think even just being in the first days of this new website has been good for me. How? Well, because I’m thinking a lot about writing here about my days, I’m more aware of the emotions I’m feeling, the moods I’m experiencing, and the ‘work’ to which I have committed myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I was nowhere near great or perfect today. But I was less of a mess than many days. I still got anxious about the

traffic on my way to work this morning. I still had negative thoughts, and some negative words (gossip), about some people I work with. I felt frustration and depression about an important personal goal/dream that I’ve recently had to put off for a while (indefinitely).

We have a somewhat new dog in our house now, and she’s still a bit of a puppy. So of course, she’s got

Mockingbird Karma: Waking Up Happy... Or Not?

I woke up this morning and, like most mornings, I lay in bed for a while in the dark, thinking. As my thoughts drifted around, they ended up at my day job. And I found myself thinking about someone there, and thinking they were a so-and-so. This is not a good thought pattern. Thinking ill of people just doesn’t help anything. Better to think of what they may be like, and to separate that from actions or decisions they make? I think so.

So I corrected myself gently, and turned my thoughts to the many blessings in my life. It worked better to put myself in a grateful mindset. So instead of dwelling on my job, and getting worked up into a negative mental state, I thought about life and blessings and gratitude for a little while.

I don’t always catch myself in time like this. Many mornings I wake up thinking negative thoughts, and they usually run away with me until I am angry or depressed or anxious. This is just another area where I have lots of work to do. At least these days, I have some information in my head that helps me see the difference.

How did you wake up this morning? Did you wake up happy? Do you struggle with negativity in the morning too? What do you do about it?

Love to you, love to all.

Mockingbird Karma: The Beginning Of The Story

This will be, I hope, the last website or blog that I ever start. Why would I say that? Well, it’s like this. I believe that many of the websites I’ve created came from a place of searching for something more than I was or more than I had. Now, today, I am embarking on a journey, or maybe better yet, I am working to initiate a metamorphosis from the person I’ve been, to the person I want to be; a person of peace and simplicity.

Over the past five or so years I’ve been reading about different approaches to attaining peace in life, different pathways to simplicity. I’ve learned a lot, but practiced little. I’m basically not much further along than I was some time ago. Except for one thing: I’ve got some knowledge. And now I need to act on it, with it, to it, for it!

I Write: Matilda & Ralph No. 1?

One of my favorite things (or compulsions) is writing. Scenes will pop into my head and I just have to write them down. Here's one. And yes, I have a novel in me... "I have at least a dozen books in me!"

Ralph thought he was seeing double. “How could this be?” He muttered to himself. He wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes and looked again. “Damn!” She was still there, standing under the cherry tree, with a gun in her hand. It made no sense at all, and he started to get a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach. The world seemed to be slowing down.

Then, it got very quiet. There was a rushing sound in his ears. It felt like he was struggling to swim through really thick water. But he was not wet at all. When he confirmed that the dirt felt so dry under his hands he realized he was no longer standing. He was on his knees, leaning forward on his hands.

“Matilda?” He strained to get the dusty words out of his mouth. Nothing was making sense and least of all Matilda standing under the cherry tree with a gun.

“I’m tired Matilda. Come sit with me.”

Matilda did not move. Ralph felt a burning itch on his stomach. His now clumsy, heavy hand fussed at the itch, and it hurt. “What the…” he thought as he looked down to see why his stomach hurt. The flowing, sticky red liquid covering his hand and shirt front confounded his efforts to identify it. He swirled the liquid between his thumb and forefinger. The sensation pleased him, and he smiled ever so slightly.

Cruelly, lucidity came flowing back at Ralph like a freight train. It hit him almost as hard as the bullet that had slammed into his stomach just seconds before. A flood of desperate emotions attacked his mind. His head snapped up and he shouted “Matilda!”

Well, he wanted to shout. It was a hoarse whisper at best. Burbling globs of blood appeared on his lips. Suddenly he could see clearly again. The sweat had gone. He was chilly in fact. And he could see Matilda. Standing under the cherry tree. With a gun in her hand. As he focused his dying eyes on her face, her beautiful face that he had so loved, he saw that she was smiling.

It was the last thing he felt. An enormous wave of sadness mixed with longing for his Matilda, and a sense of betrayal. “Why did she…”

Ralph slowly sank forward onto the pool of blood that had started to form in the dry uncaring dirt before him. His eyes came slowly to rest, half closed. His blood stopped flowing out of the wound in his abdomen. His legs gave up their futile struggle to get under his body and lift him upright. The neurons in his brain sparkled with just a few final pulses. Then, with no fanfare, and certainly no warning, Ralph died.