I heard an NPR piece today about happiness and England. It seems that the Brits are using an IPAD app to track just how happy people are, where they’re the happiest and what activities make them happy. And this has what to do with preparedness??? Trust me. I’m getting there.
A couple of decades ago, we took the kids to Disney. It was a pretty good time but the happiest place on Earth? I don’t think so. The lines were long, the prices high, the forced gaiety a little too forced. I often think about measuring and evaluating happiness. It occurs to me that even considering this is a function of two things; advertising and cheap stuff. One would not exist without the other. Prior to the age of TV, I would guess that people were not particularly concerned with how happy they were. They had to be satisfied with good relationships and meaningful work as hot tubs and flat screen TVs were decades in the future. Take away television cheap stuff to judge ourselves by (we are always found wanting BTW-that’s the point) and we would once again have to look inside ourselves for satisfaction.
Big changes are coming. Our lives will not always be defined by Madison Avenue. They will be defined by the company we keep and the work we do. Stockpile shoelaces and toothpaste, canning jars and garden seeds but don’t forget to store up some social capital and solid confidence in your ability to contribute something to the common good. It’s going to matter sooner rather than later I think.
April 5, 2011 at 9:28 pm
Awesome!
Choose Happiness & Success!
Jennifer
April 5, 2011 at 9:40 pm
So, you don’t think all this will blow over and good times will return?? According to our Governments there and here things are getting better and better all we have to do is trust them. I think your appraoch is much more practical … save your food and your friends; they will be all you can count on pretty soon.
April 5, 2011 at 10:13 pm
I wish I did Kenneth but I just don’t see it.
April 6, 2011 at 12:42 am
Hmm, I’m going to have to read that piece – I’m curious as to where the respondents where when they marked high on their HappyMeter. I’d be interested to see how many folks said they were happiest around friends & family, in the garden, or doing other productive things.
As to your actual point – very well said.
April 6, 2011 at 6:32 am
well said! I think we will have some rough times, but then there will be REAL “good times”, ones based on personal accomplishments, not personal “things”. A trip to a country fair to see what the 4H has done and what farm wives made with their own hands is a good example of this. Having friends and family over for a time to tell stories and eat everyones best dishes at pot luck…that’s good times.
April 6, 2011 at 9:21 am
Your apt description of Disney World fit my thoughts exactly. Friendships and productive work seems to be the best harbinger of a happy life.
April 6, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Well, let’s not let the Age of Blogging off the hook. I think it will rival the Age of TV for successfully generating the desire for more stuff, even worthwhile preparedness stuff. The blogosphere is the perfect petri dish for advertisers: highly focused thematic sites that attract motivated visitors; intimate, first-person blog personas that encourage legitimacy and trust; a sense of community and identity from interactive comments and forums; festive giveaways and promotions that feel like online treasure hunts; and easy, immediate access to advertiser sites via blog portals. A fertile medium indeed, the more powerful for being so insidious.
You are a notable exception to the above trend, Kathy, for which I thank you. Happiness is finding people who have integrity. Best wishes!
April 6, 2011 at 9:03 pm
Interviewed my grandfather for a high school paper many years ago. The topic was the Great Depression. My grandfather said it was the time of his life. I asked him if he was starting to lose it. No, he explained. It was great because everyone was in the same boat. Noboday had anything. They’d get together to have potlucks, play cards, etc. The neighbors would pitch in together to fix a barn, or help a neighbor. Now (which was true twenty years ago when I interviewed him and true today) everyone is on the go, always running places, not just sitting a spell.
Funny how 20 years later this conversation puts me at ease. What will be, will be. I’ll prepare for the worst and hope for the best and if we get another great depression I’ve hopefully got enough skills to survive. I look forward to getting to know my neighbors. I live in suburbia where we only see each other when we’re mowing or blowing (snow).
April 6, 2011 at 9:04 pm
The only thing left to be said is ‘amen’.
April 7, 2011 at 4:42 am
There was a matching item on the BBC radio news this morning. There has been a 40% rise in the prescribing of anti-depressants in the last 5 years, despite the best efforts of mental health organisations and workers to promote other therapies and treatments. After rummaging through the possible causes – less stigma, better diagnosis, economic crisis (their order!) – they got to talking about the consumerist nature of healthcare (‘give me a pill to fix me and I’ll carry on as I was’). An extraorinarily convoluted way of avoiding discussing the possible causes of such widespread feelings dis-ease.
April 9, 2011 at 4:31 am
Off topic, but I would love to hear your opinion. If you knew you had approximately 2 years left, what would you do to get your family ready to go on?
April 9, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Erin, I am not Kathy. But for one thing it would depend on the ages of your family. Until 2 years ago we were taking care of my 90 year old mil. And before that we took care of our 2 foster grandkids. And both things demanded totally different things in the way we took care of things. For the kids we had to have clothes and games, toys etc for the future. For mil we had to have things like adult diapers, extra bedding, a hospital bed in the end and lots of bed clothes.
In some ways things were the same. We all still had to eat. We all needed water. We would all need medical stuff like bandaids, etc.
But one of the biggest things you will need is knowledge regardless. Knowledge on how to take care of the family. How to take care of the food you will need to raise. How to keep seeds and plant and then use things that you raise. How to store all kinds of food and how to use it once you store it.
How to use a really good first aid kit. And how to at the same time make and use herbal medacine.
Clothing is another important thing. If you have or are going to have children they will need to have different sizes of clothes. And shoes.
A good sewing machine that can be ran by hand if need be. If you don’t know how to sew then now is a very good time to learn.
Go to yard sales and thrift stores and get patterns for making clothing in different sizes for your family.
Try and think of things you can do to make life easier if you had no electricity.
If you don’t know how to raise a garden now is a good time to learn. But it is also a good time to get canning supplies and learn how to can.
But this is the most important of all. Know that you can not do everything over night. Stay calm and work on it. Do not just run to town and buy a lot of stuff you may never figure out how to use. Learn as you go. And remember it is always good to ask questions if you get stuck on something.
April 10, 2011 at 12:40 am
Just seeing the title of this post, with today being what it is for me, I had to comment:
I had my first seedlings sprout today! I don’t believe that I could possibly be happier than I am right now — perhaps on par with eating the first pickles I made. But I feel that happiness is all about taking wonder in the little things, in the effort expended, in life itself — that’s all one should need.
April 13, 2011 at 12:07 pm
and where does one get the time to work on anything like self survival while the taxman has you working to pay for the survival of the tax man…………