Friends, coworkers, heck the whole world now, is obsessed with arcing content into fame online. Blog fever and social media are partially to blame. True, we get most of our news, glam tips, and health research from the Web. So in this digital reality, shouldn’t we also expect to publish anecdotes of our own that could change lives, perhaps some person’s we’ve never even met?

Looking to the classics, elements of story closely align with life, death and the struggle to exist. Oral tradition forged meaning within communities through old fashioned conversation and mythic education. The Odyssey, an epic Greek poem written in dactylic hexameter, was first read aloud or sung. Many Native American and Aboriginal stories, also shared out loud, are snapshots of a tribe’s morality, ethics, and right behavior.

Though it’s tempting to deify the past, I suspect ego entered their social fabric, too. How well a story is told probably earned points and political leverage. Some things absolutely stay the same. But the difference now seems to be that we’ve aggravated the arc – and the joy – of simple story telling.

Perhaps “joy story” void is due in part to an over-saturated marketplace. With content playing king to marketing campaigns, it’s no surprise that some content serves to titillate rather than truly engage our deeper sense of social inter-connectedness, pain, and hunger for meaning. While story is as alluring now as it has always been, today it’s more fractal fast-food fodder and less mind-altering, soul-stirring message. Sociologists, what’s up with that?

For actual, lasting Joy of Story, we need a seat in the circle. First, we need a circle. With iPhones aside, let’s chant into dream space together and re-enact the myth of slaying a dragon or staving off famine. In this story, the beast might be our failure to find joy in pixels and famine the utter isolation of empty texting.

I talk about wisdom keepers a lot. I like how The Moth, Ignite and Ted keep the art of storytelling and wisdom sharing alive. This is digital content democracy – good stuff and new communities unite. Blogs also give us a way to keep the art of story thriving. As we blog, we become wisdom keepers, too.

Funny how much time we spend awaiting the next good thing. We add up hours planning trips to Hawaii, preparing fancy dinners, and trimming Christmas trees just so. These moments of prepping futures are like raindrops in the wind. They are lush and wet, vital with energy, yet as soon as destiny arrives, they flail and fall into the great mystery of timelessness.

There is a lot of talk these days about happiness. What does it look like. Where does it live. Who’s got it and how can I get some more. Scientific research now graphs a clear line between quality of life, health and happiness. It turns out that enjoying good, positive, even challenging relationships boosts our capacity for pleasure. In his book, Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert combines science and case studies to show how a healthy social life can equal a healthy inner and outer one, too. The book’s a best seller, of course. Not only that, it was recently turned into a documentary and featured on PBS’ This Emotional Life.

Top that with popular blog and book The Happiness Project and the now classic tour de force Eat, Pray, Love, and our collective hunger for awakening rears its head. These books are externalizations of a shared internal quest for joy and meaning. We all have the Joy — deep down or riding the surface — but somewhere along the way, for many of us, it slips between our fingers.

Popular psychology and spiritual thought are full of step-by-step ways to get happy. In all things, we want a recipe for joy and contentment. While not ‘desiring’ per se, anything in particular, except perhaps the pleasure of not desiring anything at all, Buddhism offers a path called the Middle Way. In his book, The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama answers questions that remind us Westerners that the way to all good things is within us. It is the Source. It’s not about traveling the world to find it — although some find it this way. It is about going deep and cultivating connection with our divine essence.

Over sixty years ago, Viktor Frankl portrayed happiness as the art of survival amid terror. His historic book, Man’s Search for Meaning, models the undaunted power of the human spirit, and how, by changing our thinking, we can change our reality. Frankl may have been waiting for something good to happen — his freedom and the end of war. But he was waiting by taking each moment as a breath of new life and finding magic and beauty in the ugliest of places.

When you’ve got multiple balls in the air, not to mention clouds of economic gloom to contend with, staying positive can be a real challenge.

I know this struggle first hand. As an artist, Reiki healer, writer, event planner, consultant and volunteer, I often feel torn between getting it all done and stopping to smell the roses.  And I am not alone.  Read more >

An overabundance of anything can drain us. Try this on: constant news saturated by doomsday forecasts and anything that will spin your eyes in fear… lasting for, say, a couple years straight? Thus spoke national media. Exhausted?

I don’t normally write in expletives. Many pin me with the label ‘optimist.’ Still, enough is enough. So here goes.

Stop the fucking negativo, media jerks! End this self-absorbed, self-interested, self-obsessed, greed-inured, jerking off rants about how the bottom of our tidy little paradise is falling out. Get over it. Move on. Do not click ’send.’

Then make way for happy. Heard of her? She everyone’s alter ego, even yours. No, she is not deluded. She is clued in — so clued in she knows that being happy is where it’s at. Joy is all the rage for the enlightened, she would say. She is ready for fun, playful, hip and creative forays into life’s deeper essence. She’s no dimwit. And, make no mistake: she’s not your new sex toy (although she certainly is a mischievous cat).

She is, simply, happy. She is the ‘new sexy’ replacing that other vampy, plastic, drug vixen parading as a good time. When she smiles, the world watches. Her aura is contagious: others (even you, you’ll find yourself) want what she’s got and will walk miles in pursuit of it. She’s for real, square on the money, and no pushover. Try cheating at cards with this hip chick and you’ll be on your tail-ista and out the door-ista in two shakes flat.

With Happy, value has meaning. She no longer uses credit because ‘it’s delusional,’ I can hear her saying. As for stocks, investing in real human relationships, hard work, earth greenery, beautification of our waters, and community thoroughfares are her wise alternative. If stocks support such ideals, she’s all for ‘em, as long as the girl or guy running the shop can look her in the eye and go two rounds at badminton.

Mind this world: it’s time to embrace your own Happy. Time’s a-wasting. There is one less tomorrow than there was yesterday. Enjoy what you’ve got and cultivate what you love. Make way for joy. Be joyful you’re here. There are so many people who care about you. Don’t let them down. If you could do one thing today that feels right, what is it? Now, go ahead and do it.

Laughing Buddha nature - relish it

Sounds of Silence

Sometimes thoughts hammer and rush in my head, like the sound of a neighbor’s never-ending house renovation. Or the persistent scratch of a wind-swept branch tickling the window. Then I think of the ocean, my kind of ocean for such days — calm, still, placid, luminous — and the words melt into their sea of silence.

Today’s world is full of distractions… and pain… and misunderstandings. Many of us use words as a defense against the ‘gap’, the space between illusion and what’s real. For many of us, words are a welcome respite to an even less comfortable reality: quiet. Words, words, words are here on this screen, on the radio, on TV, in books, magazines, databases, and in ancient tomes. Sometimes, no words will do just fine.

Since I equate ‘peace’ with a healthy mix of quiet and action, I like to introduce calm on a regular basis. It’s how I re-calibrate the inner and outer sanctums — otherwise society’s insatiable want of dissonance will cast its disharmony. Harmonizing when you feel disturbed, out of balance, stressed, vapid, or just amped out… is essential to staying healthy.

Take action by stopping

When the news and email buzz won’t stop… when you feel like one more word from the ghetto wire will blow your mortal fusebox — just stop. Listen to nothingness. Meditate. Get a massage. Visit the spa. Drive to the beach. Lie on the chaise and dream. Make some art. Swim in someone’s arms. Dance the holy dharma funk. Be.

As you are ‘being,’ you may feel more fully yourself after awhile. You may find that all the space you created in your own heart has also created more room for others. You may find that you feel happier and that connecting with those closest to you feels even better.

Here’s a simple song, in case you ever lose track of your own silence… from the classic duo, Simon & Garfunkel. Enjoy.

Healing Dolphin Style

Watchful Seers

Occasionally, lacing the New Mexican landscape are monolithic power towers resembling skeletal, shamanic robots. Perhaps you’ve seen this style in other states, too. Across arid, deserty backdrops, they definitely stick out — kind of like native spirits rising in electric glory out of the sagebrush.

To me, they are like spirit guides incarnating as power towers. I know, they are made of steal and all that electrical stuff, but they could be totems just the same. Maybe, just maybe, your power is where you feel it, always there, watching the land while you sleep. Isn’t that comforting?

Power towers at night in New Mexico

A Warrior’s Heart

There’s one thing to be clear about: pain is part of life. Joy and bliss are always available to us, but struggle comes with being born. As Pema Chodron reminds us in many of her wonderful teachings on Buddhist philosophy, pain is best experienced with an open heart.

As we break down our barriers (thrown up to ward off pain), we let in the entirety of our experience — the good and the bad. We no longer try so hard, and get so stressed out, resisting anything that could possibly cause us pain. The result is mindful embrace of the stress agent and a warrior’s attitude of acceptance.

So, you get the irony. The longer we fight the hard stuff, the longer we actually create it — through repression, thickening walls, and abrasiveness. As we let go of this junk, a peacefulness ensues. We relax as we confront. That sounds yummy to me!

This is healthy action IN ACTION. The insight is a plus. It’s the warrior’s heart.