the happiness project

we hosted a rousing meeting of the monthly bennett cousin discussion group earlier this week.

it is such a treat to have family near by, even more of a treat to get to see them often, and the best treat of all to get together to talk about interesting this. i was in charge of the article this month and after much and lengthy deliberation, i finally settled on this piece by lori gottlieb about how helicopter parenting can ruin your kid's life.

we all had plenty to say about it, as i am sure you can imagine, but here are a few things that stuck out to me.

1. "happiness as a byproduct of living your life is a great thing. but happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster."

i think this is a lesson we learn particularly well as members of the LDS faith. when you follow the commandments, the promptings of the spirit and make good choices and you are blessed and blessings make you happy, so you learn to see happiness as (to steal from the quote above) a "byproduct of living your life."

i find this an enormously helpful concept because it means that a) if i am not feeling happy as a byproduct of my life, i can change the things i am doing in my life and experience positive results, making me the master of my own fate which is at the same time a remarkably comforting and somewhat terrifying concept and b) i can be happy even if bad things are happening to me as long as i continue to live my life in a way that brings me good things.

2. "you have to be exposed to pathogens or your body won't know how to respond to an attack. kids also need exposure to discomfort, failure and struggle."

the value of failure, we concluded, is that once you have experienced it once, when it comes again you know you can handle it. you've been through that hard thing once, so you can certainly get through it again. and how much better to learn that lesson on the ultimately inconsequential failures of childhood, than on what can be much more shaking failures in adulthood.

3. "the irony is that measures of self-esteem are poor predictors of how content a person will be, especially if the self-esteem comes from constant accommodation and praise rather than earned accomplishment."

there is no feeling in the world that can beat the feeling of working hard for something and getting it, whether it's a game, a paper, a job, a talent or a relationship. the list really is endless. and if you don't work hard but you get something anyway, how can you really feel confident in yourself and happy about your efforts? everything that means the most to me is something i have worked hard for or hard at, and those are also the things i feel very best about.

4. "our children are not our masterpieces."

one thing i appreciate more and more about my parents the older i get is that they were always proud and supportive of me, but they also let me develop into my own unique personality and they had their own lives and interests and triumphs outside of their children. i think that was just the right way to do it.

and, i also think that the "right" way is different for every parent and every child and every circumstance. just like my recent realization that there is no magic bullet piece of advice or formula for getting married, it seems that the same must be true of parenting. which is, i imagine, what makes it so terrifying, but also what makes it so wonderful.

though, if you're looking for a model, you might consider the french.

mourn with those that mourn

like just about everyone else, i have been totally horrified and, frankly, disgusted by the shooting of representative giffords in arizona a few days ago.

to be perfectly honest, i have sort of been ignoring the whole thing because i would rather not believe that things like that happen in modern, advanced society. and then when i do think about it i get really worked up and try to find people and things to blame, and then i get really depressed because, whether there is a place to lay blame or not an awful thing happened. and none of this strikes me as a particularly healthy cycle.

i did venture out to do a little reading on the whole sad thing today, though, and came across this piece, written a few years ago by susan klebold, the mother of one of the columbine shooters, dylan klebold. it is honest and heartfelt and terribly sad and completely captivating. and for lack of a better way to describe a complicated thing, it gave me a new sense of perspective about tragedies such as these.

it is easy for us to say someone is a monster after they have done a monstrous thing, but i think it is reasonable for a mother or father who has raised a son or daughter with nothing but love to disbelieve that their child could ever do such a thing, and blaming those mothers and fathers, or friends or teachers or guidance counselors for "missing something" seems cruelly unfair.

and it is easy for us to loudly blame violent video games and inflamed political rhetoric and those are things that we do need to talk about in an open and reasonable way. but we also need to talk about the kind of individual human suffering that might lead a person to do something like shoot their fellow students or their elected representative. and to recognize the suffering that those people and their actions leave behind, for everyone. perhaps we forget too quickly that their family and friends are victims, too, that their suffering will also be deep and long.

i can't begin to imagine how difficult it was for susan klebold to relive long enough to put down on paper the events that ended her son's life, and many other lives as well. and i admire her immensely for doing that even for people who demonized and blamed her. maybe we think it will make us feel better to point a finger and assign some accountability, as if perhaps that will allow us to walk away from something awful feeling somehow better.

but i think that that is wrong. i am not totally sure what is right, but i suspect it involves embracing both tragedy and all the people it touches. and then feeling sorry that it has to touch anyone at all.

it's not easy being green

thomas friedman, that venerable columnist and member of the liberal media elite (open cheek, insert tongue) was in salt lake tonight promoting his new book, "hot, flat and crowded," as well as making an impassioned plea for energy innovation that will help save the planet before it is too late. being the responsible and concerned citizens that we are, dave, melissa, dallas, kent and i went to check it out. also in attendance? the love of my life, mayor ralph becker. though i would expect nothing less.

friedman draws a very interesting parallel between the information technology boom of yesteryear and the energy technology boom that we need now to solve problems such as global climate change, strains on natural resources, energy poverty and dwindling biodiversity. the major stumbling block being that the i.t. boom introduced totally new technology that offered totally new functions (a phone i can carry in my pocket? what the what?), which made people willing to pay a premium for the technology, while energy innovations only give us a different version of something we can already get for cheap. never mind that the new version might be better and cleaner. the incentive to pay a premium for something you can get without paying a premium is pretty low.

the idea of a global green revolution is certainly an enticing one, and friedman offered up some really fascinating statistics (ex: more people will be born during his lifetime than were alive on the earth in the year he was born), but i could have used a few more practical applications. a call to "change your leaders, not your lightbulbs" is inspiring, but not immediately practical. and i take some issue with friedman's framing of wise environmental stewardship in terms of american dominance. something about phrases like, "green is the new red, white and blue" and "the space race is over. the earth race is on" rubs me the wrong way. it might be naive, but it seems that a revolution to save the planet should be a collaborative effort between all the people on the planet, not something to be lorded over some people by others. but maybe that's just me. (friedman is bff with al gore, so he has an edge on me there.)

but lest i give the impression that i thought the whole thing was lame-o (because i did not think that in the least), i will say that a few ideas really, really stuck out to me.

one. friedman gave a call to "get off facebook and get in someone's face" about the important environmental issues. i can get behind any call to be engaged in our communities and with our leaders in the real world. so thumbs up there.

two. he talked about how any revolution is going to bring some pain. not physical pain necessarily, but the pain of sacrifice. for example, paying a little more for clean energy. (and, as friedman points out, if we were to pay the burden price of our cheap electricity, including the cost of building plants, stripping the earth for coal and passing a damaged planet on to our children, that dirty energy wouldn't be so cheap anymore.) i personally find it easy to talk the talk when it comes to environmental issues, but i need to be reminded sometimes to walk the walk. no pain, no gain. as some people say.

and three. and my favorite. he encouraged all of us to see our environmental efforts as a work in progress. we don't all have to have a carbon footprint of zero by tomorrow, but every little bit helps. and every little bit can be added upon. this one-step-at-a-time idea is emerging as one of my favorite life themes right now, and i am happy to apply it in this context as well. today, a few extra dollars a month for wind power. tomorrow, a healed planet.

or at least one step closer.

i will not be discouraged. i will not give up. i will fight.

a happy international women's day! to you, and you, and you.

how did you celebrate?

i celebrated with a screening of "a powerful noise," a stunning documentary about women making a difference around the world, which was just what i needed to clear my mind of all the reality tv junk i filled it with this week, and restore some perspective about what's really important. (hint: it is not jason the bachelor.)

the film tells the stories of three women, one in mali, one in vietnam and one in bosnia and herzegovina, working to meet the needs of the women around them. one woman starts a foundation to educate domestic workers so they cannot be taken advantage of and abused by their employers; another an organization to support women living with HIV and provide AIDS prevention education; the third an agricultural co-op so widows left behind by bitter civil war can support themselves and their families and heal damaging ethnic divides. and, in a sort of amazing way, as the women's needs are met, everyone else's needs get taken care of, too.

when you help women, you help everyone.

as the columnist katha pollitt put it, there are no women's issues, only human issues. former secretary of state madeline albright has a slightly less kind way of saying the same thing: there is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.

consider this. educate a mother, teach her to read and write, teach her a skill and she can start to earn money and support her family on her own. suddenly, she can afford bed nets so her children don't contract malaria. suddenly, her daughters who have been working to help support the family can go to school. suddenly, she is in a place to empower other women. suddenly, her life is changed. her family is changed. her community is changed.

and it just gets bigger.

when you help women, you help everyone.

i often fall victim to the pessimistic (and ultimately avoidant) conception that the problem is just too overwhelming. poverty, infectious disease, abuse and family violence, war. i'm not bono. what can i possibly do?

but today i was reminded that every single little itty bit counts. every single little itty bitty project, every single little itty bitty solution, every single little itty bitty dollar chips away at the bigger problem. and every single little itty bit grows.

i mean, let's face it. if i can spare the money to buy a bunch of clothes i don't need from forever 21, (you're welcome, economy!), i can probably spare the money it would take to help fund a well in a rural village so girls can go to school instead of carrying water all day long.

don't you think? i do.

care to join me? here and here and here are a few places to start.

and then we won't have to worry about going to hell anymore, which will be a big relief.

ba-rock my world

{i couldn't have said it better myself}

i spent a lot of time tearing up yesterday. happy tears all around.

i teared up while i watched barack obama's inaugural speech.

i teared up when i read the transcript of it a few hours later.

i teared up thinking about michelle obama holding the lincoln bible.

i teared up thinking of the responsibility we all have to make this country great, or at least to make it better.

i teared up thinking about a historic election, and a historic president, who makes a lot of us want to take that responsibility a lot more seriously.

i teared up (laughing) at the final compilations of bush-isms. (he's right, you know. it is hard to put food on your family.)

i teared up thinking about two little girls who are proud of their daddy.

i teared up wishing i had hit up uncle bob sooner for primo inauguration tickets. (but he looked pretty snazzy in that white scarf, eh?)

so, needless to say, i've been pretty happy with the way things have gone down so far, presidentially speaking, and, though it's not an easy row to hoe, i have a lot of optimism about things to come.

there is just one thing missing. if only there was some way i could express how i feel through stylish and quirky footwear.

oh wait.

there is.

change in which we can believe.

{watching the results come in.}

it has now been one week since barack obama was named the next president of these united states. i know that much has been said and written about how it happened and what it means and that is all fine and good and i don't pretend to have some as-yet-uncharted wisdom to add to the existing punditry. (whew. i am pretty proud of that sentence.) after a week to think it over, though, i would love to tell you what it all means to me.

first, let me say that i am thrilled. i hope i don't get into journalistic trouble here by displaying a bias, but this is the first time in my voting life that my candidate of choice has won, and i feel pretty good about that. when obama came out on stage to give his acceptance speech, i told jess and amy that i thought i might start lactating. and i meant it. that is how happy i was.

i wasn't just happy because my party had won, though, or just because i think john mccain is sort of creepy, or anything like that. i was happy because we, collectively, had taken a step forward, taken a risk, made a new choice and embraced change. i realize that the slogan "change we can believe in" is, ultimately, just campaign cliche (not to mention bad grammar), but the concept of change is a powerful and necessary one, for the country as a whole and for us as individuals, and i was glad to be reminded of that. this election broke through prejudice and cracked the glass ceiling, and that is something i think we should all get behind, no matter how we cast our ballots.

obama had a long and stirring list of change we have already embraced: women reaching for the ballot, and now seeing their own names on the ballot; a depression endured and overcome; civil rights; a wall coming down in berlin. and he reminded us of the necessary change yet to come as we work and sacrifice to save our planet, our jobs, our healthcare, our children's futures. of all the things we work for, positive change for everyone should be top of the list.

and now, one week later, it is the need to embrace change, on all levels, for ourselves and for others, that sticks most in my mind. one of the principles of the gospel, and of life, that i love the most is the idea, the fact, that we can change, that we can and should believe in change. we can put off our bad habits, our prejudices, our misunderstandings. we can learn new skills, new talents, new ways of understanding and communicating. we can become more loving, more patient (still working on that one), more grateful and more graceful. we can do hard things. we can do things we have never done before and we can succeed. we can conquer fears. we can make our weaknesses into strengths. we can evolve and we can get better. and better. and better. because we get to change. that is something i believe.

and i believe in it, too.

yes we can. yes we did.

amen.

have you heard?

there's an election going on. and you should vote in it. because harrison ford says so. and i think we can all agree it's always best to do what harrison ford says.

(warning: i went with the uncensored version this time, because it was way funnier. but, no one panic. there are only two swears and one of them is whispered.)



look, i'll even throw in a song to sweeten the deal.



convinced? bueno.

i voted.

to avoid a partisan smack-down in the comments section, i will refrain from telling you who for, but i will give you a little hint and say that i have not voted for the winning candidate in the past two elections, but i have my fingers very tightly crossed to be on the winning (and historic!) side this time around. though the license plate holder on the car parked next to me at the city government building, which read, "in case of rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned" makes me very, very nervous.

date local

i would not necessarily consider myself an environmentalist, despite the moral superiority i feel about things like riding my bike to work, buying local eggs or wearing pressed bamboo accessories (sustainable earrings! who knew?), but i am always glad to be on the same side as the environment, especially when it's the side i've been on all along. which is why i was so happy to find this recent article about how long-distance dating is killing the planet.

you see, i have, for some time now, been something of a naysayer when it comes to long-distance relationships. i think the magic of relationships comes in melding two lives into one, in the togetherness found in mundane things like making dinner and cleaning the house, in the instant accessibility to the comfort of a person who is less than a plane ride away.

now, before someone pulls that "don't knock it 'til you've tried it" bull-oney on me, let me say that i have, in fact, been there and done that, and, while it obviously didn't work for me, i don't think all long-distance relationships are doomed to failure. and i know that you can't help who you fall in love with and true love has no borders and blah, blah, blah.

but i still think long-distance relationships add time and work and confusion to something that already takes a lot of time, work and is confusing enough when you live next-door, and i have basically refused to entertain the idea of a long-distance relationship (unless jake gyllenhaal comes a-knockin') for quite some time now.

and not that i wasn't perfectly happy to stand that ground all by my lonesome, but it does feel pretty good to have the whole earth behind me on this one.

i have five friends. do you?

because you should send them this video (or tell them to come here and check it out). i even picked the one with edited-out swears. because i love you that much.





(if you still need to register to vote, come to the ywca of salt lake city tonight at 7p.m. there is a screening of the film "iron jawed angels" about the women's suffrage movement, and there will be people on hand all night to hook you up. with voter registration, that is.)

the f(eminism) word

ever since coming home from denver (can one come home from home?) i've wanted to tell you about the rocky mountain retreat, an annual gathering of wonderfully broad-minded and free-thinking mormon women who are devoted to spirituality and truth. some of us call ourselves feminists and some of us do not, but one truth we all believe is that women should have every and equal opportunity to excel, to discover and develop talents that help themselves and everyone else. call it whatever you want, but i think that's an ideal everyone can (or at least should) get behind.

it's also an enormous and complex mission that i could write about for days and still feel like i had barely explored. which is, i think, why i have put off writing about it at all. where to begin? where to go? so i've decided to take baby steps (which seems the best way to approach all things enormous and complex) and tackle one small piece at a time.

first, let me say this. i do call myself a feminist. i didn't always, but i think that was only because i didn't realize the way i lived my life and expected to be treated was something out of the ordinary that needed a name of its own. i grew up in a family and environment where equality was a given, where moms and dads both worked and both did the dishes and both said smart and funny things at the dinner table, where boys and girls were both right and both wrong, both got masters degrees and both cuddled babies. i loved transformers as much as my little ponies and have no memory of ever thinking i couldn't do something, or should do something else, because i was a girl. it wasn't until college that i realized how unusual and lucky my life had been.

for this year's retreat, my mom asked me to sit on a panel about, basically, generational perspectives of feminism. at first i was totally jazzed because "sitting on a panel" sounds really important and grown-up and like i'm really smart and interesting, and every time someone asked me why i was going to denver i would say, "well, i'm sitting on this panel..." but then i got really stressed out because i didn't know what to say and i felt really uninformed and unqualified and it made me pull funny faces and gave me a little bit of a tummy ache. but, it was really fine and completely compelling and i learned a lot, from and about myself and the other women there as well.

in fact, i could probably write a dozen posts (or one super duper incredibly long one) just about the panel. but, baby steps. so i am going to start with this idea, which is a really pertinent one, i think.

one woman in the audience raised her hand and brought up the question of girls in junior high and high school using their bodies and their sexuality to exact and exert power over other people: teachers, friends, boyfriends, parents, even other girls. it's the oldest formula in the book and has endless expressions, but usually goes something like this: cleavage+short skirt-discernible intelligence and/or personality=success. being flat-chested (sternum all the way, baby!) and otherwise generally body-conscious, and being basically incapable of reining in my oversized personality (not to mention my crackling wit and brilliance), this is not a system it has ever occurred to me to employ. but, i have also lived long enough as a girl to understand that this is a real temptation and problem, no doubt borne from a belief that there is no other power a woman can wield. and i am just as much a slave to hair straighteners and mascara and new clothes and cute shoes as the next person (probably even moreso on that last one).

so, what to do?

the ideal solution would be, of course, to root out our damaging, body-obsessed popular culture and replace it with a healthy, nurturing, realistic vision of women and womanhood. seeing as that might take a minute though, i struck upon this idea for the meantime.

it's all well and good to tell girls they shouldn't rely on their bodies and their sexuality to get what they want. but, when you take something away, you have to put something in its place. a bad habit is much easier to get rid of if there is a better habit waiting in the wings to fill the hole. think nicotine gum or words like "fetch." and i don't think this case is any different. if we don't want girls to rely on short skirts and empty heads to get ahead, we have to give them something else to use.

which got me thinking, what is it that we emphasize and value about women, about each other? i guarantee that at least 90 percent of compliments i get have something to do with my physical self. either i am wearing a cute outfit, or my hair looks nice, or i look like i've been working out (read: i look skinny). not that there is anything wrong with these compliments, and i certainly enjoy receiving them, but let's look at the long-term, unintended consequence. if, for example, i am always being complimented on my clothes, i am naturally going to put a lot of time and effort (and, in this case, money) into my wardrobe because i know from experience that i will be validated and valued if i do. but what if, instead, i was always being complimented for being a hard worker, an articulate speaker, a kind friend? it follows that i would put a lot of time and effort into those things instead. can you start to see the difference we could make? just by changing what we say? it's so simple it seems like it can't be true, but i really think it is. certainly as good a place to start as any.

and now, dear readers, a challenge, proposed by another woman at the retreat. it is this: no look-related compliments, for anyone, for a week. or a day or a month or however long you want to try. no, "you're so cute" or "OMG, i love your shoes!" but instead, "you are so thoughtful" or "i admire your organized closet." (hey, i said it was just a place to start.) i think we will all be surprised about the many different and substantive things we find to honor in each other. and ourselves. good luck! (and don't forget to report back!)