Nat

For the last two days, my family and I have played tennis on vacation with several strangers, and the experience has been great. Players of all ages and skill levels have been polite, encouraging, and friendly to all of us. It has made the games great fun, while still providing a competitive outlet.

I’ve been saying friends whom I’ve called on the phone, that it is easy to be happy and friendly on vacation, but the point is that meeting friendly people always makes me feel good about my life and about humanity in general.

One lesson my parents taught me over and over when I was young was that it’s always smart to make it easy for people to be nice to you. They reminded me that good manners, helpfulness, and sociability combine to make a likable person, and they demonstrated by their own behavior that making an effort to be friendly all of the time made our home and their workplaces better.

Our family vacation this week is teaching the same lesson to my stepdaughter, but she has known it for years. I was proud yesterday when an older gentleman complimented my stepdaughter on how pleasant she was to play with.

Michael and I have been working on a book for a few months now, and we took this weekend to get away and make a major dent in it. It shouldn’t surprise me that the work would be so much fun, I guess, but I have spent much of my adult life afraid of long writing projects.

So, today we compiled the notes that we have been writing in 15-minute bursts since November, and we turned them into an outline. Michael did the typing, which I love because it lets me pace while we talk and think. Writing for me is easier when I’m not actually writing. It is typical of Michael to make things fun for me.

The best part of the day is finding work that doesn’t feel like work. To have any activity unravel from oneself effortlessly and focus the mind so that it requires no strain can be the best kind of inspiration. That was true for me over and over today. I have been wanting to remember what a joy it is to be working, and it’s easier for me when the work is entirely my invention. The collaboration makes it even better. It occurred to me in a cafe before dinner that writing a book with another person cuts the number of words in half for each of us. Huh.

Where am I going with this? Just that spending two days thinking about how to cultivate happiness automatically puts me in mind of how to appreciate being happy. My grandmother, who passed away this week, taught me about the state of happiness years ago when I was 18. I had broken up with a girl I adored. I had been moping around for days or weeks when my grandmother came to visit with my parents. She was always glad to see me, but she became very angry with me after dinner.

“You’ve got to snap out of this,” she told me after dinner in her hotel room. “Nobody wants to be around somebody as sour and withdrawn as you are. We will put up with you because we love you, but the people who don’t love you won’t stay with you for a minute if they don’t have to.” I was shocked to be called out by her like that, but she said it in a way that really shook up my thinking.

Naturally she was right. Unhappiness itself doesn’t drive people away, but the way you wear it does. Like it or not, that’s just a cold, hard fact. Better to adopt as friendly and hopeful a demeanor as you can. With any luck, it will draw toward you people whose company will console and reassure you. Maybe they will make you laugh, or at least forget yourself for a minute.

Friendship and love can be our salvation, even when it is friendship and love we have lost. This is what I have been feeling since last night, when Michael and I arrived at the hotel and started to work. I have felt it today. I feel my grandmother near as I write, and I am grateful to her.

My stepdaughter had a group of her friends over to the house today to watch movies and eat pizza. There is nothing like spending a few hours in the company of teenagers who like one another to make you feel hopeful about the future. Of course it helps if they also like adults and are polite, which her friends are.

They know how to laugh and how to be kids together. What is remarkable about them is that they don’t try to impress one another by being sophisticated, or worldly, or cynical. Teenagers like this are a reminder that adults could also choose to retain the best parts of their youth. The group likes to take pictures of one another laughing and smiling. They are easy to be with, and they are good to one another.

It is a relief when your child finds friends who are reliable, have good judgment, and know how to be good friends to one another. We would all be lucky to have such a group. The fact that many of them have been friends since kindergarten suggests that they know how lucky they are too. I’m very happy they opened up their circle to let my stepdaughter in during junior high.

I will stop with the baseball after this (probably). Thank you to all of you who are indulging me. But here’s the thing. I waited until I was nearly 40 to see the Red Sox win their first Series, and tonight, just three years later, I was sitting in the stadium in Denver to see them win their second Series in 4 years, in person. Because it was such a tense game, I didn’t really enjoy being there until it was over.

Now, though, all I can think is how happy my father would have been for me that I got to see it happen. He was generous about my love for the Red Sox, switching his childhood allegiances to root for my team, with the love of a convert, I should add. My mother is a big fan now, too. She especially loves Manny Ramirez.

My friends Derek and Karen made this happen for me. I can’t even describe how happy I am. But it feels great.

When I am around my friend Renee, I feel that wonderful things are going to happen. Perhaps it’s her quick sense of humor and easygoing affection. Regardless, it’s great fun to be around her.

Some people make me hopeful, because of their sheer determination to make the world a better place. That’s how she is, and the funny thing is that she makes the world a better place just by showing up.

Renee and I were talking about the future and what we would want it to be like. I want many of the typical things: to exercise more regularly, to learn to play a musical instrument, to watch what I eat, and to love what I do. We talked about the fact that all of these desires can be met. None depends on anyone else. The future is liberating.

My “best moment, worst moment” journal exercise was ridiculously easy tonight. My friend Chris called after work to say he had tickets for us to see Game 4 of the World Series this weekend. I’ve been a Red Sox fan since I was 10, and I watch a lot of games with my wife. My father was a huge fan, and one of the great thrills of my life was seeing the Red Sox end their 86-year World Series victory drought in 2004. I watched with my parents in their family room. My father and I both wept for joy, and my mother kept saying, “It’s because I became a fan this year.”

But I’ve never seen them play in a World Series game, and now I will. My wife is a saint to let me break weekend getaway plans with her and my stepdaughter to go. She is so kind to me. And it’s been three years, I think, since I saw my friend’s wife and children in Colorado.

What a thrill this will be. Needless to say, there was no “worst moment” today in my journal.

It is ridiculous how friends can surprise you beyond your wildest hopes and dreams. I am very fortunate.

My father-in-law sent me a great link to a video clip of a guy who has what looks like the most frightening job possible. You have to see the clip to appreciate it, and what I love is the subject’s description at the end of what fears he has overcome in life.

Years ago, my friend Ted took me camping in Baxter State Park in Maine. We did a 4-5 day trip, ending by hiking the Razor’s Edge down from Mount Katahdin. As you would expect, the trail is exceptionally narrow and plunges several hundred feet down on both sides. What’s even more nerve-wracking is that it is a prime spot for lightning strikes, and that day, we seemed to be just a few hours ahead of a storm.

Prior to that trip, I had struggled with a sort of low-grade but annoying fear of heights, but once you are there, you really have no alternative but to walk across it. We were both pretty ragged by that point–Ted had had to talk me up a mountain face on our first day, which I really didn’t think I had the strength to manage.

Still, needing to cross over, and with the scenery spectacular down to lakes and forests, we pressed ahead. I can’t remember for sure if we saw other hikers while we were out on the trail, but we knew that others had crossed ahead of us all summer. Knowing that it is possible, we just did what all the books tell you to do: one step at a time.

Usually I am only happy with overcoming a challenge after it’s done. This time, though, I was conscious all the way across of walking past my fears.

So watch the video clip and ask yourself what you fear that you could confront. There’s no better feeling.

It was our third or fourth warm night of the year, and a work colleague invited a group of us to join him in one of the luxury boxes at the AAA Pawtucket Red Sox’s stadium. The suite includes an indoor living room with television, sectional sofa, a few tables, and a large window so you can watch the game.

Through the door is the outdoor seating area, with three rows of seats, the lowest of which is partially below the level of the infield. I sat there most of the evening, talking about nothing of consequence with three of my co-workers.

Several guests brought their young children, which was nice for those that wanted to play and those that wanted to watch the game.

All in all, it was one of those nights of which you think, this is a very relaxing way to be. There must be people who don’t like professional sports, but I’m not one of them. So I watched the hitting and the running of young men chasing a dream. I watched it with men and women who are chasing or have found their own dream, from a really good spot.

I like to be reminded, as often as possible, that life can be sweet right where we are, that our happiness isn’t dependent on where we ultimately think we need to be. That’s how it was for me tonight.

My friend R and I had lunch outside today. I sat under the umbrella, and she wore sunglasses. Nothing makes soup and salad taste better to me than eating in the sunshine. Even in a chain restaurant next to the street in front of the mall, the experience felt cosmopolitan and Continental.

My friend is a lifelong student of personal development, in the best possible way. She thinks deeply about the value of her life to herself and to others, and she willingly shares her observations and insights about what seems to work and what doesn’t. Another quality of hers that I admire immensely is her absolute willingness to tell the truth and to be direct. I find it hard to have a superficial conversation with her, because she has a way of letting you know that it would really be much more interesting to skip to meaningful topics.

With her, I can’t lie about myself, and when I start to, I sound completely foolish.

Toward the end of the conversation, she talked about how she is learning to take things more slowly. We had been talking about reading books. I have stacks of them on my night stand and try to read about 10 at a time. Often this means I don’t finish what I start. Meanwhile, R has adopted the discipline to leave only one out next to her bed and to read it to the end before proceeding to the next.

For some reason, this habit strikes me as a towering achievement. Both of us acknowledged that we often want to have everything at once: solutions to problems, life ambitions, books read. She is learning to be more methodical and more measured, and she seems quite serene about it. I was impressed and envious, but I’m hoping that I can learn from her how to do this myself.

Many, many nice things happened to me today, and it started with waking up in New Mexico. I am in love with New Mexico. Waking up and seeing the sunshine here, guzzling water because the altitude always makes me thirsty, I chatted happily with my colleagues at breakfast in the hotel and then in the car on the way to our office.

And I finished the day having dinner at one of my favorite restaurants (Indigo Crow Cafe, no website yet) with one of my favorite people, a writer and blogger friend of mine. She recommended a wilted romaine lettuce salade with blue cheese, which exceeded expectations.

My friend set me straight on lots of levels–she’s great for that–, and she helped me see that the investment of time in this blog would be time well spent if I started looking for related blogs to read and on which to leave comments. Somehow, when she said it, it perfectly reinforced what Michael has been saying to me for a few weeks. I am so grateful. It was a series of priceless observations.

I thrive on the kind of instructive communication she was willing to share with me tonight. Thank you, thank you.