The Happiness Project

If you're interested in reading compelling memoirs of catastrophe...

On the last day of each month, I include a happiness suggested-reading list.

For the month of memento mori, I read a huge number of memoirs dealing with issues of divorce, illness, death, and other catastrophes. Here are a few that I found especially compelling.

Violet Weingarten, Intimations of Mortality
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
Robert Murphy, The Body Silent
Martha Beck, Expecting Adam
Penny Kaganoff and Susan Spano, Women on Divorce
Cornelius Ryan and Kathryn Morgan Ryan, A Private Battle (memoirs of husband and wife)
Marjorie Williams, The Woman at the Washington Zoo
Michael Korda, Man to Man
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (look at the cover--you'll see that a few of the letters in the title are in a different color. The letters spell JOHN.)
Gilda Radner, It’s Always Something
Anne Lamott, Hard Laughter (a novel)
Gene O'Kelly, Chasing Daylight

All of these books are well worth reading, but I especially recommend Stan Mack’s account of Janet Bode’s struggle with breast cancer, Janet and Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss.
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I'm pleased to have discovered the Happiness and Public Policy blog. I just started poking around--lots of interesting material and links there, with a strong point of view, which makes it fun to read.

This Wednesday: Tips from memoirs about illness.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Tips I gleaned from reading dozens of memoirs about illness.

Now I have a new appreciation for my good fortune in not having had much experience with hospitals—so far. As I was reading these memoirs--mostly about cancer--I made note of the bits of advice I read on how to cope with a serious illness. It seems a bit offensive, or at least overly simplistic, to sum up these profound experiences in a tips list, but the writers themselves seemed eager to try to help others learn from what they went through. So here goes:

 For long periods of suffering, take it day by day. Don’t anticipate.
 Being gregarious and upbeat wins you more attention from the staff. This isn’t fair, but it’s true.
 A lot of living goes on in the course of dying. Don’t postpone things—like seeing friends—until you’re “doing better.” You may never do better.
 If a friend is sick, show your concern. Don’t assume he or she will know, or will ask for your help. Caring silently from a distance looks like denial, or lack of concern, to the ill person.
 As a friend, don’t forget about caregivers, who not only help the ill, but also share the life they lead—and aren’t cut as much slack as the person who is sick. For example, they often keep working, while assuming a huge number of new responsibilities and worries.
 MANAGE PAIN!
 I wonder whether it would help or hurt you if you mentioned to the medical staff that you were writing a book about the experience.

Unfortunately, although these memoirs are packed with accounts of doctors, nurses, and others who were wonderful, they’re also crammed with stories about devastating problems and hideous frustration with doctors, nurses, and hospitals.

From this, I took the following lessons:
o You need to educate yourself as much as possible. Doctors don’t have the time or the emotional energy to explain all the possibilities to patients and their families.
o Write everything down. It’s hard to take in information the first time you hear it. And keep thorough records for insurance purposes, too.
o Every additional course of action carries pitfalls: side effects, pain, the difficulty of recovery from surgery, subsequent infections, time in the hospital, the real possibility of medical mistakes. So resist the impulse to “do everything.”
o Double-check everything you can. When my father was in the hospital, his doctor told him not to drink anything, then a nurse urged him to take a pill with water—which would have been disastrous, if he’d done it. A friend who went through chemo had a special notebook where she wrote down her prescriptions, and checked her notes against the chemo bags before she allowed each treatment to proceed.
o Before following a course of treatment, press as hard as you can—is this procedure absolutely necessary (e.g., do you really have to have that enema)? How painful will it be? How invasive is it? What other options exist, and are any of them less invasive, painful, etc? What will happen if the procedure isn’t done? Arthur Frank refused to sign a consent form when his doctor didn’t explain an operation to his satisfaction—and then ended up not having it at all.
o Note that the medical staff often minimizes the discomfort and difficulty of treatments. Perhaps this arises from a desire not to be discouraging, but the effect is often to make it difficult to plan (will it really be possible to go back to work within a few days?) or to make patients feel that they’re complaining unreasonably.
o Stay with the patient as much as possible. I don’t know what the visiting rules are in hospitals, but having read these books, I don’t think I’d leave a patient alone there, ever, if I could help it.
o Insist on understanding the true prognosis. In several accounts I’ve read, people reflect sadly that they didn’t really understand that the patient was going to die. And so they made choices they regretted—for instance, resisting using methadone, despite its effectiveness in fighting pain, because of its addictive properties. A ridiculous concern to someone who will die in three months! Terrible news is hard to hear, and it’s hard to give, so if you want to know, you need to push. Stan Mack recalls that Janet’s doctors’ talk was “ambiguous.” He recalled a doctor saying, “You don’t have a curable cancer anymore, but with medication there is a subset of women who…” They didn't understand what they were being told.

It's time to stop reading memoirs by people fighting cancer.

It’s just about time to stop reading cancer memoirs. They’re haunting, fascinating, and I keep adding more books to my pile—but I’m going to make myself quit when August is over.

Reading so many, I see poignant connections among them.

In his 1979 memoir of prostate cancer, A Private Battle, Cornelius Ryan mentions visiting his publisher Michael Korda to tell him about the cancer; I’ve read Korda’s Man to Man, so I know Korda will have his own fight with prostate cancer, twenty years later.

In her 1989 breast-cancer memoir, It's Always Something, Gilda Radner talks about how important The Wellness Community became to her; in Stan Mack’s 2004 memoir of Janet Bode’s breast cancer, Janet and Me, Mack talks about going to a support group at Gilda’s Club—an organization started by Radner’s husband, Gene Wilder, after Radner died in 1989.

Anatole Broyard’s Intoxicated by My Illness is an account of his prostate cancer. The book includes Broyard’s short story, “What the Cystoscope Said,” inspired by his reaction to his own father’s experience with cancer. Cancer killed both of them, the son forty-one years after the father.

But as compelling as these memoirs are, I think I need to stop reading them. Pain, hospitals, fear, affliction, humiliation, and dread have become too vivid in my mind.

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s account of the first year after her husband’s death, she tells the story of John’s first heart attack.

I lent my copy of the book, so I can’t check the exact words, but I remember reading that John told Joan something like, “Now I know how I’m going to die,” after his heart attack. She scoffed at this; he could be hit by a car. But, in fact, at that point he did know how he was going to die.

That phrase has lingered in my mind. “Now I know how I’m going to die.” It gives me a sense of panic that I didn’t feel before, when I hear words like cancer, chemotherapy, exploratory surgery, and all the rest.

In many ways, reading these illness memoirs has made me better able to think about bad things that might happen in the future. But I think it’s time to stop reading them now. Time to take that familiar advice: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Have I learned nothing from my work on the Happiness Project? A bad morning...

I’ve done everything wrong today.

“Sing in the morning?” Hardly. It’s not even noon yet, and I’ve already yelled, screamed, hissed, snapped, and said things like, “Can’t you please just do ONE THING I ask you to do?” and “Get out of my way!”

My only excuse is that the Little Girl woke up in misery. The minute I picked her up, she started to make the universal sign for “ear infection”—pathetically batting the air next to her head, trying to wave away the pain.

Listening to your own baby crying in pain is agonizing. This is obviously advantageous from an evolutionary standpoint, but my nerves were shot after the first few minutes.

I had an hour and a half of singing, rocking, and walking around the house before the doctor’s office opened at 8:30. Mercifully, the doctor was willing to squeeze us in right away. As predicted, the Little Girl has a double ear infection—poor thing, she’s never had one before.

I couldn’t have handled the situation with less serenity or good manners. I was reasonably polite in the doctor’s office, but I snapped at the pharmacist, at the taxi driver, and at the poor sweet Big Girl who was trying hard to be helpful.

I think my work on the Happiness Project actually made me behave worse. In the past, I wouldn’t have been so conscious of how atrociously I was behaving. Realizing what a bad job I was doing made me feel guilty and inadequate—which in turn made me act even crabbier.

But now the Little Girl is asleep, having had her Tylenol (she threw up the first batch), her prescription is waiting in the fridge, the Big Girl is visiting her grandmother, and I’m promising myself to do better later.
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This month, I've been reading of lots of memoirs by people dealing with catastrophe--most often, illness. On the Internet, I stumbled across no more mashed potatoes, a blog by a woman who is dealing with chronic illness, in her case from TMJ disorder. A lot of very helpful material there.

This Saturday: a quote from Samuel Butler.

“I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.” --Samuel Butler
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I think of this comment by Samuel Butler whenever I'm breaking my commandment to "Be Gretchen" and trying to make myself like things like fly-fishing, foie gras, or the novels of Philip Roth.

In which I steel myself to use the specialty diaper-disposal bags I foolishly bought eighteen months ago.

Last night, I had to remind myself to follow my Twelve Commandments and to “spend out”—that is, to stop senseless hoarding, to be willing to use things up, to trust to abundance.

We were packing to go away for a few days to a house we rent in the Catskills.

As I was gathering things for the Little Girl, I caught sight of an unopened package of “Sassy Diaper Sacks” in her drawer. These are small, scented diaper disposal bags, the right size to tie up one dirty diaper.

Just before the Little Girl was born, we made a trip to a gigantic baby supply store. As second-time parents, we managed to steer clear of most of the useless gadgetry that first-time parents can’t resist. But these little sacks caught my eye.

“They’d be so handy when we’re at someone else’s house,” I said to the Big Man. “I never know what to do with dirty diapers if we’re visiting people who don’t have a baby themselves.”

“Sure,” he shrugged. He just wanted to get out of there. Super-stores depress him.

So we bought the diaper sacks—a package of 50. And now the Little Girl is eighteen months old, and I’ve never opened the package.

Have we visited people who don’t have a diaper-disposal system in place? Of course. And why hadn’t I used the diaper sacks? I asked myself. Well, I had to admit, I was saving them. But why? For what?

This is the foolishness of not spending out. I act as though a more deserving time will come in the future—a time more deserving than the last eighteen months have been. I can easily imagine the Little Girl outgrowing diapers before I decide that the time had come to break out the diaper sacks.

It was very foolish to buy those diaper sacks. They’re the kind of unnecessary product that just puts more plastic in landfills. But having bought them, it’s silly to “save” them. Not using them is just as wasteful as throwing them away unused.

So I packed the sacks to take on our trip. And in the rental house, instead of using the clear, plastic, grocery-store produce bags to tie up the diapers before putting them in the trash, I use these specialty bags. They’re very nice, very convenient—just as convenient as the produce bags.

But I’m glad that I’m putting them to their proper use, instead of hoarding them to no purpose.
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I've been diving into the treasure trove of information at management expert Bob Sutton's Work Matters blog. It's about management, but really it's about dealing with other people, and the suggestions are so smart, and the writing is so funny, that I enjoy reading even the parts that don't apply to me.

You're getting an "A" at the end of the semester. What will you have done to deserve it?

I decided to take a little break from reading catastrophe memoirs, and I picked up The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.

Benjamin Zander, a conductor, explains a technique—“giving an A”— he used in his class on the Art of Musical Performance. From experience, he knew his students would be so anxious about their grades that they wouldn’t take risks—yet taking risks was essential to their mastery.

So he announced that each student would get an A for the course.

“However,” he told them, “there is one requirement that you must fulfill to earn this grade…you must write me a letter dated next May…‘Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because…,’ and in this letter you are to tell, in as much detail as you can, the story of what will have happened to you by next May that is in line with this extraordinary grade.”

He includes some excerpts from students' letters, and they’re astonishing to read. Putting themselves in the future, the students wrote letters that described with extraordinary excitement and relief the goals they’d attained and the fears they’d surmounted. It was surprisingly moving.

It struck me that the Happiness Project is a bit like the “giving an A” approach. Although I frame the process differently, I imagine very clearly how I want my life to have changed, for the better, by the end of this year.

Eliminating grades might seem like a utopian strategy that wouldn’t work in any other context, but my law school used a lesser version. At Yale (at least when I was there), for that first terrifying semester, all first-year students got a “Pass” for their classes, unless they did something extreme—like refuse to take the exams. And for all three years, Yale Law School only awarded grades of “High Pass,” “Pass,” “Low Pass,” and “Fail.” Low Passes were quite rare; I’ve never heard of a Fail.

The funny thing is, most of the students—even the first-years—studied just as hard. But this system took the edge off considerably, and it allowed people to take much greater risks in what they chose to do. I wrote a paper about dread!

In our last year of law school, a friend had a funny experience at a job interview.

“What’s your class rank?” asked the interviewer.

“We don’t really get grades,” my friend said, and he explained the Yale system. “So we aren’t ranked.”

“But surely you must have some idea of your rank in the class. Approximately where do you stand?”

“I really don’t have any way to know, because I don’t know what other people get.”

“But you must have some idea,” the interviewer insisted. “Take a guess.”

“Well,” my friend said, “I’d guess I’m first in my class.”

So try this: imagine that it's December 2006, and you're very pleased with the "A" you received in recognition of all that you accomplished this semester. What will you have done to deserve that "A"?

This Wednesday: Tips for getting your sweetheart to do chores—without nagging.

Tips for getting your sweetheart to do chores—without nagging.

In marriage, or any partnership, chores are a huge source of conflict. How do you get your sweetheart to hold up his or her end, without nagging?

 It’s annoying to hear a hectoring voice, so suggest tasks without words. When the Big Man needs a prescription filled, he puts his empty medicine bottle on the bathroom counter. Then I know to get it re-filled.

 If you need to voice a reminder, limit yourself to one word. Instead of barking out, “Now remember, I’ve told you a dozen times, stop off at the grocery store, we need milk, if you forget, you’re going right back out!” Instead, call out, “Grocery store!” or “Milk!”

 Don’t insist that a task be done on your schedule. “You’ve got to trim those hedges today!” Says who? Try, “When are you planning to trim the hedges?” If possible, show why something needs to be done by a certain time. “Will you be able to trim the hedges before our party next week?”

 Remind your partner that it’s better to decline a task than to break a promise. The Big Man told me that he’d emailed some friends to tell them we had to miss their dinner party to go to a family dinner—but he hadn’t. Then I had to cancel at the last minute. Now I tell him, “You don’t have to do it. But tell me, so I can it.”

 Have clear assignments. I always call repairmen; the Big Man always empties the Diaper Genie.

 Every once in a while, do your sweetheart’s task, for a treat. This kind of pitching-in wins enormous goodwill.

 Assign chores based on personal priorities. I hate a messy bedroom more than the Big Man, but he hates a messy kitchen more than I. So I do more tidying in the bedroom, and he does more in the kitchen.

 Do it yourself. I used to be annoyed with the Big Man because we never had cash in the house. Then I realized: why did I get to assign that job? Now I do it, and we always have cash, and I’m not annoyed.

 Keep a to-do list. That way, if an energetic mood strikes, you know what needs doing. This works very well with the Big Man. He makes fun of me, but I see him consult the list.

 Set aside a weekend afternoon for home improvement. Your sweetheart may think, “I’ll clean out the mess in the breakfast room when I have some free time,” but no one has that much free time. Make time for it.

 Settle for a partial victory. Maybe your partner won’t put dishes in the dishwasher, but getting them from the family room into the sink is a big improvement.

 Re-frame: decide that you actually enjoy a chore. This sounds ridiculous, but it works. I usually dislike shopping for kids’ clothes, but because the Big Man enjoys back-to-school shopping, I was able to find it fun, too.

 Re-frame: decide that you don’t mind doing a chore—like putting clothes in the hamper or hanging up wet towels.

 Don’t push for the impossible. The Big Man knows that there’s no way I’ll do anything relating to our car, so he doesn’t even ask.

 No carping from the sidelines. If your partner made the travel arrangements, don’t criticize the flight time. If your partner got the kids dressed, don’t mock the outfits. If you want something done your way, do it yourself.

 Remember that messy areas tend to stay messy, and tidy areas tend to stay tidy. If you want your partner to be neat, be neat yourself.

 If a task is a high priority, make that clear. I used to leave popsicle sticks all around the house. Then the Big Man held one up and said very nicely, “You know how some people feel about the cap being left off the toothpaste? That’s how I feel about these things.” Message received.

 Think about how money might be able to buy some happiness. Could you find a teenager to mow the lawn? Could you hire a weekly cleaning service? Could you buy prepared foods? Eliminating conflict in a relationship is a high happiness priority, so this is a place to spend money if it can help.

 A friend has a very radical solution: she and her husband don’t assign. That’s right. They never say, “Get me a diaper,” “The trash needs to go out,” etc. This only works because neither one of them is a slacker, but still—what a tactic!

I admit that these tips are practically useless, however, in a situation where one person is absolutely oblivious for the need for chores to be done. I have it easy, because if anything, the Big Man is more chore-oriented than I am. If a person simply does not care, it’s practically impossible to get him or her to participate.

Slow progress toward happiness--better than no progress.

Yesterday, I asked the Big Girl to bring some dishes into the kitchen. She hopped to it without protest, but on her way back, dropped a mug full of black coffee which splattered on the carpet, wall, and wooden floor.

I smugly congratulated myself for holding my temper. In a tight but calm voice, I told her and the Big Man to get towels, and they both helped clean up. But did I leave it at that? Nope. I couldn’t resist some kind of remonstrance.

“The lesson is that you shouldn’t load yourself up too much,” I instructed. “It’s better to make two trips and not risk dropping something. It just makes more work, in the end.”

“Don’t blame me!” she wailed. “You always say it’s my fault.”

Of course I’d said nothing like that, and I don't always say things are her fault. But she was right that I was feeling annoyed. We all had to leave, just then, so we didn’t continue the conversation. But after we left, I had to go back for my sunglasses, and I had a minute to think about the incident from her perspective.

She was asked to do a pesky, if appropriate, chore, and she did it willingly. Just as she was about to finish, something went wrong. I know that feeling so well—the disappointment and frustration that comes when a good deed is thwarted.

How do I rate my reaction? I didn’t get angry—good. I didn’t praise her willingness—optional, but would have been nice. I didn’t say in a jovial way, “Accidents happen! Quick, everyone grab towels, and let’s mop up”—which would have been a much pleasanter response, happier both for them and for me.

The Happiness Project may have me over-thinking my every move, but I do believe it’s slowly making a difference. Last year, I think I would have found some way to yell. Next year, maybe I’ll be able to handle something like that with sincere good cheer.

Suffering the "lost wallet syndrome."

I was at the drug store yesterday, loaded up with necessities, when I discovered that my credit-card wallet wasn’t in my backpack.

I have a special system for handling my wallet stuff. After a friend’s wallet was stolen, with four friends sitting right there, I changed the way I organize my wallet items.

My backpack has an outside zipper that opens a small side pocket, and a top zipper that opens the entire bag. The outer pocket is far more vulnerable, but also more convenient. So in that pocket I keep a zippered pouch that holds my change, some cash for the day, my subway card, and my bank card. Tucked deep inside a side pocket in the main bag I keep a small wallet with two credit cards, my insurance cards, my driver’s license, and my AAA card.

My aim is to avoid going into my credit-card wallet very often, so that I’m less likely to lose it, and to keep it inaccessible, so it’s less likely to be stolen.

I always keep this wallet in exactly the same place, so when it was missing, I was pretty worried. But even though I was anxious, I was comforted by my set-up. It would’ve been pretty tough for someone to steal that wallet, and given what I’d been doing the last few days, it was unlikely that I’d lost it. I hurried home and found it right away. When I’d thrown my backpack on a chair, it had slid out.

The incident did show me that I didn’t have a clear idea of what to do if the wallet had been gone. So this morning I typed up a list of its contents and the numbers to call if it went missing. I’m going to do the same thing tonight for the Big Man. That way, if the worst happens, it won’t be a horrible nightmare to try to figure out what’s missing and whom to call.

Finding my wallet gave me a quick surge of joy that dissipated almost immediately. Call this the “lost wallet syndrome”—when you’ve lost your wallet, you think, “If only I could have my wallet back, how happy I would be!” But when you get your wallet back, the delighted relief comes and goes in a flash.

Once again, I'm reminded of one of Life’s True Rules: it’s hard to be grateful for the absence of a problem.

Losing my wallet certainly gave me an entry for my gratitude journal--and of course, it's a good example of the benefit of keeping a gratitude journal, as trumped up as it sometimes does seem to me.
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Here's Roy Peter Clark's fabulous list of 50 tools for better writing--very specific and clearly explained. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to pull the 50 ways up in a single document, so I can print it out without opening each “tool” individually.