Twelve Personal Commandments

Four Splendid Truths

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What Started Me Thinking

  • "The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." Mark Twain
  • “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
  • "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
  • “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
  • “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
  • “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
  • “A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
  • “Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
  • “Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

  • Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
  • Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
  • Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
  • Sartre: "Hell is other people."
  • Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
  • Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
  • John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

Why it's so hard to "Be Gretchen." (Even for those of us actually named "Gretchen.")

The first of my Twelve Commandments is “Be Gretchen.” Now, why is it hard just to be myself?

It sounds so simple. It’s a piece of advice that people have been doling out for thousands of years (I think the Pythian Oracle is inscribed ‘Know thyself’). And yet it’s very, very hard to do.

And I’ve realized one of the reasons why. It’s because although you can choose what you do, you can’t choose what you like to do. You can’t control your tastes.

I’m thinking about this because I’m sitting in a coffee shop, and they’re playing Kate Bush over the loudspeaker.

Kickinside_1I have a confession to make. I love Kate Bush. I have practically no interest in music, but the first time I heard her “The Kick Inside,” I loved it. I still remember the afternoon when, during my sophomore year in college, my roommate’s friend from home (he clearly had a huge unrequited crush on her) brought it over on a Friday afternoon, and for lack of anything better to do, we listened to it as we began the elaborate process of “getting ready to go out.”

That reaction was unusual for me. Although I do love certain songs, I have only a mild appreciation for most music.

I listened to Kate Bush for a while. But gradually I decided that I didn’t like the fact that I liked it. I wished that I liked jazz, or cutting-edge music, or at least classical music. Kate Bush was too…sentimental. Sappy. Histrionic. Icky mystical. But nevertheless I loved it. So what to do? Gradually I stopped listening to it.

About a year ago, I saw on Amazon that her new CD "Aerial" got some ecstatic reviews. For the first time in a long time, I thought about Kate Bush. I briefly considered buying it, but then I thought—no, I’m not the kind of person who listens to Kate Bush.

Maybe I’m not the kind of person who listens to Kate Bush.
But whether I like it or not, I am the kind of person who likes Kate Bush.

Be Gretchen. I just ordered Aerial.


Posted November 27, 2006

Comments

Aerial is an interesting album... I could listen to The Kick Inside over and over, but unfortunately I could only listen to Aerial once... It was maybe just too deep (weird?) for me. I should probably give it another try because I am also "the kind of person who likes Kate Bush" :o)

Posted by: Chris Cavanagh | November 27, 2006 at 03:50 PM

Your tastes - your likes and dislikes - are a great part of what make you, you. It's a shame to feel like we have to hide them, or apologize for them. Wouldn't it be so easy to completely be ourselves, if we all just weren't always concerned about what other people's reaction to our being ourselves was?

Posted by: Sharyn | November 27, 2006 at 04:41 PM

Here's an interesting article on happiness a friend sent to me today. Enjoy!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15909133/wid/11915773?GT1=8717

Posted by: Kelly | November 27, 2006 at 04:57 PM

I hear you! My friends pick on me because my taste in music runs to sappy, historonic, sappy music about relationships, rain and sex. It's a grand joke now. But I love it so.

Posted by: Autumn | November 27, 2006 at 05:02 PM

As for the "Be Gretchen"... Maybe liking Kate Bush is part of being Gretchen, and not liking liking her is too :o)

This would mean that you were Gretchen all along.

Man, that's deep :o)

PS
I like Kate Bush too.

Posted by: Alexander Kjerulf | November 28, 2006 at 08:40 AM

I love Kate Bush! :)

~Monica

Posted by: Monica Ricci | November 28, 2006 at 05:56 PM

Hi Gretchen! I adore Kate Bush's music, especially "Aerial", and here's why: To me she is so entranced by things we take for granted or consider mundane: a birdsong, washing laundry, a sunset. She gives us a look at them through her eyes with her voice, her words, her music. For me, it's magical and puts me right in the moment with her.

So, what did *you* think of "Aerial"?

Posted by: Lucy | November 29, 2006 at 10:00 PM

I met a singer/songwriter named Jodi Shaw from Williamsburg whom I think is just wonderfully gifted. She needs to be discovered. Any tips?
www.jodishaw.com

Posted by: Saul | November 30, 2006 at 11:31 AM

I keep "re"discovering your website every once in a while. I thought this entry was great and cut right to the heart of some of my issues with myself. It made me very curious in your other "commandments" for yourself. I was dissapointed to find that the list on the left side of your blog does not link to relevant posts about every commandment. I would love it if it did! [nudge, nudge!] I have a feeling some of them would work for me if I understood what they meant.

Thanks for sharing your personal journey.

I'll try to remember to check back more often.

Posted by: ayala | December 05, 2006 at 12:40 PM

coincidence, i was curious about the meaning of be gretchen, and was considering the new kate Bush album, unsure whether i liked it!

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Gretchen RubinGretchen Rubin is the best-selling writer whose book, The Happiness Project, is the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. Here, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.

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