Category: Culture

The secret of our happiness.

It’s both obvious, and yet it is not!

Anyone who has more than a single dog around them knows how a group of dogs, even just a couple, are fantastic companions. Extending that line of thought brings one immediately to the realisation that a person who lives on their own yet has a dog never experiences the loneliness of a person who lives on their own ‘sans chien’.

So hold that notion in your mind as I introduce an item that was recently published on the Care 2 Living Healthy blogsite. It was called, in part, What really makes us happy and is republished here within the terms of Care 2.

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A 75-Year Study Reveals What Really Makes Us Happy

By: Becky Striepe, January 8, 2016

Robert Waldinger directed a 75-year study looking at what makes us happy. It boils down to three things, and they’re not the things we tend to think are going to make us happy. His TED Talk about the study findings challenges our most common life goals.

When you ask most people what would make them happy, their answers tend to cluster around achievement. Maybe they think they’d be happier if they were rich or famous. Or maybe they feel like success in their careers would bring them true happiness.

Unlike many studies on happiness, the Harvard Study of Health Development happened in real time. The researchers didn’t rely on memories of past events. Instead, this project—passed down from research team to research team for 75 years—followed a group of 724 men through their lives. They were interviewed every two years, and got complete physicals at every check-in.

When the project began, 268 of the men were sophomores at Harvard University, where the study took place. The other 456 men were inner-city Boston high school students.

Waldinger was the study’s fourth director and in his talk he explains some of the interesting findings about happiness. He says happiness boils down to three things, but if you wanted to sum it up even more succinctly, you could say this: What really makes us happy is social connection.

Waldinger says there are three main lessons about what really makes us happy that come from this study:

Social connections are critical to our mental and physical health. Whether it’s relationships with family, friends or neighbors, people who have social connection are happier and healthier. In fact, he says, loneliness is toxic. People who want these relationships but lack them are not only not as happy but they experience worse health.
Your number of friends doesn’t matter. What matters most is the quality of your relationships, not the quantity. People with loving relationships in their lives, not just from spouses, but friends or other family members, had overall better health. Quality of relationships was a better predictor of later-life health than markers we tend to focus on, like cholesterol levels.
Quality relationships are good for brain health. People who have quality relationships in their lives have better memory as they age. People without quality relationships were more likely to experience cognitive decline as they grew older.

He defines a quality relationship as one where you feel like you can count on the other person. He says that doesn’t mean never fighting. It means an overall sense of security.

When you hear these results, they sort of seem like a no-brainer, right? But when the study began, 80 percent of participants said being rich would make them happy. We know on some level that relationships are a key to happiness, but we tend to discount their full importance. Why? Waldinger gets into that in his talk, as well (at around 12:15, if you want to skip ahead). You can watch it in full right here:

Published on Nov 30, 2015

What makes us happy and healthy as we go through life?
If you want to invest in “the good life,” where should you put your time and energy? Robert Waldinger answers these questions with lessons learned from a 75-year-long study of adult life that started in the late 1930s and continues to this day.
Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Zen priest. He directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and teaches at Harvard Medical School.

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Thus while this study does not refer to dogs, nonetheless a dog or two (or nine!) does provide a wonderful social connection, as all those who know and love dogs will attest to.

Picture parade one hundred and thirty.

Speaking of dogs and cats …

(With huge thanks to John H. for sending these on to me.)

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Another set of these gorgeous photographs next week.

Stay happy and stay warm all of you!

Cold Winter nights.

The last few nights have been so cold we have needed to put an extra dog on the bed!

From left-to-right: Cleo; Hazel, Pedy; Oliver; Sweeny. (Photograph taken at 09:40 last Thursday, 7th January.)

Private First Class Lingo.

Don’t worry son, you’re in the Army now!

Fellow author member of AIM (Authors Innovative Marketing), Constance Frankland, sent me a link to this news item over on Californian station KSBW. Here it is:

and here are the details that were presented on KSBW’s website:

MONTEREY, Calif. —Private First Class Lingo is in the Army now.

The 8-month-old shepherd mix enlisted in a formal doggy ceremony in Monterey on Tuesday, signing up to be treated like any other member of the service.

“He will be uniformed, he will be tracked, he will be documented,” said Defense Language Institute commandant Col. Philip Deppert.

The Private First Class will go down in DLI’s history books as its first-ever mascot. The Presidio of Monterey had a canine mascot back in the 40s, before DLI existed, and his name was Sgt. Tippy.

Lingo is starting at the bottom in his military career, but Deppert said he will have opportunities to move up in rank if he behaves.

“He will also have the opportunity to lose rank, should he misbehave, and not perform as we expect the rest of our service members to,” the colonel said.

But so far the pup has been toeing the line: getting up early for walks, exercising out on the field with the students, and most importantly learning the art of obedience.

Part of Private Lingo’s training is learning how to run in formation because in February he is scheduled to lead the commandant’s run with all the 2,000 plus service members at DLI.

Aside from his normal duties, the rescue dog was brought to the Presidio of Monterey for a special mission, to be the mascot, and so far he is knocking it out of the park.

“He has made about 2,000 new best friends; he is a magnet any place he goes, and it is exactly what he was intended to do,” Deppert said.

Lingo was adopted from the SPCA for Monterey County in November.

Here are two photographs from that story.

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Another example of our incredible dogs.

The power of WordPress.

Back to the theme of sharing.

The latest WordPress report is out in terms of a review of WordPress blogging for 2015. Here’s how that review opens:

Here’s an incredible fact: together, you published more than 660 million posts on WordPress.com in 2015, and made more than 655 million comments.

That’s a whole lot of joy, laughter, tears, insight, and thoughtfulness. And it’s just one part of a huge global community of people — WordPress now powers more than 25% of the internet — with interests ranging from the news shaping our world to personal stories that shape our own families and lives.

We talked about the serious and the mundane, the silly and the sorrowful; we talked about creativity, sports, marriage, parenthood, politics, love, romance, differences, divisions, and identity.

From all of us at Automattic to everyone in the WordPress.com community: it’s been a thrill to watch, participate in, and support your work.

What an incredible community. One that demonstrates multiple times a day that sharing our lives, our dreams and our fears, is all that matters.

Speaking of large numbers here’s a repeat of something that I published last January. Hope not too many of you recall it from a year ago.

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“I see millions of stars.”

night-sky — Billions and billions of stars

The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert.

After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep. Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says,

“Kemo Sabe, look towards sky, what you see?“

The Lone Ranger replies,

“I see millions of stars.“

Tonto then responded,

“What that tell you?“

The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says,

“Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.

However, astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo.

Then again, thinking about the time just now, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning.

From a theologically perspective, it’s evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant.

Finally, meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.

What’s it tell you, Tonto?”

Tonto is silent for a moment, then says,

“Kemo Sabe, you dumber than buffalo chip. Someone has stolen tent.”

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All I want to add is this: Thank you all for taking an interest in Learning from Dogs.

Precious puppies

Just couldn’t resist these.

I was searching for another item on YouTube and accidentally came across these two videos.

Take a few minutes out of your day and revel in the following.

Published on Dec 29, 2015

Zina, a Maremma/Great Pyrenees mix, does her very best to get her father to play with her. Will he give in? Well, it’s not looking good so far…

Published on Mar 3, 2013

Zoey playing with her dad, Bravo, who was a certified therapy dog. 😦 Sadly, Bravo passed away in February. We are happy he can continue to bring joy to people through this video, even though he is no longer with us.

Dogs of all shapes and sizes bring us humans so much joy.

The beauty and power of words!

You are going to love this – guaranteed!

Eleanore MacDonald is the author of the blog Notes From An Endless Sea. It’s a blog that I have been following for a while.

On the last day of last year, I published a post that contained the following:

There is much in this new world that concerns me and I know I am not alone with this view. But the rewards of reading the thoughts of others right across the world are wonderful beyond measure.

Little did I know that in just five days time Eleanore would demonstrate “wonderful beyond measure” par excellence! With her very kind permission I republish in full her post from last Sunday. Please don’t read any further until you can be very still and read Eleanore’s post with your total concentration on her stunningly beautiful prose.

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January 3, 2016

I didn’t have to search for it. My word for the year just came to me, and with it, a host of lovely synonyms in its wake. Devotion. Well, devotion––minus the religious connotations––holding hands with dedication, fealty, loyalty, commitment, fortitude and constancy.

In the past I have labored over what it might be for me, that word that embodies all I want to do with my intentions in the year ahead. But this year, it came floating to me like an errant leaf, late falling on a winter’s breeze. It resonated deep within and because it came with an entourage I felt like a farmer with acres and acres of fertile, unblemished land spread before me all waiting for me to plant an endless bounty.

So I start my new cycle, this new year, with the sowing of seeds of intention, digging deeply into this dark, rich soil. It begins with a renewed Devotion and dedication to loving. To magic. And to beauty.

And writing – something I failed so miserably at conjuring last year. A block is no joke, it is a deep, dark hole that any creative soul can fall into and in my case is called ‘writer’s block’, and it is real. And it sucks. I banish it now with a loyalty to work, those further and continual efforts to paint with words from a palette-full of color.

And then there is Fealty. A deep and resonant fealty to my love/partner/mate, to family and those dear ones who love me as I am whether broken or whole; to those who love the animals and celebrate empathy, truth and compassion; to those who will be happy for me when I succeed, and cry with me in my sadness, who try to pick me up when I fall, and push me hard to continue to explore the vast continents of my interior and to walk onward along the path to becoming the best I can possibly be.

Those beloveds who allow me, in all of that vulnerability, to do the same for them.

Loyalty. Loyalty to my path. And to the greater good. To honesty, integrity, goodness, caring, loving––to kindness and empathy, to staying awake with eyes and ears and heart attentive to the big world around us, to laughter, to weeping buckets when I’m overflowing, to connection, to speaking up and speaking out (loudly!), to celebrating beauty and color, and to a nurturance of the evolution of soul and spirit, my own and that of others.

there is a world ... — there is a world …

Commitment. To continuing to wield light, through music.

Commitment to seeing the glass half full.

And to the voiceless ones, who really are my reason for being. The animals. Commitment to doing what I can to ease the burden of suffering for those in need of compassion and caring, of rescue and respite.

Commitment to honoring those others who continue to do the hard and mostly thankless work attending to the emergent needs of those barely surviving untenable lives in the shadows; those caring for the pets of the homeless, animals who act as angels for the people of the streets whose only tether left to any comfort in this life is a beloved dog or cat companion; those pulling the newborn kits and pups from garbage bins, or flimsy boxes set in the cold rain along busy streets, those rescuing dogs from a brutal existence of abuse, abandonment, fighting, life at the end of a cold chain; those earthly angels whose hearts have been broken over and over again yet they continue on, continue giving, helping, trying to make a better life and a better world for those left behind. (I have always held that, were humans to collectively realize that the other beings we share this glowing, gorgeous orb with––the animals, the trees, the waters, the land––all require and deserve our recognition, our action, our honor and caring, then the world’s ills would resolve. And so it goes…)

Fortitude. The fortitude to walk my path ahead in constancy, through dark and light with no time or inclination to curl into a ball and sink to the bottom of the well. Life now is too short for that.

Dedication, fealty, loyalty, commitment, fortitude… in action, together they reduce down and distill to a fine and pure constancy of devotion.

I am good with that! Right?

Do you have a ‘word for the year’? If so, do try to hold it close, in honor of its gift. When 2016 comes to pass, I would love to hear what your word was and how it served you. Or, how you served it.

Spreading my wings now… With love and light, and hopes that your year ahead is graced by all that is good,

Eleanore

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Adding anything from me runs the risk of diminishing the beauty of Eleanore’s words.

See you tomorrow!

A resolution for 2016

Says it all!

(This was published yesterday on Facebook by George Ball, a friend from my Devon days.)

Here’s to loving our dogs more than ever before in this new year.

A lesson in bridging divides.

From our dogs, of course!

Happy New Year to everyone!

I am what I learn!

Reflections on the old and the new.

So here we are on the last day of 2015, the cusp of a new year and who knows what the next twelve months have in store.

All I am going to do is to reflect on the huge potential our modern ‘wired-up’ world offers for learning.

Most will know the saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

But it is wrong!

Here at home, where a number of the dogs are in their old age (Pharaoh is the equivalent in age of 100 human years; one dog year being approximately the same as eight human years) Jean and I see no difficulty in these elderly dogs learning new tricks. Staying with Pharaoh, as an example, his hearing is pretty poor now but he has learnt a whole range of hand signals in recent months and he still communicates very well with us.

There is much in this new world that concerns me and I know I am not alone with this view. But the rewards of reading the thoughts of others right across the world are wonderful beyond measure.

Here’s a tiny dip into some fascinating items and articles that have graced my in-box in just the last twenty-four hours.

Eckhart Tolle’s Moment Reminder: “As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”
Val Boyco, “Everything comes to us that belongs to us, if we create the capacity to receive it.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore
John Zande in his Sketches on Atheism, “Theism’s most potent, pervasive, irresistibly enchanting gift to frightened but otherwise sane individuals is a belief—a promise—that upon their death they will go home.”
Mother Nature Network, “7 ways to meditate while you move – If you don’t have time for sitting meditation, give one of these active meditations a try.”
George Monbiot, (on the UK floods), “These floods were not just predictable. They were predicted. There were clear and specific warnings that the management of land upstream of the towns now featuring in the news would lead to disaster.”

and my final selection:

Patrice Ayme: (from an essay on Brain & Consciousness) “The best microprocessors you can buy in a store now can do 10 to the power 11 (10^11; one hundred billions) operations per second and use a few hundred watts,” says Wilfred van der Wiel of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, a leader of the gold circuitry effort. “The human brain can do orders of magnitude more and uses only 10 to 20 watts. That’s a huge gap in efficiency.”

So here’s to a new year of wonderful new learnings. And let me leave you with this additional message for 2016.

Namely that The Nation weekly journal are celebrating their 150 years of publishing the magazine. They recently published a 150th Anniversary edition and the front editorial is written by Katrina Vanden Heuval. There is a ‘break out’ to one side on Page 2 of that editorial that reads:

Change is inevitable, but the one constant in The Nation‘s history has been a faith in what can happen if you tell people the truth.

Finding out the truth and sharing it so we can all see what can happen is my wish for 2016.

Happy New Year to all of you, and to all of your friends and loved ones.

A 75-Year Study Reveals What Really Makes Us Happy

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Here’s an incredible fact: together, you published more than 660 million posts on WordPress.com in 2015, and made more than 655 million comments.

“I see millions of stars.”

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