MamaBlogga

I like music (surprising, I know). My favorite artists perform ’60s and ’70s pop and rock. Well, really I should say performed. Over the weekend, I indulged a fascination with one of my favorite bands as I listened to their greatest hits and researched a lot about their members. The excesses of the lifestyle resulted in untimely death, as it has for so many people in that industry. (From the classic trio, only rock’n'roll is good for you, you know.)

I kept thinking about this this week. So many of these artists were immensely talented and really contributed so much to modern popular music—but I don’t think they were truly happy. I certainly don’t know what their personal lives were really like, but I think they spent a lot of their time and effort in trying to fill themselves by doing whatever they think might make them happy. But without (divine) guidance, they didn’t know where to begin to look.

I cannot count how many times in the last week that I looked at a child in my arms, heard my baby’s laugh, or cuddled with my kids and thought He never had this. (They’re mostly guys, which is most likely also a product of the time period.) He lost his life trying to find the things that would make him feel good, and I have it right here.

When I was visiting my family recently, my dad and I had a similar conversation—but it wasn’t talented rock stars missing out. It was everyday people, coworkers and the like, who hadn’t been taught the importance of family. They put off marriage, put off having kids, and when they do finally decide to do it, they keep their family as small as possible and don’t seem to make their children the priority that they should. They, too, spend (perhaps we could even say “waste”) their lives doing whatever feels good at the time, hoping that it will help them to be happy, and usually ending up empty.

I think that we can make ourselves feel good momentarily by choosing what feels good. I once likened this to eating desserts. I have a major sweet tooth and basically could live on chocolate. I don’t go a day without it without major effort. Eating sweets feels good at the moment.

But trying to fill myself with sweets? Not so much. I have to have something with substance and nutrients, or I know I’ll feel awful (and awful about myself! Hello, body image issues). I will have consumed thousands of calories and still feel empty.

So I eat healthy things. And they usually taste good. It’s not the intense but momentary reward of a dessert, but it’s a delicious flavor that keeps me healthy.

Doing whatever I want to do with my life (which would probably devolve into sitting in front of the computer for a long time!) might taste sweet at the moment, but living only for myself would quickly devolve into psychological nausea and self-image issues.

While sweets might always be my favorite self-indulgence, I’m glad that I have the substance. It might not give the instant satisfaction that’s so addicting, but choosing the better part is more than choosing the best piece of cake. What I’m doing is important and it WILL last and make a difference—and more than that, it’s beautiful now.

What do you think?

Photo by Jake Bellucci

This might be my favorite post on this blog of all time.

Choosing happiness. It’s been a bit of a theme for the year—one of my resolutions, one of our Group Writing Projects (oh, man, looks like it’s about time for one of those again). It’s something we hear about a lot.

And now I finally know what it means.

Surprisingly, it has a lot to do with why, when I talk about how heart-rendingly difficult stay-at-home motherhood can be, people tell me I should get a job.

It’s because we don’t know how to be happy.

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness.

The analogy that keeps springing to my mind is one of food. I like donuts and ice cream and cake and pie . . . I could go on, but you get the idea. Food does make me happy, treats especially. I do the grocery shopping, so if I wanted to, I could stock up on these things every week and eat them every meal.

But I can’t choose cake and ice cream all the time. Yeah, I’d enjoy eating it (to a point), but I would soon get sick, gain weight, and miss out on vital nutrients. (Scurvy, anyone? Oh and PS tooth decay?)

To be happy with my body (liking how I look) and happy in my body (not feeling like crap), I have to make healthier choices. I do enjoy eating healthier foods, too, though not as much as my sugary treats.

The same goes for my day-to-day activities. I could ignore my kids all day, plunk myself down in front of the computer and them in front of the TV (where we are now, thank you), but we all end up grumpy and lazy.

Choosing happiness means doing what I may not want to do most right now—it means choosing the thing that I know is right for me, what’s important in the long run.

Staying home with my children all day may not be an endless delight for me. There are diapers and housekeeping and tantrums and nap strikes. But I believe the most important contribution a person can make to the world is to raise their children right, to show them love, to give them their personal attention. I know that in twenty years, my successful marketing campaigns won’t be what warms the cockles of my heart.

By choosing to raise my children myself, I’m choosing a long, hard road—but one that leads to real, long-term happiness.

What do you think? Are you giving up treats today so you don’t vomit tomorrow?

(More thoughts on how to choose happiness as a mom here.)

This post originally ran 8 October 2009.

Photo by Swamibu

Considering the topic of my blog, quotes on happiness tend to stand out for me. I found one of these last week while reading Delirium, which I really liked. The book is about a society where they’ve found a cure for love—and it’s mandatory. It’s illegal to fall in love. Even parents don’t really love their children. If a child gets hurt, their parents tell them to get up—if they respond at all. A mother mentions that her child had pneumonia for two weeks as if she was reporting an appliance breaking down. (Dude, if I didn’t love my kids, I’d be ANGRY I had to take care of them when they were sick. But the Cure takes care of that, too.)

The main character and her best friend are coming up on their turn for the procedure. As they go in for their pre-procedure evaluations, the friend turns to the main character and says, “You can’t be really happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes. You know that, right?”

The main character thinks her friend has kinda lost it, but by the end of the book, she knows that her friend was right.

The other happiness quote I’ve come across this week was on a friend’s blog:

“Everybody in the world is seeking happiness – and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.” – Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People via Clarissa Draper.

Love it!

What are your favorite quotes about happiness?

Photo by Peyri Herrera

But perhaps most importantly, H is for this guy:

Happiness. We all want it. And yet it seems to elude us the more we think about it.

I think that it’s really easy to overthink happiness. Happiness is a choice, an attitude, but mostly for me it means focusing not on myself and what I want to do, but what I know is most important: my family.

This was a big take home lesson for me a couple years ago as I thought about how to choose happiness:

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness. . . .

Choosing happiness means doing what I may not want to do most right now—it means choosing the thing that I know is right for me, what’s important in the long run.

My conclusion is something I still need to work on: “Choosing happiness means choosing my children. It doesn’t mean that I am completely subjugated or I have to ignore all my own needs—but when I take the time to really work at being a mom, the whole family is happier—including me.”

What do you think? What is happiness to you?

If you’re in Utah, don’t forget to enter the Thanksgiving Point Giveaway! Today is the last day!

It seems like, if we’re happy, we’re supposed to love every minute of our lives. If we enjoy motherhood, we should love every minute of it. And some people really do love every minute of being a mom—so if we don’t, there must be something wrong with us.

I don’t believe that’s true (and I sincerely hope it’s not!).

I say this because sometimes I struggle to love any minute of motherhood, for weeks at a time. Sure, there’s the occasional 30 seconds of bliss as I snuggle a finally-asleep-again-baby, and the flush of pride when Rachel starts crawling at six months or Rebecca successfully counts to 12(!) at <two and a half, and the smiles at Hayden’s first realistic full-body drawing:

But those tiny pleasures are so easily forgotten after hours of diapers, whining, crying, screaming, bickering, punishments, refereeing, and motherhood in general—hours where it feels like these tiny tyrants need everything you have to give and more.

When I dare to admit that feeling, I often get comments telling me I should go back to work. Give up, essentially. Focus on what will make you happiest (“giddy with delight”) immediately.

I do still think that what I’m doing as a stay-at-home mom is important. But sometimes, I’m so unhappy on a daily basis that I struggle to feel that what I’m doing is best for me and for the kids.

I do still think that what I said a year ago is true:

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness.

But I think I need to put more effort into making better choices on a day-to-day basis. I don’t believe we’ll be “giddy with delight” every minute, no matter what we’re doing, but we can try to focus on the things that do make us feel good about motherhood. And it’s about time I recommit to doing that.

When I was good about working on Feeling Fulfilled Fridays, that’s what I was trying to do: focus on those things that I can do to affect the way I feel and we all function. Maybe it’s about time I work on those things again.

I stopped posting about it for several reasons: struggling with these feelings, being too busy, and the deafening lack of response and enthusiasm from 99% of my readership. However, I think that focusing on fulfillment again—refocusing—can help with the first two, since I think they’re really symptoms of the problem instead of side-effects.

The last one . . . well, that one’s up to you. Is there anything I can do to help encourage you to participate in Feeling Fulfilled Fridays?

As a reminder, for FFF we create a list of things that help us feel accomplished, work on a few of those things during the week, and report on Fridays.

What can you do to enjoy your time as a mother more?

And oh yeah, Rachel really is crawling:

Manic smiley photo by Astrid Phillips

It snuck up on me again: today is my blogoversary. Blogiversary? Whatever.

Four years. I’ve been blogging for four years. I keep thinking that must be wrong, but then I remember I started when Hayden was a few months old, and now he’s four, so it must be true.

If I’d been paying attention (and not distracted by something so non-time-consuming as a new baby, a toddler, and a preschooler ), I could have had a wonderful party set up here for you today. Instead, you’ll have to make do with my thoughts. But, hey, that’s what blogging’s all about anyway, right?

I started this blog for the same reason lots of people start their blogs: I wanted to keep my far-off family updated on my kids’ (well, kid’s at the time) life. And I was bored.

Actually, the boredom part played a big role in starting the blog. While I knew being a mother was where I belonged, I still felt overwhelmed—and bored. I vacillated between wondering How can I handle all this? to Is this it?

And I kept waiting for the sense that I was in the right place, doing the right thing—that all this effort was worth it. Fulfillment. But no magic wand bestowed fulfillment on me. I didn’t wake up one morning with the peaceful assurance that one day—perhaps even that very day—my children would rise up and call me blessed.

I hoped I wasn’t the only one.

Over the last four years, a lot has changed. Our family has grown—and slowly, but not-so-steadily, so has my contentment with motherhood, my current season in life. I’ve come to learn that “finding” fulfillment is misleading. We choose happiness, and then it comes to us.

It’s something we must recapture every day, sometimes. It’s easy to lose. To be honest, a big part of the reason why this blog has been so quiet these last few months is that I lost it, big time. (And some days, it felt like I was seriously “losing it”!)

Things have been wonderful since Rachel was born, even being on my own for the last four days. It’s not because the nature of the thing—motherhood—has changed. My capacity for doing, on the other hand, has. The newborn days are still tough (I swear Hayden and Rebecca could be put down once in a while…), but I know they’ll come to an end, and my tiny little girl will grow into a toddler who’s stringing together four and five word sentences (before her second birthday!), and then a preschooler making amazing connections in logic and reasoning, and on.

I’m trying to treasure them as they are now and imprint them on my heart at each stage, because soon the amazing new things they’re doing and saying will fade in novelty, or out of their vocabularies forever. (Rebecca just stopped calling her brother “Hee-ah” last week. “Hay-DEN,” she corrects us.)

How do you treasure today? How has your foundation for fulfillment evolved over time?