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It’s been said that, “When you look at your life, the greatest happiness [es] are family happiness [es].” One of the questions, for me, is whether that statement is true or not.

I’ve had many happy moments in my life with and without family members in attendance. I tend to focus on how one quantifies happiness.

Does extreme happiness always have to be accompanied by tears, for instance? Or, is such a deep emotion as true happiness so overpowering that expression of any kind is beyond the ability of the one experiencing it?

What about a lack of happiness? I’ve seen occasions when great sorrow, not happiness, was what took over when family arrived. Where does a person draw the line of family involvement in one’s personal happiness?

Here’s another example of relevant questions. How many degrees of happiness does a person feel and does everyone feel the same degrees of that emotion and label them the same way? I don’t think anyone has a definitive answer to either of these questions simply because each person’s emotional thermometer registers feelings differently based on personal experience.

When you realize how genuinely moved a person is to meet you, does that evoke great happiness, sweet satisfaction, or deep humility coupled with gratitude. If humility, does that constitute a portion of happiness? If you feel satisfaction only, does that mean that conceit has crept into your thermometer?

You see how complicated emotional definitions and signals are? What if you feel nothing at all except seeming boredom when someone exhibits excitement at shaking your hand and talking with you face-to-face? After all, this could be a cousin that you’ve never met before.

Does your lack of emotion mean that you really don’t want to know any more family, that you’re too important to worry about those on the fringe of the family, or that you’re just a jerk?

Or, could it mean, as it does with me, that caution and trust issues rule your actions and responses during first meetings?

Circumstances dictate our responses to events in our lives. The exact experience also contributes to those responses, as well as the circumstances immediately preceding an event.

For instance, many years ago, when I was teaching in an elementary school, I’d gone outside during recess. I needed some quiet time without children’s voices in my ears or designs on my next thought. I spent my ten minutes breathing in the scent of blooming forsythia and tulips in nearby private yards, listening to birds announcing their romantic intentions, and generally decompressing. The afternoon sun warmed my face and hands, clean air wafted past my nose, and a sense of rightness filled me.

On my way back to the classroom, a curious sensation flooded my body. I stopped walking. I closed my eyes and felt my whole body fill with blinding light from the inside. I could see it, behind my eyelids, flooding through me. Such a wave of pure joy washed over me that there were no words, no other sensations, no sound. All else in the world fell away, leaving me held within this personal lightshow.

It ended, and I nearly cried. I felt in that instant the most amazing happiness. I’ve yearned for another taste of it ever since. I wait for the day I can feel that sensation, that joy, again. Where it came from, or why it came, I have no idea. I don’t care.

I only know that that one blazing event taught me more about joy than a lifetime of other experiences. Nothing can compare to it. I wish everyone could have their own instant of pure joy that they can aspire to feel it again.

Whether a person has reached a new phase of an existing career or pursuing a new one, there is always a settling-in phase involved.

The person must go through at least three distinct steps during this phase.

• Astonishment at having arrived at the new status
• Panic at the thought of establishing new self-expectations, abilities, and reputation
• Developing new coping mechanisms and strategic schemes for advancement within that status

The survival process can be either pleasant or not, depending upon the approach used. That approach depends largely on whether the person sought the change in career status or arrived there at someone else’s behest. The least objectionable attitude to assume, nonetheless, is one of acceptance. Stress reduction during the process is paramount. Acceptance breeds calm responses.

New Status Astonishment

If your new status was actively sought on your part, now would be a good time to show everyone that belief in yourself and your capabilities. Obviously someone believed in you or you wouldn’t be in this new position. If you didn’t seek the status, you can always bow out gracefully, without losing face. It’s entirely up to you. You answer the person or organization with a simple No Thank You, and leave it at that.

Let’s assume you’re a writer. You’ve just landed a plum assignment from a pitch you made to a glossy magazine. NOTE: You pitched it, you believed in it. Now deal with it.

The editor loved the idea and is contracting you to run with it. NOTE: You’re at this stage because you’ve learned how to market yourself, your ideas, and your talent. Accept that someone else believes in you and your potential to generate quality product to fulfill that contract.

Panic at New Responsibilities and Expectations

It doesn’t always follow that because you sought this change in status, you understood the responsibilities and expectations that go with it.

Greater belief by others in your abilities settles the mantle of responsibility for quality, punctuality, and consistency squarely on your shoulders. You might not have considered that side of the equation when seeking your elevation. There is no need to panic.

If you’ve strived in the past to provide quality and accuracy in your work, you’ve covered the first and last of those responsibilities. If you’ve set deadlines for yourself and kept them on a consistent basis, you’ve already covered that expectation as well. Panic comes with unfamiliar territory, unfamiliar needs being placed on a person’s career plate. If you took the time before to cultivate your skills to give those factors mentioned above, you’re going to be fine.

If you haven’t yet cultivated those factors, now would be a good time to start. Take it slow. No one is forcing you to be perfect with each second of the day. Take the time to get comfortable with these new expectations. Find a mentor to help you ease into thi

immerse in his own thoughts

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Cynthia Freeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, Texas.  Her new book, Portraits and Persons, shows that portraits have served two fundamental fuctions throughout the ages.  Firstly, they preserve identity, bringing us closer to loved ones who are either absent or dear.  And secondly, they tell us something about the subject being portrayed: not just external things, but also the subject’s emotions and inner state.  In the excerpt below Freeland analyzes self-portraits, specifically the work of Frida Kahlo.

Frida Kahlo (1907-54) is another artist particularly known for creating an extended series of studies of herself in her art. There are 55 self-portraits among the total of 143 of her known paintings. We can notice many of the same concerns in her work as those addressed by the previous artists: social status, artistic success, identification of a core self with key psychological traits, and concerns about mortality. There are, however, a few additional factors that arise in Kahlo’s work. For one thing, she is notably concerned with issues of national and ethnic identity. Kahlo is also concerned with her status as a women and with her troubled partnership and marriage with her teacher and fellow artist Diego Rivera. Kahlo’s concerns about mortality were intensified by her childhood polio and by the bus accident that left her damaged and in need of multiple operations. Her wounded and suffering body became a persistent theme in Kahlo’s work. Ironically, perhaps, the concern with mortality does not seem to be much reflected here by paintings that show self ageing. Frida’s face looks remarkably the same across her works (unlike the faces of Rembrandt of Cézanne.)  She is always recognizable with her coal black hair, uni-brow, and intense dark gaze, even when she pictures herself as an infant suckling at her nurse’s breast!

Kahlo’s paintings, like those of the previous artists, show an awareness of art history and reflect linkages with predecessors she admired, often those from the Spanish tradition or from distinguished Italian portrait artists.  For example, in her Self-Portrait with a Velvet Dress (1926), she alludes through both the red dress and the slender elegant fingers both to Botticelli and Bronzino.

Many of Kahlo’s works feature the wounded self/damaged body, which is specifically a female body.  She is shown dealing with the pain and loss of miscarriage and infertility in Henry Ford Hospital, and with pain stemming from both physical and emotional wounds in paintings such as Broken Column, and Wounded Deer.  Despite the female identification Kahlo can also play upon and invoke identification with male saints: with St Sebastian (in Wounded Deer), and with Christ (in Broken Column).

Kahlo’s repeated experiments in the self-portraits with clothing and accessories such as jewelry, native plants, and animals, shows a preoccupation with defining and embracing her ethnic heritage (European German-Jewish, Mexican, Indian).  Writing about Kahlo’s works, Sharyn R. Udall remarks, ‘She is trying on identities, both personal and artistic: from the melancholy aristocrat of her first self-portrait, she seems to be testing an image that speaks of her mixed Euro-American and Indian heritage.  She is also concerned with political and national issues about the distinctive identity of Mexico as it emerges from colonialism into independence, and in particular with its identity vis-à-vis its northern neighbor, the United States.  She resists comparisons that rank the two countries by showing th progressive, industrial, wealthy northern country as superior to its poor and ‘prim

1. More than half the bones found in your entire body is located in your hands and feet.

2. We are all colorblind at birth.

3. Blood is actually and organ.

4. When born we have 350 bones but when fully grown we only have 206

5. Research has shown that guilt damages your immune system. Spell check won’t let me type the reason why. 

6. We are basically water bags, 70% of our body is water.

7. We take about 600,000,000 breaths a lifetime.

1. More than half the bones found in your entire body is located in your hands and feet.

2. We are all colorblind at birth.

3. Blood is actually and organ.

4. When born we have 350 bones but when fully grown we only have 206

5. Research has shown that guilt damages your immune system. Spell check won’t let me type the reason why. 

6. We are basically water bags, 70% of our body is water.

7. We take about 600,000,000 breaths a lifetime.