He saw another mountain...He saw another mountain...

Sometimes, when my fantastically happy 2-year-old son Owen bounces into the room to share an amazing fact like how much he is enjoying the vanilla yogurt that is in his mouth, it feels like a bittersweet moment.

Why can’t I get that kind of simple, pure happiness back? Then I add to my woes by judging myself too harshly and declaring that I've been jaded.

Long gone are the days when a happy-go-lucky me turned every corner with a smile on my face. Then I worry that the same fate awaits Owen one day.

But was my childhood really my halcyon days? This psychological slight of hand tricks me every time.

Happiness researcher Gretchen Rubin writes about the myth of happiness.

“We often imagine that we’ll be happy as soon as we get a job/make partner/get tenure/get married/get that promotion/have a baby/move. (But) usually by the time you’ve arrived at your destination, you’re expecting to reach it, so it has already been incorporated into your happiness. You quickly become adjusted to the new state of affairs," she writes on her blog, The Happiness Project.

That is the main difference in the way Owen experiences vanilla yogurt versus the way I experience vanilla yogurt. I am used to the experience, so used to vanilla that I can't help but wish for swirls of fruit or chunks of candy to be mixed in. Instead of appreciating the hint of cool sweetness hitting my tongue, I am thinking this needs to be whipped or garnished.

But that is only the half of it. What about what we commonly call looking through rose colored glasses? Am I remembering things accurately when I am thinking back on the good old days?

The things that frustrate toddlers my son's age are nothing to sneeze at, like not being able to communicate things that he wants to do or things that he wants to say. While the taste of vanilla yogurt can send him spinning like a Sufi into the living room, without Mommy or Daddy, he couldn't get the yogurt out of the fridge or his spoon out of the drawer.

By the time I mastered taking care of myself and created my own identity--let's say I was somewhere in the pre-teen years--I had other concerns, like zits or big ears. In hindsight, I think back to all of the fun I had playing ball in the street or hanging out on summer days. But of course by that point I spent much of my time listening to my Walkman in the back seat of my parents' car wondering when I would have total control over my own life.

"Arriving at one goal usually reveals a new goal. There’s another hill to climb," continues Rubin. "In fact, working toward a goal can be a more powerful source of happiness than hitting it – which can sometimes be a letdown. It’s important, therefore, to look for happiness in the present, in the atmosphere of growth afforded by making gradual progress toward a goal."

These days, my life is my own. While the balancing act of paying the bills and taking care of the family can sometimes be a burden, it's one that my wife and I get to share.

The process of selling our townhouse and buying a bigger home that our family can grow into was hard, but it was progress. As my parents get ready for retirement and look forward to downsizing--possibly to a townhouse--I think back to a song they taught me to sing during long car rides.

"The bear went over the mountain. The bear went over the mountain. The bear went over the mountain, and what do you think he saw? He saw another mountain. He saw another mountain. He saw another mountain...And what do you think he did?"

How the little things add up

Let me introduce you to Claire and Glenn. They walk together in the morning through my neighborhood. They are well dressed, probably retired, and they seem happy because they are usually smiling.

The only other thing that I know about them is that they are social. I know this because they introduced themselves in the local ShopRite.

Glenn approached me and introduced Claire and then I called my wife, Sarah, into the mix.

Now we are all a bit more entangled in each other's lives. The smiles on the street are wider. The waves are grander, and of course, the names must be remembered (my ulterior motive for writing this column).

But the interactions are not disingenuous or as slight as they may seem from my tongue in cheek introduction - quite the opposite.

The smiling couple makes the street seem homier when I see them. Their existence at the edge of my world expands the borders of my life.

Much like the lights of my neighbors' porches when they come on in a row at dusk, they add up. It makes me feel like I am part of something.

At the end of the day there is a line of people letting their loved ones know that they are home and waiting for them when the work is over. The lights say that neighbors are welcome to stop by, or at the very least, they are not saying, "Don't bother me."

Simple things, like leaving a light on or waving hello, are important because they are communal.

Technological revolutions, like the massive, free Web encyclopedia "Wikipedia," (written by volunteers) show that given the chance, through technology or otherwise, people care. They want to connect and they are willing to go out of their way to do so.

For all I know, Glenn and Claire could have pages on MySpace, but in a simpler and more direct way, they reached out and improved my community, just by saying, "Hello."

Oh no! Not another way to instant message!

"I was up too late last night," I thought to myself last Sunday morning. I overslept. Sleep deprivation seemed to be playing tricks on my mind.

It felt like I was wearing an invisible space helmet, and too much oxygen was being pumped in.
"Man was I aching," my internal dialogue continued.

At this point you're probably guessing that I had a hangover. Maybe you'd be half-right. But partying was not the problem.

It was my carpel tunnel that was throbbing. You see, I was actually "tweet" deprived. Twitter—the online messaging tool—was to blame for my lack of sleep.

It had been hours since I sat at my computer. While the rest of my house was fast asleep, I sat wide-eyed reading tweets (as Twitter messages are called).

What was New York Times columnist David Pogue's favorite book as a kid? Who was rocker Colin Meloy of The Decemberists jamming with at 3 a.m.?

What a time-suck! And what was the point of it all? Was it just more chatter? A popularity contest? (Just like MySpace, Facebook and blogs, Twitter makes a big deal out of how many people are following your posts.)

As someone who writes for work and writes for fun—someone with four blogs already—did I really need to jump into this too?

And then it hit me...Maybe I could use Twitter to share one line poems! That sounded like fun. With a smirk on my face and a tingling in my carpel tunnel, I clicked out my first tweet: "As a musician, Einstein couldn’t keep time very well."

"Aha!" I shouted to myself in the dark while my son snored in his adjacent room. No longer would I crack that twitter was for twits! I saw the light and once again, I was on board with the latest technological fad.

Next thing I knew I was looking up old friends, searching for interesting celebrities that twitter and signing up for New York Times news blasts.

By the time I finished setting up my cell phone to receive tweets, I knew there was no turning back.

But I don't blame myself or feel any guilt. It's not my fault that (at least for the moment) there is so much to love.

It's downright noble that there's so much fervor built upon words. Throw in the democratization that this DIY tool makes possible and who wouldn't be hooked?

Why do I care what Poque's favorite childhood book was? ("The White Mountains" by John Christopher.) I don't know. But I do feel more connected to one of my favorite columnists when I read his tweets.

The great potential of Twitter is that we have once again invented another way of interacting with each other.

Will it be used in that regard, or just as a marketing tool? To me, that is going to make all the difference. For now, Twitter is connecting a lot of people.

It's one more example of technology breaking down barriers and putting us all on a level playing field.

WE'RE NUMBER TWO! WE'RE NUMBER TWO!

I am not trying to write the best blog entry that I can write this time. I am shooting for the second best entry that I can write. And what is wrong with that?

Why aren't fans in stadiums waving over sized foam fingers shouting "We're number two?"

Wasn't Commander Riker's role really Number Two? Why did he and Captain Picard have to pretend otherwise?

While Pepsi sells less soda than Coke, the company still has a greater market share than Shasta.

For now, America is the sole superpower in the world. But we would do well to remember that we got here by being scrappy underdogs.

Those in the pole position have to worry about others catching up. Meanwhile, the second place driver has his eye on the prize. He feels his heart race each time he stomps on the gas. At each opportunity he sees he tightens his grip on the steering wheel and calculates his next move.

The thrill of being on the heels of the leader isn't the only advantage to being the beta. The number-two guy gets to define himself against the alpha.

He gets to learn by watching the mistakes of the one in front. And of course, a brighter spotlight shines on those mistakes.

For anyone at the top, the only way left is down. When will the glory days be over? Who will be the first to take him down a peg? And this will all seem very unfair after the fall when the hero is left wondering what he did wrong. All he really did was become number two.

When life gets too serious

My wife and I huddled together on the couch to watch Paul McCartney on TV. When the credits started rolling, I almost walked away. But out of the corner of my eye, I caught a 64-year-old McCartney skipping down the road into the sunset.

Seeing him skip was the best part of the show. It brought to mind my favorite word: chearth.

A friend, Phil, made up the word years ago, along with its adjective form: chearthy.

The concoction popped into existence when Phil combined the words “cheer” and “earth.”

We seemed to need the word during our teenage years and into our early 20s – the formative years when we were starting to spread our wings, starting to step in to the world of adults.

As we looked around we liked that we could do more things: drive, go to clubs and bars. We were anxious to race full-speed ahead. Only one thing made us pause.

Why were adults always so serious, so rigid? Their voices seemed fraught with concern. They looked bogged down as responsibilities furrowed their brows.

This seemed like death to us. How were we to prevent the hand-me-down clichés about the tough world from coming out of our mouths? How would we stop our shoulders from rounding as the weight of the world set in?

Our answer was chearth. We created the concept to remind us where we came from, a land of surprise and wonder for anyone who hasn’t been jaded.

Wasn’t just hanging out with a friend in your own backyard enough fun when you were younger? At dusk, you could run after lightning bugs. And when you were 17, wasn’t driving around with the stereo on enough fun?

It seemed like this take on life was worth keeping so we developed exercises for staying chearthy, like skipping. (It’s impossible for an adult not to be chearthy while skipping.)

Exercises might vary from person to person, but the point is to do something silly, something that would have entertained you as a kid, but makes the self-conscious adult in you cringe just a little bit.

The blue train to sleepy town

My wife, Sarah, and I have a few tricks up our sleeves to make the idea of going to bed appealing to our son, Owen. We brush our teeth together, read and sometimes sing.

The process usually does the trick of winding him down. But 2-year-olds are not so good at dealing with transitions. When Owen needs a little more help calming down, we use guided meditation.

It was my wife's idea. I have to admit that when she first tried it, I thought her touchy-feely Boulder, Colorado roots were finally seeping through.

But Oh how it works! Guided meditation can take a stubborn toddler from, "No! No! No!" to "ZZZzzzz..."

With a skeptical stance I stood by his crib, watching Sarah in action.

She turned on his crib toy. It projected a cycling movie of birds, bees, bears, stars and puffy white clouds onto his ceiling while classical music and lullabies wafted softly into the air.

"Owen drives the train up the hill and as he looks out the window he sees birds flying in the sky," she started.

Owen grabbed his sippy cup to settle in for the story. He approved of the beginning.

"The train heads into a tunnel," she continued.

"Other train!" Owen pitched in.

She followed her cue.

"In the dark tunnel, Owen sees another train," she said. "So he turns on his light as the other train goes by. 'Choo choo!' says the other train as they all wave."

"Puppies!" demanded Owen.

"When the train comes out of the tunnel, Owen sees puppies playing in the field...There is a brown puppy and a white puppy..."

Owen's eyes start to close as his mommy listed the different kinds of puppies that he saw as he looked out of the train window.

He curled up in that way that only toddlers find comfortable--with his butt up in the air and his face mushed into his mattress.

It worked so well that I decided to give it a shot the next night. I started by asking him what color train he wanted to drive that night.

"Blue," he said.

I kept my voice calm so that the story had a soothing feel to it. I tried to one-up his mommy by adding other guided meditation tricks that I learned about in psych classes in college.

Besides being Owen's favorite color to say, (I think he likes the sound of the word and it's easier for him to say than red) blue had another advantage. It's a calming color.

So Owen drove the blue train over the blue bridge that stood over the blue water (water is also a calming image used in meditation) as he waved to blue birds in the blue sky that night as daddy embraced his new-agey side.

Since then, I've done some research and learned that guided meditation is a common practice to help sooth children at bedtime.

Essentially, it's just telling them a story that they can picture themselves in. It helps them forget that they are trying to go to sleep.

"The Everything Guide to Raising a Two-Year-Old" by Brian Orr and Donna Raskin advises to make the scene "as evocative yet as soothing as possible," and "Use as many descriptive words as you can."

Does everyone have the potential to be happy?

Bart likes to wear black. He thinks of himself as a rebel. He has always been an outsider and that is just fine with him because in his own words, the world is a messed up place.

People are too closed-minded, he says, and their interactions are superficial. So Bart took no part in school plays, sought out and stuck with his nonconformist buddies in college and still refuses to sell out by working for the man today.

It's hard to check in with my friend Bart, his name only for the sake of this post, because he can't afford a cell phone and his myriad of odd jobs (needed to make ends meet) put him on what seems like an antisocial schedule.

Is Bart an example of the Nietzsche Ubermensch - resisting the opiates of the masses, like "American Idol," and moving to the beat of his own drummer? Or is Bart kidding himself?

By Bart's own admission, life is an uphill battle that rarely makes him happy. But it's bill collectors that gnaw at him, not suckers in the daily grind. It's failed relationships that hold him down, not a backward thinking populous that fails to see the value of going against the grain.

In truth, he just seems to be getting in his own way. Don't we all have friends like that? They just never seem able to get traction, no matter how many hours we spend on the telephone trying to solve their problems. We wonder why they just won't wake up as we try to listen to their dysfunctional stories in one ear while catching "American Idol" in the other.

There may actually be a reason.

Psychologist Jack Mayer studies how emotions influence personality. According to Mayer, biology and social interaction can shape a personality. This much we know, but studies over the last 10 years indicate that once the personality is molded, a person is limited to experiencing only a finite range of emotions. Mental health professionals call these ranges "set points."

"We are a bit like Weeble-Wobble dolls," said Carol Kauffman a psychologist and Harvard Medical School professor. "We tend to go back to our usual happiness set point after negative or positive life events."

So, Bart may always want to wear black. But according to Mayer, all hope isn't lost. Psychoactive drugs, exercise, and diet can help a person break past biological limits on happiness and "cheerier friends" can help counteract negative surroundings.

Specifically, Mayer offers the following advice to Bart.

"The world is a marvelously complex place," said Mayer. "As it turns out, some mental models are more constructive than others... I think that searching for a constructive model of the world is a worthwhile pursuit in life."

Although he acknowledges that Bart may not agree.

Getting enough sleep? No alarm clock needed....

During sleep, hormones are secreted that regulate blood pressure, encourage growth and stimulate cellular repair, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF).

While we are in dreamland, various maintenance routines are running. Neurons that misfired during the day are rebooted and memories are consolidated. Kind of like defragging our internal hard drives, sleep helps us run optimally through our days.

Not getting enough sleep leads to poor decision-making and poor health. According to the NSF, many of us are in this boat. Its 2002 poll found that 80 percent of Americans are not getting enough sleep, making us irritable, bad drivers who are prematurely aging.

So how do we know if we are getting enough sleep? The NSF says that people who get enough sleep should be able to awaken naturally - without an alarm clock!

Time travel--a perk for humans!

It's Easter 2000. I am in Manhattan at an Episcopal church. The priest is using way too much incense and I fear it's going to instigate a sneezing fit as I crinkle my nose.

But I'm happy because I am with Sarah, the woman who will end up being my wife. She doesn't know it yet, but there is a big stuffed bunny waiting for her in my Jeep.

Now it's 1975 and the Bay City Rollers' hit "Saturday Night," sounds amazing to me as it plays on the AM radio in the family's station wagon. Mom turns around in amazement as 3-year-old me chants the chorus, "S.A.T.U.R.D.A.Y. ...NIGHT!"

Scene change: 1987, I am laughing hysterically as my friend Tom practices dancing with a girl behind a barn where we're blasting "(I've had) The Time of My Life" on a boom box.

"We are a race of time travelers, unfettered by chronology and capable of visiting the future or revisiting the past whenever we wish," writes Daniel Gilbert and Randy Buckner in their Time magazine article, "Time Travel in the Brain."

The article asserts that this ability is unique to humans putting us ahead of the pack, evolutionarily speaking.

On the practical side, this ability allowed us to sit safely in our caves and replay the day's adventures over and over, learning something new each time we replayed an event in our heads.

Our brains also allow us to travel into the future. The knowledge accrued thus far makes it possible for us to run through situations that haven't happened yet and make predictions about the outcomes.

At 23 months old, my son doesn't have a huge pool of knowledge to draw from. But as I watch him make his first friends, I am reminded of another aspect of time travel - it's fun!

Thinking back on family drives, one of the things I enjoyed most was turning on my Walkman and tuning out - diving into my own head.

I logged a lot of hours daydreaming about being a rock star or meeting girls as the sun poured through my parents' car windows. While I never became a member of the Bay City Rollers or met Tiffany, I still had a lot of fun!

Quick! What do you want out of life?

As spring gets underway, new projects abound! To keep track of everything I wrote a life list. A life list can mean different things to different people. It can be a simple list of tasks or it can be a things-to-do-before-you-die list.

In my mind, the list was also an icebreaker sparking meaningful conversations and illuminating the hopes and dreams of friends and family. But that's not how they saw it.

One night, at dinner with a friend, I beamed as I showed him my life list on my PDA. I awaited anxiously to see if he would in-turn construct a list of his own right there in front of me at the Hibachi restaurant while the chef made a flaming volcano of onions shoot fire to the ceiling.

Unfortunately, he did not. Not that he wasn't game, but he said he needed some time to think about it. I understood, or at least I was preoccupied with my hot sake.

On vacation, sitting with my cousin eating space ice cream (a dehydrated treat that looks suspiciously like a block of sugar) outside of the Men In Black ride at Universal Studios in Orlando, I proudly presented my list.

After reading that I would like to own another Jeep in my lifetime, my cousin said he would have to consult his wife before coming up with his own list.

Once again, the life list didn't seem to be a key to anyone's soul. Bonding with my cousin would have to be done over a day of motion sickness-inducing rides and junk food - I highly advise against this combination!

But, as you can see, a pattern emerged, and it continued with other friends and relatives. I was disappointed. How come my scheme to get to know the people in my life better wasn't working?

"It's not always easy to decide what you want," my wife said.

This didn't make sense to me. Stating desires and needs seemed simple. To illustrate that point, I asked our dog if he wanted water. He danced around the kitchen on his hind legs eager with anticipation as I topped off his bowl. My wife didn't buy it.

"People want to want the right things," she said.

It's an interesting point. I wasn't asking people a simple question like would they like a drink. How we spend our time on earth is one of the deepest, most difficult issues we have to tackle. Being in my loved ones' faces waiting for them to present their plans in writing probably made it harder.

But I still hope they give these lists a shot in private moments. To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, you only hit what you aim for.

Googling "life list" brings up the name John Goddard. He is the subject of many motivational Web sites. Goddard wrote a list while he was a teenager.

Sixty years later, he completed 109 of his 127 goals. He learned to fly a plane, swam in Lake Superior and drove a submarine, but he didn't climb Mount Everest. He visited the Great Wall of China, built his own telescope and read the Bible cover to cover. But, to date, he still hasn't owned a chimpanzee.

My list is nowhere near as ambitious. Although who hasn't dreamt of owning a
chimpanzee? My list still gives me joy though, even just looking at it!

Somehow dreams, like singing in a band with my wife, seem more tangible now that they are written down.

Why do collectors get the fever?

The joys of 
being a fan and collecting have been on my mind ever since I saw "Fever 
Pitch." In the movie Jimmy Fallon plays Ben, a Boston Red Sox 
fan. His home was stocked with memorabilia, from the time he got up in the 
morning to when he got ready for bed, all he saw was red.



But what did Drew Barrymore's character, Lindsey, get for her troubles 
besides a beau who was always busy during baseball season? She found a
passionate man who knew how to love life.

Experts agree that passion is typically the common denominator amongst 
collectors.

 However, Canadian Psychiatrist and author of "First Aid to Mental Illness" Dr.
 Michael G. Rayel doesn't think that there's a certain personality type for
 collectors.

Rayel said collecting is an individual's choice based on their 
passions.

 Some, he says, like 
music fans collecting CDs, may collect so they always have access to the 
music that makes them happy.

Sometimes, collections serve as trophies
 pointing the way to people's interests. But Rayel did offer one 
generalization.



"We all want something to represent ourselves," Rayel said.



Susan Neri-Friedwald, a behavior modification specialist and founder of the
 New Behavior Institute in Manhattan, says that surrounding ourselves with 
things creates a sense of security.

She added that we identify with the
 objects we collect and they strengthen our sense of self.



"We might collect things that remind us of our childhood, connecting us to
 the feelings of safety we had then," she said. "We might collect things that 
reflect who we wish to be and it makes us feel more powerful and more connected to those images."



So collected objects are manifestations of our inner hopes...?