7QT: Virtue Signaling My Happiness Edition

7QT: Virtue Signaling My Happiness Edition April 22, 2016

One
On Friday mornings the boys and Matt go to men’s bible study, leaving me with a jealous and needy Kylo Ren–jealous of the iPad, needy for constant affirmation about who he is, even though who he is is really really irritating at 6:30 in the morning. “He has a broken look in his eyes,” I said to Matt.

“Broken? He doesn’t look broken. He looks evil.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said, “you look in his eyes and there’s something essential missing, like sanity. He’s not Jesus on the cross dying for our sins broken, he’s Hitler lacking empathy and compassion for man kind broken.”
“Yes,” said Matt. What more is there to say.
Two
I’m pretty charmed about Harriet Tubman being on the twenty dollar bill. I particularly love all the memes flying around of her giving the stink eye to the One Who Would Spend Money. I think I probably will be a better and holier person in the store, having to look at her hallowed face. Even better, the government unfolded this very sensible scheme right at the moment when the children and I have been working through a biography of her life. For Once! Reality has been a help to me.
Three
And apparently also, today is earth day. Facebook instructed me to rejoice as soon as my eyes blinked open. I clicked “I don’t want to see this” which probably means I’m going to go on a special list where Kylo Ren will be allowed to lick and bite my fingers as a form of aggravating torture. I do like the earth an awful lot, and am grateful about it, but my vast list of work doesn’t include me virtue signaling about my energy use. I only have one drop of virtue signaling available to me a day and I’ve just used it up on Harriet Tubman.
Four
Speaking of being a good person, I’ve had this article open in my browser all week thinking that I’d say something about it. Any time I see the word Happiness I always click, expecting to be made easily happy with little to no work. The number and weight of things I would have to do to be happy, however, in this Listicle, makes me unhappy to think about. In fact, I would say this article entirely misses the boat. The best way that I know of to be happy is to stop thinking about myself all. the. time. If you cast your gaze outward toward, say, toward another person, and stop worrying about yourself, you might wake up for a minute to be happy. Whereas this long long long list is really just a hundred ways to think more about yourself. I read it and wanted to cry.
Five
It’s coming close to the end of my school year and my fingers are twitching to write, in the spirit of that Huffpo article, a comprehensive list of all the things that went well for me this year that surely you should take and make into a law for yourself. That’s what I always do, at the beginning and end of every school year. I read a lot of blogs of people who homeschool like Jesus himself would homeschool, I measure them up against my own homeschool, I make a messy and incalculable list of things I should do differently to be perfect, and then I spend the rest of the year feeling bad because I don’t end up doing it that way at all. So! Keep your eyes peeled for the Definitive Guide to Anne’s Overwrought and Guilt Laden Homeschool. It’s going to be YUGE.
Six
Still eating the bread. OMW. It’s so magic and awesome. This week I found that, along with losing ounces of weight, I found my temper on a much more even keel. I’m not swinging back and forth between meat laden emotional deprivation and guilty bagel soaked blood sugar highs and lows. I just kind of, you know, eat food. And I’m not thinking about how I feel every moment of every hour. Which is surely a recipe for happiness if ever there was one. I’m telling you, this flour is magic.
Seven
I’ve survived two Solemn Communion classes and I’m really impressed and happy with my group of kids and how well the discussions have gone. Sofia Cavalletti talks about Sensitive Periods–moments when the child is obsessively working on something essential, like door opening, or paper cutting, or sorting out the universe. When you hit one of those moments it feels like the striking of a tuning fork on a longed for frequency. You see the child resonate with their whole person. That’s what these two classes have felt like. I’m so charmed that God cleared the way for the class to be right at this moment, before we all scatter for the summer. It is, dare I say it, a perfectly happy way to conclude the scholastic year.

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Now go check out better takes and get out there and feel guilty for earth day. Post about it on Facebook. Or something.


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