My Last Halloween

I remember my last Trick or Treat fondly - it was a candy fest!  Bags and (garbage) bags of candy!  The last quest for Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, Butterfingers, Snickers, KitKats. Mounds, Duds, Twix and Milky Ways.  Bags of M & M's, Skittles, Reese's Pieces, Raisenettes.  I was thirteen and in seventh grade, and knew this was the last time I could pull off saying "trick or treat" with a straight face. My older sister was in high school and off with the cheerleaders while my mom took my younger brother and sister as cowgirl and cowboy around the neighborhood.  My best friend Jamie (the boy down the street that I knew since preschool) and I plotted our course.   On our bikes we could cover our entire neighborhood, and the next subdivision for at least a total of 40 to 50 streets of affluent high quality Mars, Hershey and Nestle products.  I was a hippie he was a hobo.  We made our costumes from hand me downs from our older sisters and brothers.   The booty was so good that before the sun went down had to go home to empty our pillow cases because the load was too heavy.  It felt so liberating.  No parents waiting at the sidewalk or younger siblings and friends to follow along.  We were just two kids (a hippie and a hobo) going from house to house. Total freedom to legally get as much free candy as possible!

Remember Happy Times

According to the Harvard Study on happiness, “multi-tasking is the enemy of savoring”.  My next challenge towards happiness was to “Savor the Pleasure”.  Placing my attention on pleasure and enjoying each experience in the moment as it occurs.  This happiness philosophy is the subject of Eckhart Tolle’s NYT bestselling book “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”.   It is no surprise that Oprah Winfrey recommended the tome with its promises of new consciousness and enlightenment.  I found out this week that I really suck at the Power of Now. 

Pilots are natural multi-taskers.  This is when I came to the realization that ADD does have benefits.  When flying you need to look out the windshield, monitor your instruments, physically fly the plane with feet on rudders and hands on throttle and yoke (in the old days) while talking to the tower on the radio.   For this reason, I see no distracting danger when I shift my car while I talk on the (wireless) phone.  I manage best with several balls in the air, and easily get bored focusing on one task at a time. 

I started on Monday morning with my sincere attempt to savor each task and  “recognize and enjoy pleasures in my day” as the Study recommended.   I bombed from the start by reading the newspaper, while drinking coffee with the morning news on in the background.  I could not stop myself from checking e-mails and sending a few texts.  Single-tasking was an impossible mission.  Things got better when I read my daily meditation without distractions and took the dog for a walk and purposely left my phone at home.  But I could not take a run without my I-pod music giving me encouragement.  The more I tried to limit my attention to one thing the more stressed out I became, not exactly my definition of “happiness”.  That evening I was able to focus on our hour-long yoga session, but not without my mind wandering a few times.  The value of inner stillness is no more evident than in the practice of yoga. 

The premise of living in the moment is to not to regret the past or fear the future, but to enjoy the present.  But savoring can also mean fondly remembering earlier happy events, like I did this week when I watched a few home videos.  And daydreaming about returning to Europe this summer with the girls gave me joyful anticipation about the future. 

While I failed miserably at the goal of single-tasking, I think I succeeded in appreciating every day’s special moments.