Tag Archives: Review

Refining Happiness

Posted on by under Literature, Memoir, The Edison Project Blog

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth” – William Butler Yeats

Of late, I’ve found myself furiously taking notes while reading through Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.  For those not acquainted, Rubin determined for herself a few year’s back that while she led a charmed life, she perhaps did not appreciate it enough.  For anyone who may feel that appreciation is something they lack for themselves or their situation (I do), especially in critical moments where things feel tight and we aren’t sure of important outcomes; this venture hits home.  Only part-way through her report on her findings, I am finding her structure to be something I believe I’d really benefit from.  I have augmented some of what she’s done, but plan to mimic several aspects, tweaking along the way.  I also have found the research she has included, as well as the quotes and stories to fill areas of my quest that I had not yet been able to define.

While The Edison Project is simply a continued experiment to determine a path towards many things; authorship, intentionality, documentation of my life for my children – it is also a probe into what makes me happy.  Striving for positivity and remaining focused on these objectives have led me down extremely intriguing paths.  I have set markers for myself at the beginnings of each of these forks, that I might – much like Hansel and Gretel – find my way back to probe each of these deeply as I move through life.  The timeline for this experiment is a long one.  Such a discovery has led to increased patience as I feel the need to understand these undiscovered aspects of my character before determining a singular course for anything as massive an undertaking as a book.  Where this time last year I was aimlessly creating characters and scenarios, I’ve pulled back to uncover the reasons for why this person might exist in my world – or that one might not necessarily need to be involved.  I’m working to understand how these people may behave in such a world – or worlds – as my ideas vary from month to month on where such an effort should most organically take place.

So here I find myself exploring the quote above.  That happiness is characterized as most likened to growth is the truest explanation I’ve ever felt.  When I read that passage, I looked up from the page, set my book down, and began to investigate that posit within my own life.  Indeed I have always been most happy when at the cusp of something new and important.  I’d add only that to Mr. Yeats’ deep and layered thesis.  That growth must be focused in ways true to our character is as important as the fact that growth is even happening.  Fortunately, there are many areas in which this young man can grow.  I intend to continue to believe that for as long as I draw breath.

At work, new building techniques, applications, building uses and challenges may create a large learning curve, but it is determination I already posses.  When arriving at the apex of the challenge, where the curve drops off and the production takes form, I am exhilarated beyond belief.  Such has been the case for the seven years I’ve now undertaken this industry.

At home, witnessing landmark events, exploring my children’s own unexplored territory with them provides a rush and sense of bonding that can’t come from the dinner table, not to dismiss the importance of a family eating dinner.  Working with them to create their own perceptions of what is good, what is worth exploring, I find myself inspired to look inward on my existing perceptions and alter, perhaps, some of them to include lessons they’ve just then taught me.  The adventure can be as simple as watching my infant daughter lay on the floor giggling.  It can be as trivial as observing the ways my son constructs duplo-blocks to portray, even if in a slightly ambiguous form, towers or castles or rocket ships.  It can be as superficial, yet layered, as interacting with my oldest while she’s holding and caring for one of her many baby dolls.  Watching how she loves these inanimate objects alerts me to what she’s learned through witness, and creates in me a heightened sense of my contributions to this formula.

With my wife, watching each other grow as we establish new roles while learning to balance all of our existing responsibilities as we balance our natural desire to grow with the weight that parenthood can sometimes add to focus and energy; I am bolstered by what the future promises.  I am emboldened to act now the way I want to feel later.  It is in these acts where the depth of our relationship is revealed; that although we have known each other for nearly ten years, we have merely skimmed off a fraction of what we are capable of – both individually and together.  Beginning to depart from old habits in order to create space for new goals makes me love her in a light I haven’t before held vantage of.

These are the aspects of my life that create my happiness.  It is not the thought of becoming happy, but the act of fulfilling happiness that compounds on itself.  And each and every day we are granted here on earth we have the opportunity to invest that effort into areas that will generate into something greater.  Refining that happiness towards growth in the foundation of our character reflects areas, yet undiscovered, where light can be found and happiness experienced in full.

What a truth to explore!

Yours in the Pursuit and Growth of Happiness,

Will O’Connor

S#*thole

Posted on by under Memoir, The Edison Project Blog

Last night a friend in my close, inner-circle shared an article detailing the now infamous s#*thole comment we’ve been all been talking about all day today.  Last night, I wasn’t sure if it was real, or a manufactured story.  These days its truly hard to tell at first glance.  Today, I promised myself I’d listen, first.  I wanted to listen to my liberal friends.  You know, the ones who haven’t liked a single thing the President has done.  I wanted to listen to my most conservative friends.  You know, the ones who haven’t had a negative word to say about the man.  In case you weren’t aware, the main topic of this Congressional session is immigration reform.

Apparently, having become frustrated with some form of the bi-partisan talks about how legislation could take shape, Donald Trump formed a question.  “Why”, he asked, “do people from shithole countries come here?”  In the context of the meetings, the question surely came as a way of dragging out from Democrats a response somewhere along the lines of “well, because our country provides freedoms, securities and luxuries that no other country will, or even can, to immigrants, while also being the most willing to accept peoples of all nations into its borders through legal processes.”  I’m not sure what the answer he got was, but I’m betting it wasn’t that.

As one who evolved over the past decade from a Progressive Democrat to a Reaganite (that’s the closest I can come to describing policy I completely support), I can appreciate the position of both parties, although I really only believe one to be correct.  I’d like to explain, after listening, pondering and checking against what I know to be true, the three reasons why I agree with the President, even if I wish he’d package his delivery in an easier-to-swallow tone and message.

  1. President Trump wasn’t labeling people, only nations – and he’s not wrong: Okay, so I don’t happen to agree that word selection should be shithole.  But it is a matter of objective fact that the United States has accomplished more in the sectors of human rights, liberties, economy, just military activity, peaceful political transition… and just about everything else, than nations he specifically referred to – Haiti, El Salvador, various African Nations.  This is not to suggest that these nations can’t elevate themselves to more equal standing in some of these areas.  But to be clear, they’ll never achieve complete and total equal standing with the United States and at present nearly anyone who has the means to leave these mentioned nations for another nation essentially does.  This indicator of immigration/emigration is a prime indicator of a nation’s place on the spectrum of misery/prosperity.  The United States, by all accounts is decidedly prosperous.  Haiti, by all accounts, is perhaps the least prosperous of all the nations in the Western Hemisphere.  None of that has anything to do with the people governed by corrupt and totalitarian regimes led by careless authoritarians or oligarchies.
  2. Over the past seven years, I have worked for three general contractor firms.  I have worked in Baltimore, Maryland, Washington, DC and Richmond, Virginia.  On a given day, any of the fourteen projects I have managed are somewhere between 35%-75% Hispanic.  Those people come from all over.  Many of them are illegal immigrants.  Citizens of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and Venezuela; I have had the opportunity to have in-depth conversations with many of those whose presence has been continuous.  Nearly to a man, financial relief is sent to family back home.  Also, nearly to a man, their chief hope is that they can one day save enough to move every single member of his family to America.  And the rational is not merely that America is so prosperous.  It coincides with the complimentary fact that drug lords and gangsters control their homelands.  Returning to their country with enough money to retire often alerts these crime rings to pay a visit to a family and demand patronage of some sort, in order to remain protected.  Their government, police force and elected leaders (if they are fortunate to live in a democracy) offer no help. Some have even discussed the miserable reality of having elected leaders and police officers side with the crime ring or in some cases be the entity that propositions this patronage relationship.  By their own admission, their country is firmly affixed to the opposite end of the spectrum of misery/prosperity.  They would never use the word shithole out of veneration for their ancestors and friends lost to drugs, crime and corruption – but the words they use are essential interchangeable, if only slightly less profane.  Candidly, my experience does not extend to Haitian or African citizens.  There are decidedly less of those individuals in the construction industry, if only because their nationalities are not as present in the area of the country in which I reside.
  3. Finally, the prime defense I’ve witnessed in attacking Donald Trump is that this statement is racist.  In an era where a Caucasian levels a statement whereby a minority – whether an individual or entire citizenry – is compared to a Caucasian of the same magnitude, that statement is automatically racist in its roots.  This is purely a derivative of temporal movements.  Racism is the inherent belief that the color of one’s skin creates superiority in-and-of-itself.  When someone accuses another of racism, it is a serious accusation.  And yet recently, the context by which this accusation is delivered is increasingly diluted – for two reasons.  Many of these cases, such as yesterday’s, incorporate variables having nothing to do with race.  Haiti’s historic response to deadly disaster after deadly disaster has prevented it from achieving any stability.  Their size and limited profile of resources similarly guarantee its economy will never be as vivacious, dynamic or sustainable.  Haiti’s culture, rooted as a hotbed for slave trade is pervasive even to this day in the class system that exists.  Upward mobility is not a word that can be employed there.  It is not racist to assert these things.  In fact, in Eastern Europe, in places such as the Balkans, there are similar examples of nations riddled with natural disasters, limited economies and culture of authoritarian dictatorships/communist influence.  While their men are not subject to slavery,  its women very much are.  Would it be racist for me to call Latvia a shithole? Is it even a shithole, or is its distant location to me and history of soviet occupation just create in my mind a false pretense? No doubt, Latvia is probably a fine place to live.  But if I had to choose, you wouldn’t be able to accurately represent with a stopwatch how quickly I made my decision.

If I were a person of influence with Donald Trump, I’d tell him he was doing a fine job of incorporating his campaign promises into legislation and through judicial appointments as well as executive order (only when necessary).  I’d also implore him to do two things – 1. Stop Tweeting.  Although he has been able to effectively deliver his message to his constituency without manipulation by the media, the topics he’s chosen to engage in have been suspect at best and harmful at worst.  Perhaps a daily rundown at the end of the day, where he’d only be using his Twitter account between 7-9PM and topics would be pre-determined. 2. Politics in a democracy is a balance between content and packaging.  While Donald Trump, generally, has provided decent content.  His packaging has sucked.  Historically, we’ve had Presidents who would come off just like Trump had they been subject to a 24 hour news-cycle, and these men were considered very effective leaders.  Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F Kennedy, Jr., Andrew Jackson chiefly among them.  These men cursed like sailors, cavorted with women like they played for an NBA team, and just generally didn’t have to worry about packaging their message but for the State of the Union Address, and they occasional direct statement publicized in papers to reach the American people.  Trump shares some form of this rough-edged personality with each of these men.

I have no idea what type of President Donald Trump will turn out to be.  He has three years left on his first term.  Much of his legacy is yet to be written.  My hope, and reason for getting political tonight, is that Donald Trump will package his message better AND that his opposition will make more of an effort to understand that some of this is just poor packaging, while other aspects of the affront are simply higher levels of ethnocentrism, patriotism and hot air.

May God Continue to Bless America,

Will O’Connor

Laid to Waste by ‘Beneath a Scarlet Sky’

Posted on by under Literature, The Edison Project Blog

***SPOILER ALERT***

The following are my thoughts in response to having read Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan.  If you have designs to read this book, while I appreciate you frequenting my blog, please save for a later date.

Edison Project BASS

Calamity.  Utter and total heartbreak.  Those are my feelings today, as I’ve closed the book on Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan.  I don’t know how I’ll ever open another book.  In the week since I first opened this beautiful, hopeful, inspiring and yet altogether heart-wrenching novel, I’ve cheered for Mimo and Uncle Albert, scorned General Leyers, revered Father Re and Cardinal Schuster and fallen in love with Pino and Anna. The kind of love where your hope resides in a greater future for the love you posses within yourself and for others.  The kind of love only found in Eden’s paradise, before we cast ourselves into shadow.  I don’t know that I’ve ever cursed at a book out loud before.  I probably only did so because I saw it coming, and was powerless to stop it.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky is set in WWII Milan, leading us through the winding trials of Pino Lella.  Pino finds himself in one harrowing predicament after another.  Shortly after the bombing of Milan began, Pino’s parents scuttle him to Casa Alpina, where he’d spent much of his youth skiing and studying under the careful tutelage of Father Re, the remote school’s headmaster and priest.  Pino soon discovers Father Re has other designs for Pino; leading one expedition after the next over a chain of Italian Alpine Mountains with Jews seeking refuge in Switzerland has his repetitious mission.  Pino encounters thieves, doubt and avalanches along the way.  His faith is tested but his outlook on life remains untainted, ever-desirous of finding love.

Prior to turning 18, Pino is jettisoned back to Milan under the bequest of his father, that he might avoid the draft and instead enlist in the German Army under a division that would keep him out of harm’s way.  After a near-death incident shortly into his career, an injury places Pino on leave.  Upon returning home he is yet to even set foot in his home before he encounters General Hans Leyers, the chief engineer in Hitler’s Nazi Regime in Italy.  Having learned to maintain and operate vehicles as a hobby while at Casa Alpina, it is his deft technical skill that earns him the new position as driver for the General.

On Pino’s first day as driver, he knocks on the door of the General’s apartment and is greeted by the maid, a beautiful woman named Anna to whom we are introduced earlier in the story.  The night of the first bombardment, Pino has scheduled a date with Anna to see a movie.  She stands him up, avoiding, unbeknownst to her, a bomb hurtling through the roof of the theater.  Their subsequent near daily interaction quickly leads Anna to reciprocate feelings for Pino, who is now operating as both the General’s driver and a spy for the resistance in Italy.  Pino’s love for music abounds as Sullivan deftly conflates Pino’s passion for Anna, and for music, into one solitary tone.  The two fall in love despite the war-ravaged surroundings and become engaged just before the German retreat.  The love scene depicted in the story was written in such a way that anyone looking for clues as to whether or not their days would entail each other for the rest of their loves quickly becomes aware that Anna will not survive the war.

As much as I knew this to be true, still there was hope.  Perhaps the words would rearrange themselves in the coming pages and the tragedy about to ensue I would be spared of.  Fully invested in their world, their happiness, their continued existence, I trudged forward.  Sure enough, a few calamitous decisions on Pino’s behalf coupled with the ill-timed retreat of the Germans and the vendetta killings required by the Partisans set the stage for Anna’s capture, due to her association with General Leyers’ mistress.  A public gathering’s boisterous atmosphere attracts Pino’s attention.  The strapping young man works his way to the front of the mob as an executioner leads out “collaborators” of the Nazi party.  Anna among them.  Before he can explain the mistake, the executioners try the traitors and kill them by firing squad.  Pino has a front row seat to the barbarous atrocities, his heart breaking mine.

I can think of only one other such case where I felt so abandoned by the death of a literary love interest: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.  All of this leads me to feel powerless and forlorn, with a burning resolution to evade Italian-set World War II tragic novels.

I am glad I encountered Pino’s story, it was a world I relished having a window.  Pino is a hero for so many of his actions.  Much like much war literature, Pino’s humanity befalls his passion and love.  Pino’s misfortune reinforces my good fortune.  I am grateful to have never known war.  I am fortunate to have never been separated by my wife.  Blessed to have never feared what might become of me, my wife or my children.  But yet still, here I am, heart-broken over the evil that stole Anna from this world, even if I’d never known her.  To have come all that way in such a perilous time and die at the hands of your misunderstanding countrymen is what makes Beneath a Scarlet Sky so difficult a pill to swallow.

Yours in the Passionate Pursuit of Happiness – Con Smania

Will O’Connor