CHOOSING HAPPINESS: Learning to Find Joy in Life

By Cliff Dean

This book is a celebration of life. It is the colorful story of one man’s personal search for happiness. It is a collection of stories about unusual, even unique circumstances and events in life from which essential lessons can be learned about how to be happy, regardless of circumstances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798823011778

Cliff Dean

Like you, I’ve spent a lifetime looking for happiness. I’ve diligently explored the nooks and crannies of happiness’s hiding places for over seventy years. I’ve done a lot, experienced a lot, and learned a lot about how to be happy. I’ve been a son, sibling, spouse, parent, and grandparent. I’ve been a student, manual laborer, salesman, legal secretary, court reporter, and air traffic controller. I’ve won National Science Foundation grants and worked in microbiology labs. I’ve been a firefighter, mountain man, survivalist, and master naturalist, as well as a yoga instructor. I’ve lived in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, faced bears, moose, elk, and cougars, and survived for months at a time by catching and eating rattlesnakes. I’ve jumped out of airplanes and off cliffs and waterfalls. I’ve flown military combat aircraft and been trusted routinely with the lives of tens of thousands of people, as well as the safety of Air Force One. I’ve written books, won poetry contests, published a magazine about birds, sung in choirs, acted on stage, created stained glass windows, sculpted clay creations, and designed popup cards. I’ve lived on the East Coast, West Coast, the South, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, Southwest, California and Hawaii. I’ve lived on coastlines, mountains, deserts, farm country, and a Pacific island in the middle of a vast ocean. Here is what I have learned about happiness.

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© 2023 Cliff Dean. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/19/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1178-5 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1177-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912975

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

… AND SO IT BEGINS

Branded

Firstish Memories

Proudest Moment

Home

Moving

Labels

SCHOOL LESSONS

Elementary School

Junior High School

High School

College

The Edge of Oblivion

Appalachian Leaves

Concrete Boots

Laughter in the Night

Dropping Out

BECOMING A MAN

Preparations

Walking Into Wild

Half-Ton Snorter

Face-To-Fang

Walking Out from the Unknown to the Unknowable

MOUNTAIN MAN DAYS

Journey to the River of No Return

The Shriek

On the Hunt with Buckskin Bill

New Year’s Surprise

Desert Survival

It’s Good to Be Alive!

Experiencing Existentialism

ROMANCE

First Love

The River Doesn’t Care

A Unique Wedding

WHAT TO DO

Bosom Buddies

Walking the Tightrope

Bad Boss

Air Force One

9/11

Voyager

SERENDIPITOUS ENTANGLEMENT

Losing Myself

Cross-Country Courtship

LIFE’S LESSONS

Seasons

Henry & Ben

Principled Underpinnings

Being Parented

Hunting Squirrels

Lost & Found

Retirement

Reinventing Myself

Positive Aging

Music

Hobbies

Listening

The Illusion of Everything

Pandemic’s Gift

Crack in the Armor

Post-Pandemic

My Summer Vacation

Thanks

Making A Difference

Regrets

Resolutions

Words of Wisdom

FINAL THOUGHTS

Ashes

Eulogy

SUMMARY OF LESSONS LEARNED

PHOTOGRAPHS

Are You My Father?

Laughter in the Mountains

The Reflecting Pool

Appalachian Trail Sign in North Carolina

Building a Suspension Bridge with Buckskin Bill

Buckskin Bill: Legendary Mountain Man

Mountain Man Days

Crazy in Love

Singing the Lead Role (as a Rabbi) in a Musical

Bosom Buddy

Voyager (first around-the-world nonstop flight)

Losing 253 Pounds in One Year

Finding Love Again

Good Attitude is Critical

Loving Parents

Wet Anhinga with Attitude

Enjoying Retirement

Reinventing Myself

Singing for Fun

Creating Lemur Playmates Out of Clay

Training to Go Beyond Illusion

Discovering What’s Behind the Mask

Gratitude

Enjoying New Adventures

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Are You My Father?: Answering Life’s Unexpected Questions

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(2019; Balboa Press; ISBN 978-1-9822-2592-6)

Laughter in the Mountains: Enjoying the Last of the Mountain Men

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(2012; AuthorHouse; ISBN 978-1-4685-0146-9)

the reflecting pool: reflections of a mountain man (a book of poetry)

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(2009; AuthorHouse; ISBN 978-1-4389-4974-1)

INTRODUCTION

Like you, I’ve spent a lifetime looking for happiness.

And like most people, I’ve often confused pleasure for happiness. But over a lifetime of experience I’ve discovered that pleasure and happiness are really two different things.

Pleasure is driven by our physical senses. Our bodies are genetically programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Pleasure is rooted in our physical environment and is short-term. Experiencing pleasure without an accompanying underlying sense of happiness is proverbial.

Happiness is an internal state of being. It is a filter through which we experience life. Happiness (and its alternative states of being) is the mental, emotional and spiritual context in which the events of our lives are experienced and interpreted. It is based on our innermost beliefs – regardless of what our conscious thoughts may be. It is the group of underlying stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world – and believe.

When I was in college, I got accepted into an elite extracurricular program for developing leadership skills in promising young students. In one of the first interviews for that program I was asked point-blank what my goals in life were. I responded simply: To be happy. The mentor chuckled, commenting that of course everyone wanted to be happy. But he insisted that I would need to have very specific defined, tangible, and quantifiable goals – which I subsequently would need to actually accomplish – in order to be happy.

This was a very successful, knowledgeable, respected world-wise mentor who was advising me. In my innocence I presumed that he knew what he was talking about. So I took his advice to heart and intensified my search for happiness in the suggested traditional ways extolled by the successful members of our culture. I sought happiness by having the right family, friends, relationships, career, home, health, wealth, travel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.

I’ve diligently explored the nooks and crannies of happiness’s hiding places for over seventy years now – examining the usual spots where everyone thinks happiness is to be found, as well as some creative and unexpected treasure caches.

This is the story of my personal search for happiness and what I have learned.

~ Cliff Dean ~

DEDICATION

for Logan

and a lifetime of choices yet to come

for W. H.

for being my personal living example of how to be

a good man, and then an ever better man

for JoAnn

for showing me a kinder, gentler way of experiencing life

without having to force everything/everyone to be

as I think it/they ought to be

for Melba

for always loving to listen to my stories

and always wanting to hear more

for

the members of Carolina Arbors Memoir Writing Club

Larry, Susan, Tien, Irina, Lisa, Mary and Tom

for inspiring me and encouraging me to write this book

for

everyone and everything

that has ever showed up in my life,

allowing me to grow in my choices of how to experience life

and for

Happiness Hunters

everywhere

… AND SO

IT BEGINS

BRANDED

M Y PENETRATING, ANGUISHED SCREAMS OF pain brought my panicked mother and grandmother running. Only a few days old, I was a totally helpless baby. My mother had put me down for a nap in a bedroom at my grandmother’s house while the two women prepared a meal in the kitchen. When they arrived breathless at my bedside, my three-year-old brother was standing beside me – guilt and confusion engulfing him.

What happened?!

My brother just shrugged, refusing to look my mother in the eyes.

Mom reached down, picked me up, and soothingly cuddled me back to calm. It wasn’t easy. I continued to wail for a long time.

When everything had finally settled down and Mom laid me back down on the bed, she gasped. My tiny arm bore the brutal imprint of a full set of fresh teeth marks.

Shocked, Mom turned to my brother.

What did you do to the baby?

He wasn’t moving. I wanted to see if he was okay.

Fortunately, I have no memory of this event at all. Nor do I have any memories of my dramatic home birth. I was a very big baby (almost twelve pounds) whose birth caused near mortal trauma to my mother. The country doctor that was supposed to deliver me didn’t show up until after the birth – drunk! I’m told that this was the one time that my father, a preacher and peaceful man of God, came perilously close to the temptation of physically assaulting another person.

But I never heard these stories until I was a teenager and my brother had already firmly established himself as my mentor, my protector, and my idol. Almost three years older than me, he paved my way through life. As I grew, everything that I wanted to do and learn he had already done and learned. And he was always patient and willing to teach me what he knew.

My first day of school was utterly humiliating. I was the new kid in a new town in a completely new situation. All the other kids knew each other and seemed to know what to expect. I had never felt so out of place, so alone, so stupid. That set the pattern for my early experiences in school and with other kids my age. I was behind in everything. I was ignorant about everything that everyone else seemed to know all about.

My brother, Jerry, was the one person I confided in. He had already been through all of this himself and truly understood. He was the one who patiently taught me – day after day, week after week, month after month – exactly what I needed to know to catch up with the others, then surpass them. By the end of the year, I had indeed caught up with my classmates and had even become a star pupil.

From that early searingly painful and humiliating moment of initial estrangement from kids my own age, I spent my time with my brother and his peers. Because I was younger than everybody else, their expectations of me were low – so I never felt humiliated when I couldn’t meet the standards of those around me. But I got early and consistent exposure to (and practice of) a level of performance far beyond that of the kids my own age. And my brother protected me from any form of condescension from the others. He was bigger, smarter, and tougher than all of them and would not tolerate them treating me with anything less than respect and acceptance.

He was my hero.

LESSON LEARNED for HAPPINESS:

Be open to allowing a painful experience develop into a blessing.

FIRSTISH MEMORIES

R ATHER THAN A DEFINITIVE FIRST memory, I have a conglomeration of firstish memories.

Plumbing the depths of my memories produces only time-indefinite images and feelings related to the first home I can recall – what now would seem like a small, poverty-draped, dilapidated cottage; but what then seemed like a hillside fairytale castle with a commanding view of the surrounding estates and countryside.

I can recall numerous early adventures, but cannot arrange them chronologically…

…The excitement of furiously pumping the cast-iron handle of the old pump out back to prime it, anxiously watching for the first magical splash of water spewing from its rusty mouth.

…The daily morning trudge beside my mom through foggy, dew-encased fields to milk our neighbor’s cow and carry home a huge, heavy bucket full of fresh, warm milk.

…Careening down the hill (that was our back yard) in the proverbial little red wagon, trying desperately to avoid crashing into the line of trees at the bottom of the hill.

…Diving headfirst into collected mounds of raked autumn leaves, emerging messily and victoriously with a huge grin on my face.

…Afternoon naps regularly interrupted by the man next door, coming home from work and yelling out to me at the top of his lungs: Hey, Little Bitty Buddy!

…Dressing up in cowboy hat and chaps, darting around the front yard using my trusty cap gun to dispatch anything and everything that dared move – dogs, cats, birds, dragonflies. Even the inanimate were not safe if they caught my sharp-shooter eyes.

But what actually came first remains an enigma within the foggy and unreliable confines of my mind’s reconstructed memories.

LESSON LEARNED for HAPPINESS:

The facts involved in memories are often overridden by feelings associated with those memories. To the extent possible, choose what feelings you wish to associate with memories.

PROUDEST MOMENT

S PECIAL MOMENTS IN LIFE MAKE indelible imprints upon our psyches. Such a moment proved to be one of my own proudest moments and forever changed my life. Indeed, it was a true turning point for me, virtually instantaneously lifting me out of the depressive rut of continual failure, shame, and embarrassment to personal triumph – giving me the self-confidence to step boldly into a future of countless successes, each accomplishment setting the foundation for the next and helping ease the anguish and shame of previous failures.

Before this pivotal moment, life had gotten complicated. I had become increasingly aware that people around me were beginning to judge me more and more negatively, wondering more and more often why a person my age never seemed to be able to get his act together. Despite my best intentions and my most diligent efforts, time after time success slipped away from me, leaving me chagrined and utterly embarrassed.

Then, finally, my transitional moment arrived. It was total relief – a glorious moment of penultimate success! In an instant I rose from the bowels of humiliating failure to the heights of triumphant glory.

Mommy! I yelled. I did it! I went Number Two – in the toilet – all by myself!

It was my proudest moment. It changed my life forever.

LESSON LEARNED for HAPPINESS:

Almost anything can be a special moment. Celebrate everything!

HOME

W HEN I WAS YOUNG, HOME was wherever my parents chose to live at any given stretch of time:

… first an idyllic hilltop little white house in rural Tennessee, with an expansive grassy field as a front lawn that ended abruptly where the graveled country road passed our yard fifty feet below the precipitous cliff separating us from the road, with an improvised vertical staircase of short wooden planks dug into the dirt (one above the other) to allow us to climb precariously up to our house, with steeply sloping hills forming the back yard where we children regularly careened downward in our little red wagon, racing out of control into seeming oblivion until gravity or a tree stopped us, whereupon we dragged the wagon back up the hill and enthusiastically pumped the cast-iron handle of an old-fashioned water pump to start a flow of cold fresh well-water which we greedily gulped with gaping mouths thrust directly beneath the gushing faucet.

… then a primitive little flat-topped cinder-block house set amid a forest of guardian pine trees where, once a week, we converted our old galvanized steel washtub from its intended duties of washing clothes to washing the grimy little bodies of me and my siblings with buckets of water we each laboriously carried by hand to fill the impromptu bathtub.

… then another (and a bit bigger) L-shaped Tennessee hilltop house in Oak Ridge – a town built in World War II by the U.S. government specifically for the purpose of refining enough uranium to make the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in Japan – and where I first ventured independently into the world when I daily boarded a school bus which delivered me to my kindergarten class.

… then a brand-new small two-story brick house on the eastern shore of Maryland in a little town at the southern end of Chesapeake Bay by the Atlantic Ocean, built on land that had been reclaimed from the bay by dumping untold tons of oyster shells into the water’s edge to create dry land upon which the town was constructed. The town was just barely above water level, and it regularly flooded whenever it stormed – much less during hurricane season. All the houses were raised above ground level to prevent flood waters inundating them. Everyone had waterproof boots, foul-weather gear, and rowboats. The town was often underwater, and it was a common sight to see boats rather than cars navigating the streets in front of our house.

… then a stately old wooden two-story frame house on the edge of a beautiful and prosperous little town on the Chesapeake Bay’s eastern shore. Surrounded by good neighbors, friends, good schools, and loving family, this was an excellent setting in which to end my childhood before the starker realities of self-responsibility began to set in.

Up until this point, I was dependent upon my family and my community to feel safe – to feel at home. But that was about to change. When I was fourteen my parents moved to a poverty-stricken little town in southern Indiana. My sister was already away in college, and my brother stayed behind in Maryland to finish his senior year of high school. So, besides my parents, I was on my own for the first time. And I didn’t like anything about this new place and these new people. For the first time I didn’t feel at home. For four years I felt stuck in this situation and at the mercy of my environment and the people around me. So I changed my thinking and I changed how I felt about home.

I began to realize that home was not a place; it was a feeling. And I slowly began to realize that I had choices about my feelings: I could allow my circumstances to dictate my feelings, or I could consciously choose how I perceived any given situation and also how I felt about it. I could react or respond.

Changing my ingrained habitual reactions to consciously chosen responses seemed overwhelming and required infinite practice. In fact, I am still practicing and learning how to do that. But eventually I concluded that "home was an idea. It was a thought – that triggered emotions. It was emotions – that triggered a thought. Ultimately, it was within me. And if it was within me, perhaps I could choose to feel at home anytime, anywhere, under virtually any circumstances. It was a matter of becoming comfortable, safe, and trusting with myself – being in command of my own thoughts and feeling comfortable in my own skin. I am home. Home is my being." Wherever I am, I am at home.

Thus I subsequently have truly felt at home scaling the heights of mountains, hiking trails from Maine to Tennessee, sleeping in open-faced tin-roofed lean-tos on mountainsides as rain and hail pelted the metal roof with deafening staccato machine-gun chatter, sleeping under trees or the open sky in the Rocky Mountains, plopping down on whatever bit of ground I happened to be standing on and genuinely feeling like it was my home for the night. College dorm rooms, hotel rooms, apartments, friends’ houses, cabins in the woods, houses of all shapes and sizes, cars, trains, airplanes – every place is home if you carry those thoughts and feelings within you. Truly, the world is your home.

LESSON LEARNED for HAPPINESS:

Find something which you can appreciate and enjoy in everything, everywhere.

MOVING

I HAVE MADE MANY MOVES DURING my life, starting with the big one – moving from seeming nothingness to life, from floating languidly in embryotic fluids to gasping for air, moving from darkness into light.

After that first move from the dark safety of a mother’s belly to the chaotic cacophony of the outside world, further moves and changes came fast and often.

I moved from the natural freedom of nakedness to restrictive clothing.

I moved from lying down, all curled up, to crawling, to walking, jumping and running; and more recently to limping, to cane-walking, and back to lying down, all curled up.

I