I was curious, so I conducted an anthropological experiment which ended when I was asked to leave the store by a senior dishwasher salesman.

This year, Canadians — or at least the people who sell them things — have openly embraced the dubious American phenomenon known as Black Friday, even though our Thanksgiving happens on a Monday in October.

Up here our consumer culture isn’t really that different than it is south of us, it’s just a little more self-conscious and toned down. Canadians would be embarrassed to buy, for example, a velvet-and-rhinestone painting of a waterfall at a truck stop, or a five-pound pack of Nibs. And so it’s not on offer up here. I kind of like that, and I guess that’s why the widely-welcomed invasion of Black Friday left me a little uneasy at first. I liked our Canadian consumer self-consciousness while it lasted.

Maybe it’s not so bad. It’s a symbiotic relationship that was bound to happen. Retailers are always looking for The Sale, and customers are always looking for The Deal. Black Friday is a day when both parties are guaranteed to get what they’re looking for with no shame implied on the part of either, and I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a little like what happens when the fleet comes into port and the local seaside establishments turn on their red lights.

This exchange is happening all the time, but Christmas is when the retailers really want to get the turnstiles spinning. There’s nothing terribly clever about the way they market their clothes and perfumes and phones, certainly nothing more clever than the now-ancient custom of pricing an item at $9.99 instead of ten dollars.

They don’t need to be clever, because both parties come to the table willing. And maybe that’s why it’s all so absurd. We’re so used to waif-proportioned mannequins and plastic Santa Villages that their ridiculousness is almost transparent to us.

So that’s why I went to the mall with my Nikon this weekend. The plan was to take images of the decked halls and gay apparel, then go do something in real life like read a book or walk in the park, and then look at the photos later when I’ve detoxed from the mall air, and see how silly it all really is.

The whole Christmas mall menagerie is so silly that it can barely offend anymore. It doesn’t warrant a serious condemnation, and being hard-nosed about it is a little like picketing a WWE event to convince showgoers that it isn’t real wrestling. More than anything I wanted to be entertained, and I was.

What fascinates me in particular are the images and displays that retailers use to lubricate this mass-transaction and get us in the mood. Fake boughs of holly hung with no hint of irony or kitch. Sterile plastic trees with wrapped empty boxes beneath them. White, flaky fuzz sprayed on window-corners by the canload, meant to remind us of some Charles Dickens book we know about but have never read.  Read More

My friend Neil makes an interesting point about happiness: those “peak” moments in life — the big achievements and big releases that we imagine to be exactly what happiness is made of — will never amount to more than a tiny proportion of a person’s life. They are infrequent and quickly give way to the ordinary again. We invest a lot of energy getting to those exceptional highs, but they are exactly that: exceptions to the normal course of life.

In between these “violin crescendo moments” life unfolds without much fanfare, in its familiar way. But within these ordinary stretches of life lie frequent, intensely gratifying moments that arise out of the most mundane activities: waiting in line, parking your car, watching a TV movie.

Even in the context of a really bad day, there are humble little details that seem to hit some kind of “smile” button in the brain, and for those moments, life is unfettered. It’s great. Life is great just knowing that each day will contain them no matter what else the cat drags in.

Other than Ben Franklin’s two dreadful certainties, nothing in life is guaranteed — except (if you’re paying attention) that there will be a steady stream of these humble little awesome things, regardless of your situation, as long as you live. This is a powerful thought and even throughout the worst days I’ve never been able to forget it for long because the reminders come along so frequently.

Ever since I included him in a quick piece on three extraordinary blogs two years ago, Neil has been a friend of mine. I love his perspective on gratitude — it recognizes that the present moment really is the place to find everything you look for in life (and not just “in theory”), yet doesn’t stray into ego-dismantling, self-mortification or Stuart Smally-like affirmations. It takes playfulness, rather than determination.

I am not his only fan. Neil’s blog, 1000 Awesome Things hit its stride pretty quickly in 2008. He won the Webby Award the following year for Best Blog, leading to his first book The Book of Awesome, which became an international bestseller. Its sequel, The Book of (Even More) Awesome launched Tuesday.

There is something about couch cushion forts and the other side of the pillow that huge numbers of people seem to be able to identify with. I don’t recommend many (any?) products on this blog, but I’m all over this one. In terms of a practical, non-striving approach to cultivating quality of life, it’s hard to do better than to learn to celebrate these very things, just for what they are. Read More

The Ides of March, again. Super bad day for Julius Caesar, but it was the day Raptitude was born.

My baby is two.

And how it’s grown. I’ve been spending more and more time responding to reader email, and I’ve had to cut down the length and depth of my responses. Often I answer the same questions over and over, so I figured it might as well post a list of frequently (and not-so-frequently) asked questions for curious readers.

In my first month of blogging a group of my fellow newbie bloggers got together to each post a “7 things you didn’t know about me” type of post. I ducked out of it and said I’d do it later. I guess this is that post, plus accrued interest. This is a long one, but it’s definitely the skimmable kind if you have to catch your bus or something.

Some of these questions are reprinted almost verbatim from reader emails, others are paraphrased because they get asked a lot in some form or another.

Somebody asked me what Raptitude is about and I wasn’t really sure how to answer. What would you say it’s about?

I don’t really have a snappy way of describing what it’s about. How about “Street-level skills and insights for contending with the human condition.” That’s not quite right either but it’s close enough for now.

It’s really about evolution, though I don’t always frame it like that because some people don’t like that word. At the moment, humans are just getting used to civilization, and we’re really not very good at it. Therefore the conventional wisdom about how we should live our lives is either old-fashioned and rife with pitfalls (try to dominate others, win the rat race, sign on with an organized religion) or too vague to be useful (try to be a nice person, try to be true to yourself, be one with the universe). I try to provide insights and techniques that are specific, unconventional and actionable.

We’re just now getting a taste of some of the higher qualities of human beings: forgiveness, nonduality, self-examination, compassion, and love — and we’re beginning to figure ways to mitigate and transcend the worst ones: reactivity, violence, self-loathing and attachment. We’re growing up as a species because individuals are making big changes in how they live, and that’s what I write about. There, that’s it.

Are you a Buddhist?

No. But Buddhism is a major influence in my life and my writing. It’s the only religion I know of that hasn’t completely lost touch with what it’s supposed to be: a set of personal practices for transcending the human condition. The other religions are hung up on ego tripping about being pure or worthy or favored, about possessing the truth, about being on the right team, about me, me, me. They’re lost in the pitfalls they’re supposed to help people overcome.

Buddhism hasn’t been immune to this kind of distortion, but it’s maintained its practical value and its identity as a methodology for personal transformation, rather than a partisan, self-gratifying institution. It’s a very systematic, unassuming approach to being a better human and its concepts are quite clear and consistent with each other.

I use Buddhist concepts and practices in my writing and in my life but I don’t formally practice the Eightfold Path, which I reckon is what makes a person a card-carrying Buddhist. I will take up the path one day in the near future as an extended experiment (probably for a year as opposed to my typical 30 days) but it’s not quite time for it.

Do you accept guest articles?

No. There have been three guest articles in Raptitude’s two years, and they’ve all been by invite. Two were from my friend Josh Hanagarne, the author of worldsstrongestlibrarian.com, and one was from my friend Lisis Blackston, formerly of questforbalance.com. Read More

I set out two days before Christmas

To beach-walk the holidays through,

Bunking with twenty-three strangers

Who relished to be alone too.

Happy with nature’s fine company,

No need for the trappings of home,

We twenty-four souls would be grateful –

Together by being on our own.

Well, nothing is quite as expected:

Twenty-three souls having fun

Belonged each to couples and families;

I, the sole party of one.

I left on the day before Christmas

Not onward, but back to the start

To friends, Swiss and English and German

Prior with whom I did part.

A Christmas Day dinner of pasta

Instead of dried fruit on its own,

And a table of young solo travelers

Who thought they’d spend Christmas alone.

***

Merry Christmas, wherever you are, whoever you’re with.  – D.

Early morning in Hua Hin

Well, my four weeks in Thailand is up, and I’m sad to leave. I arrived in New Zealand yesterday so my spirits are high but I do wish I had more time for pad thai, beaches, Singha beer, banana pancakes and night markets. It seems hard to believe now, but I actually thought I might not like Thailand. Now I am determined to go back one day.

Ah well.

My blogging mismanagement continues, and there will be no article today. Hopefully Monday’s was sufficiently long-winded to keep you busy. More stories and updates are coming to David Goes Kiwi as well over the next few days.

I have a bit of a backlog of emails too, sorry for the slow turnaround. Each will be answered soon, thank you as always for writing me.

Apologies for the inconsistent posting recently. I’ve been living in a bamboo hut on a secluded beach on Ko Lanta, where wi-fi is scarce and exclusive, and even the land connections are unreliable. For me to use the internet I have to take a sweaty half-mile hike down the beach, and the terminal may be in use when I get there. Just now I made the trip, and planned on uploading an article from my trusty USB stick, but this computer doesn’t recognize my file type and the whole OS is in Thai.

Oh well. I do continue to write and will post as soon as the situation allows me to. Shouldn’t be long, I’m headed to beautiful Ko Phi Phi today, maybe I can snag some Wi-Fi time there.

Back in June when I announced I was taking a big trip to New Zealand, I mentioned I would be opening up a new section of the site, called David Goes Kiwi.

Well, with my trip only days away, it’s finally here! You can find it at the easy-to-remember URL kiwi.raptitude.com. I’ll be posting my verbal and photographic accounts of the trip there, on a frequent but irregular basis. As far as I can foresee I will continue my twice-weekly articles here at Raptitude.

To get you acquainted with this new baby of mine, today’s post is on David Goes Kiwi. Enjoy.

Photo by Sh0dan