You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd But there are 10 Steps to be Happier If You’ve a Mind to.
Posted: Tuesday, October 18, 2011
by Christofer French
Rain Dancer Associates, LLC
Roger Miller wrote so many outstanding songs and especially lyrics that his words will linger forever in Country Heaven.
But when he wrote the above referenced song (“You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd, But You Can Be Happy, if you’ve a Mind To”) he hatched a series of thoughts for the young and the old, the miserable, the depressed and the distracted, the overwrought and those who think of themselves as Irretrievably unhappy.
Just read the lyrical examples from his song and smile:
You can’t take a shower in a parakeet cage.
You can’t go swimming in a baseball pool.
You can’t change film with a kid on your back.
You can’t drive around with a tiger in your car.
You can’t go fishing in a watermelon patch.
Our Brains Like Physical Challenges, Puzzles and Mastering the Around
The songwriter’s angle is to start our wondrous little brains on a physical problem. As we envision, we try to see it all, us with our roller skates, us with our happy habit of being so skilled at roller skating. And then these roundly puffy hard as bowling balls manure creations planted amidst holes skewered by sharp hooves that fill up with piss and rain and melted hail and blood here and there.
Then you realize, this is a cute song, but if you start living it, all of these physical challenges do in fact DEFY us to be masters.
The Leprechaun and the Bikers
The ingenious lyric sits down and talks to us with the sparkling magical inquiry of a Lazy Leprechaun, deep in the darkest part of the Northern California Forest asking two drunk bikers why they are so profoundly confused.
They stumble around on a sunny California morning, their bikes won’t start, and they are hungry.
“Oh you cute little humans. You have this big gray and pink mass in the top of your head. You are wired way beyond your need to survive. You are way passed clever, and you poke at your friends all day long trying to be more astute than the other. We Leprechauns we don’t have brains equipped to conquer the around like you do.
Leprechaun brains are made for magic and joy and wonder. And You can have a Mind to be Happy!”
The Leprechaun pranced through the “camp” and finished off the snacks and beers. "We laugh at humans for two reasons. They are smarter than we, Yet we are happier than they”. The sound of empty beer cans bouncing off their bikes had awakened them both.
The Bikers rose to their defense. "Look, I’m a lawyer and he’s a money manager. We dress like this on the weekend to expand our consciousness. You know to be bigger, better, cooler than we already are anyway. We’re livin’ the American Dream.”
I don’t know why I am talkin to a guy who thinks he’s a Leprechaun, but I’ll tell you what, if you stole our gas, we can give you a hot rasher of bad luck, fast.”
“Don’t threaten us, we only offer good luck.” The Leprechaun twinkled as his cohorts giggled in the bush.
The Lawyer Biker and the Money Manager Biker looked at each other. The Leprechaun sang the song just like Roger Miller. In fact, it sounded just like Roger Miller, but that was something beyond them.
"You little bumb, mountain person, what the hell did you do with our gas? I have low blood sugar. Don’t get me mad. And don’t try to tell me I need to be happier, you little s____.”
“Well, its certain I am littler than you!”
The little leprechauns giggle from the bush. “They want to know if you think a busy brain is easier to manage than a happy and fulfilled Mind?”
"You red and gray haired puke, you steal our gas and you tell us we’re not happy. We’re on bikes for the weekend, and we aren’t who we are during the week. That proves we’re happy. Go _______ yourself.”
“I tell you what, just sit there and have some coffee, and listen, and I am sure your bikes will take you back to your homes. After all, through this lecture, we are hoping that you don’t return here - At least not with your current states of mind.”
10 Steps to Achieve Personal Happiness – To Have a Mind to
One of the keys to life is having your mind allow your brain to address your Higher Goals. The following is a step-by-step 10 Stage process to invite your inventive and sparkling brain to build up your Mind in its Higher Causes. One of those Higher Causes can be to have a Stated Happiness Project.
1) Emotional Step- Address your Predominant Emotions and label them. Noting when predominant palpable emotional states disturb or enhance your happiness.
2) Conscious Step- Address the Conscious part of your mind and List those things that you know make you happy. This will in and of itself be instructive to you. If you try to replicate or multiply these conditions, you will learn.
3) Unconscious Step- Understand and acknowledge that your Unconscious World affects positively and negatively your states of Happiness, in which thought patterns are more mysterious and indeterminate.
4) Life’s Events Step- Understand how Active Happenings affect your Happiness; and then how Predominant Emotions, Conscious, Unconscious activity occur in a Dynamic Continuum causing your states of Happiness. Sometimes one can think that certain events are stronger than they really are, and that the drunken Uncle at Thanksgiving is really more a part of the event than hating Thanksgiving itself.
5) Holistic Step- As Time passes, you see that you are a Whole Person, not actually divided in small pieces and increments. Because you have undertaken your Happiness Project, you will see how difficult some states are to deal with, and how other mood conditions tend to “move over” as you confront your conscious and unconscious activity. This project affects your whole being.
6) The Rest and Ease Step- Your Happiness Project is not intended to “make you unhappy because you can’t achieve all the happiness that you desire”. So you adopt the personal opinion that your happiness will increase, as you adopt an ease over this process. You deliberately begin to adopt an official time of rest in the day, in the week, in the month. Perhaps you discover that the “rest” does you well.
7) Personal Agenda Step- The farther you remain in this process, the more you realize that you have a Personal Agenda which is natural to you which tends to allow for and fight certain states. Your fight and flight patterns are personal to you. You understand this Agenda is part of you, but it does not mean that you are powerless.
8) PsychoSocial Examination Step- As you continue this process, you see how birth order, familial conditions, family behavior conditions, ethnic and racial elements affect your states of happiness. This of course could be entirely theoretical, but thinking about this problem can help these issues come out, as you let your own ideas about these topics come to the fore.
9) The Natural Step- As you progress you will come to some conclusions: I am not naturally that happy a person, but I have made progress. I am a naturally happy person, but I have learned more about myself in this process, that don’t have to do with happiness per se. Just learning what I perceive as “natural” to me may be instructive.
10) The Totality Step- As you have gone through these steps, you see that Happiness is not all there is to life, and that other States of Mind are important too. Some of the greater human struggles and efforts have to do with transcendent goals that don’t necessarily equate to the issue of Human Happiness or Happiness is one of the last issues you deal with, as others emerge naturally before Happiness. But because you come to this conclusion you are Happy that you have addressed Happiness in your life, because it has helped the Totality of what makes you you. “I am what I am” but at least I have given me complete consideration.
If You’ve a Mind to…
If you’ve a “mind to” then you have the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of a special organism – Yourself.
Pronunciation: /'mind/
Function: n
1 : the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons
2 : the conscious mental events and capabilities in an organism.
3 : the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of an organism.
“Self Reporting” Your Own Happiness Tells You What You Would Tell Someone If They Asked
The Leprechaun smiled “Why don’t you invent an exercise for yourself? Self Report to Yourself. Treat yourself to a Temperature Taking that does not hurt. It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or years -- we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we begin to think about the control of our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on. See if you can envision saying to yourself: “I am illumined with a greater capacity for love and happiness.”
The lawyer stepped forward and threw his remaining coffee in the woods. “Is the Honorable Crazy Leprechaun done with his case?”
“Yes.”
“That sounded just like me, didn’t it?” The Money Manager nodded as the Lawyer put his gear together.
“Now where’s that damned gas?” He looked at his guage. “It says its full.”
“Yes, indeed, you’re full of it.” The Leprechaun laughed that eery hollow laugh and backed into the wood. The giggles in the bush stopped.
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/
Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2007 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Hi Christofer.
Very creative! And very interesting. Great message and good advice.
Hugs,
Dianne
O.K., O.K, your outdid yourself with this one. I am sending this link to others for a good read.
ArleneThank you very much. I tried to layer it with substance, not just color and charm. I appreciate your fanlyness.
Christofer,
Good stuff. I especially like the titles. How about You Can't Raise Kids Who Think They're Parents Too. Daniel Pink is a master motivator. He says we need three things to get motivated: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. As you say about, people love to master things. And if we master what we love, well then, there's our greater purpose. Great article.That is a title of sterling quality because it carries so much of our current culture and society with it. I checked you website. Looks like you have a powerful and complete approach. Do you hire out any speakers? Maybe I should just ask how much your program is first. Thanks for your comment. It's appreciated.
"If you follow the herd, you're certain to step into something", roller skates, or not.
A splendid motivational article for people whose minds are not their own best friends.
(I am sadly a long standing senior member of that club.)
Happiness is indeed grabbing the reins of that runaway chariot of mad machinery.
Well done!I wish I could write like you do. I am trailing along, picking up your droppings of morsels - cookies and "thoughtlets" (forgive the new word inventions).
What I was hoping for is more simple than anything. Your reference to the herd is meaningful. This article is not a big draw because people are happy being as happy as they are. Its those who desperately want to be happier that I wish to talk to. Thanks for your response. It's fun talking to you in the "open field".
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