Contemplating Happiness

After two weeks of a dose of .75 ml. I started on 1.5 ml. of Mirapex. There was a return for two days of mild nausea and drowsiness, but that has passed. Yesterday I had a busy day and felt energetic with no need of a nap. I was up at 6:00 a.m. and bed at 11:30 p.m. (though I did briefly doze off watching a movie that evening). This morning I am walking well, planning to work in the garden and do household chores as much as I can on what promises to be a very warm and humid day.

            I have wanted to read a book on the brain and have begun reading Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert’s, Stumbling on Happiness. It’s marvelously funny while describing the complexities of the human mind. The book is quite different and even in some ways oppositional to other books I have read recently, but perhaps it melds with my new, albeit half-hearted acceptance of modern science and drugs. The Mirapex roving through my system is supposed to be honing in on my brain’s dopamine function. I am amazed that the manipulation of a tiny process in my brain that by the way, I don’t understand is producing such a dramatic difference in my life.

            I feel happier in a physical way, because at the times I am using my body it is moving more smoothly with less effort. Before the Mirapex I was feeling happy in a spiritual way, some of the time, because I was working, through meditation and other methods, on acceptance, gratitude and awareness of the present moment. But when I found myself trying to do tasks and struggling with them, I became discouraged. It’s hard to be happy when your options in life are so limited.

            I am beginning to hope that I can do some of the things in the future that I thought were unavailable. My frontal lobe, the portion of the brain that plans for the future, is enjoying imagining my prospects, though my recent training has me focusing more on happiness in the here and now.