Story-telling Songs

As I've been listening to music over the years it has amazed me that people are able to write such great lyrics about specific topics. A few of the songs are long, but I promise they are worth it.

                                                Bob Dylan - Hurricane
     Hurricane is a protest song about the imprisonment of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. It talks about alleged acts of profiling and racism against Carter to convict him of multiple counts of murder.

BobDylan-Hurricane - Vidéo Dailymotion (Turns out this was harder to find than a needle in a haystack..)

                                  Relient K - Deathbed
    Matt Thiessen, the lead singer for Relient K who wrote the song with the band's long time producer Mark Lee Townsend, had this to say about the song:
     I started the song with the chorus, the very first part of the song, the "I could smell the death on the sheets" sorta thing. I don't know how that came about, I was just kinda goofing around on the piano one night. And so then I was like, "Where should I go with this? I kind of like it." And I was thinking about writing a song about myself - imagining myself dying. At that point, it wasn't cancer or anything, I was like, "Maybe I'll go through my life and imagine everything," but then I thought, "Y'know, that's kind of weird and it might not be good." So I started making up this fictitious character and that was really fun. I just started having a lot of fun with it. I thought "This'll be cool!" and I'll go through his life and whatnot. And certain parts of this guy's life, I based off family or friends that I knew. Like he ended up getting married on his twenty-first birthday, well my brother got married on his twentieth birthday. And he got divorced, and my brother got divorced. My brother-in-law, his previous marriage ended up getting divorced and he joined a bowling league and bowled seriously every day of the week and ended up bowling two to three hundred games. And that is how he dealt with his divorce and stuff. So it was just a lot of different little things like that. Actually, I had two or three people tell me already that the song is their grandfather to a "T." My old roommate, he's been on our third record and did our hidden track with me, I played him the song - see, I always play him our stuff and he doesn't really like our music, I just wanted to play him that song - and his grandpa died a week before and he was a preacher's son and there are all these coincidences with it, it was really weird. He was like, "Dude, that's crazy! I didn't tell you my grandpa died!" 
     What is really interesting is that the song has 115 different tracks with different instruments involved. Matt Thiessen sang and played trumpet, trombone, french horn, and baritone on the song. I found an average amount of tracks per song online and liked this one the most:
     "Between 10 and 100 with a standard deviation of 30 and mean of 39."

                             Billy Joel - We Didn't Start The Fire
     Every time I hear this song I think "I really don't have a clue of what half of these things are.." I recently looked them all up, and conveniently found them all list in chronological order in the wonderful world of Wikipedia. Enjoi.

1949

• Harry Truman is inaugurated as U.S. president after being elected in 1948 to his own term; previously he was sworn in following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He authorized the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II, on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively.
• Doris Day enters the public spotlight with the films My Dream Is Yours and It's a Great Feeling as well as popular songs like "It's Magic"; divorces her second husband.
• Red China as the Communist Party of China wins the Chinese Civil War, establishing the People's Republic of China.
• Johnnie Ray signs his first recording contract with Okeh Records, although he would not become popular for another two years.
• South Pacific, the prize-winning musical, opens on Broadway on April 7.
• Walter Winchell is an aggressive radio and newspaper journalist credited with inventing the gossip column.
• Joe DiMaggio and the New York Yankees go to the World Series five times in the 1940s, winning four of them.

1950

• Joe McCarthy, the US Senator, gains national attention and begins his anti-communist crusade with his Lincoln Day speech.
• Richard Nixon is first elected to the United States Senate.
• Studebaker, a popular car company, begins its financial downfall.
• Television is becoming widespread (in black and white format) and becomes the most popular means of advertising.
• North Korea and South Korea declare war after Northern forces stream south on June 25.
• Marilyn Monroe soars in popularity with five new movies, including The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, and attempts suicide after the death of friend Johnny Hyde who asked to marry her several times, but she refused respectfully. Monroe would later (1954) be married for a brief time to Joe DiMaggio (mentioned in the previous verse).

1951

• The Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius, were convicted on March 29 for espionage.
• H-Bomb is in the middle of its development as a nuclear weapon, announced in early 1950 and first tested in late 1952.
• Sugar Ray Robinson, a champion welterweight boxer.
• Panmunjom, the border village in Korea, is the location of truce talks between the parties of the Korean War.
• Marlon Brando is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire.
• The King and I, musical, opens on Broadway on March 29.
• The Catcher in the Rye, a controversial novel by J. D. Salinger, is published.

1952

• Dwight D. Eisenhower is first elected as U.S. president, winning by a landslide margin of 442 to 89 electoral votes.
• The vaccine for polio is privately tested by Jonas Salk.
• England's got a new queen: Queen Elizabeth II succeeds to the throne of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms upon the death of her father, George VI, and is crowned the next year.
• Rocky Marciano defeats Jersey Joe Walcott, becoming the world Heavyweight champion.
• Liberace has a popular 1950s television show for his musical entertainment.
• Santayana goodbye: George Santayana, philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, dies on September 26.

1953

• Joseph Stalin dies on March 5, yielding his position as leader of the Soviet Union.
• Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Stalin for six months following his death. Malenkov had presided over Stalin's purges of party "enemies", but would be spared a similar fate by Nikita Khrushchev mentioned later in verse.
• Gamal Abdel Nasser acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
• Sergei Prokofiev, the composer, dies on March 5, the same day as Stalin.
• Winthrop Rockefeller and his wife Barbara are involved in a highly publicized divorce, culminating in 1954 with a record-breaking $5.5 million settlement.^[10]
• Roy Campanella, an African-American baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
• Communist bloc is a group of communist nations dominated by the Soviet Union at this time. Probably a reference to the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.

1954

• Roy Cohn resigns as Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel and enters private practice with the fall of McCarthy. He also worked to prosecute the Rosenbergs, mentioned earlier.
• Juan Perón spends his last full year as President of Argentina before a September 1955 coup.
• Arturo Toscanini is at the height of his fame as a conductor, performing regularly with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on national radio.
• Dacron is an early artificial fiber made from the same plastic as polyester.
• Dien Bien Phu falls. A village in North Vietnam falls to Viet Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap, leading to the creation of North Vietnam and South Vietnam as separate states.
• "Rock Around the Clock" is a hit single released by Bill Haley & His Comets in May, spurring worldwide interest in rock and roll music.

1955

• Albert Einstein dies on April 18 at the age of 76.
• James Dean achieves success with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, gets nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and dies in a car accident on September 30 at the age of 24.
• Brooklyn's got a winning team: The Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series for the only time before their move to Los Angeles.
• Davy Crockett is a Disney television series about the legendary frontiersman of the same name. The show was a huge hit with young boys and inspired a short-lived "coonskin cap" craze.
• Peter Pan is broadcast on TV live and in color from the 1954 version of the stage musical starring Mary Martin on March 7. Disney released an animated version the previous year.
• Elvis Presley signs with RCA Records on November 21, beginning his pop career.
• Disneyland opens on July 17 as Walt Disney's first theme park.

1956

• Brigitte Bardot appears in her first mainstream film And God Created Woman and establishes an international reputation as a French "sex kitten".
• Budapest is the site of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
• Alabama is the site of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which ultimately led to the removal of the last race laws in the USA. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr figure prominently.
• Nikita Khrushchev makes his famous Secret Speech denouncing Stalin's "cult of personality" on February 23.
• Princess Grace Kelly releases her last film, High Society, and marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
• Peyton Place, the best-selling novel by Grace Metalious, is published. Though mild compared to today's prime time, it shocked the reserved values of the 1950s.
• Trouble in the Suez: The Suez Crisis boils as Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal on October 29.

1957

• Little Rock, Arkansas is the site of an anti-integration standoff, as Governor Orval Faubus stops the Little Rock Nine from attending Little Rock Central High School and President Dwight D. Eisenhower deploys the 101st Airborne Division to counteract him.
• Boris Pasternak, the Russian author, publishes his famous novel Doctor Zhivago.
• Mickey Mantle is in the middle of his career as a famous New York Yankees outfielder and American League All-Star for the sixth year in a row.
• Jack Kerouac publishes his first novel in seven years, On the Road.
• Sputnik becomes the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, marking the start of the space race.
• Chou En-Lai, Premier of the People's Republic of China, survives an assassination attempt on the charter airliner Kashmir Princess.
• Bridge on the River Kwai is released as a film adaptation of the 1954 novel and receives seven Academy Awards.^[11]

1958

• Lebanon is engulfed in a political and religious crisis that eventually involves U.S. intervention.
• Charles de Gaulle is elected first president of the French Fifth Republic following the Algerian Crisis.
• California baseball begins as the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants move to California and become the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants. They are the first major league teams west of Kansas City.
• Charles Starkweather homicides capture the attention of Americans, killing eleven people before he is caught in a massive manhunt in Douglas, Wyoming.
• Children of Thalidomide: Mothers taking the drug Thalidomide had children born with congenital birth defects caused by the sleeping aid and antiemetic, which was also used at times to treat morning sickness.

1959

• Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash on February 3 with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, in a day that had a devastating impact on the country and youth culture. Joel prefaces the lyric with a Holly signature vocal hiccup "uh-huh, uh-huh."
• Ben-Hur, a film based around the New Testament starring Charlton Heston, wins eleven Academy Awards.
• Space Monkey: Able and Miss Baker return to Earth from space aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18.
• The Mafia are the center of attention for the FBI and public attention builds to this organized crime society with a historically Sicilian-American origin.
• Hula hoops reach 100 million in sales as the latest toy fad.
• Fidel Castro comes to power after a revolution in Cuba and visits the United States later that year on an unofficial twelve-day tour.
• Edsel is a no-go: Production of this car marque ends after only three years due to poor sales.

1960

• U-2: An American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, causing the U-2 Crisis of 1960.
• Syngman Rhee was rescued by the CIA after being forced to resign as leader of South Korea for allegedly fixing an election and embezzling more than twenty million U.S. dollars.
• Payola, illegal payments for radio broadcasting of songs, was publicized due to Dick Clark's testimony before Congress and Alan Freed's public disgrace.
• John F. Kennedy beats Richard Nixon in the November 8 general election.
• Chubby Checker popularizes the dance The Twist with his cover of the song of the same name.
• Psycho: An Alfred Hitchcock thriller, based on a pulp novel by Robert Bloch and adapted by Joseph Stefano, which becomes a landmark in graphic violence and cinema sensationalism. The screeching violins heard briefly in the background of the song are a trademark of the film's soundtrack.
• Belgians in the Congo: The Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville) was declared independent of Belgium on June 30, with Joseph Kasavubu as President and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister.

1961

• Ernest Hemingway commits suicide on July 2 after a long battle with depression.
• Adolf Eichmann, a "most wanted" Nazi war criminal, is traced to Argentina and captured by Mossad agents. He is covertly taken to Israel where he is put on trial for crimes against humanityin Germany during World War II, convicted, and hanged.
• Stranger in a Strange Land, written by Robert A. Heinlein, is a breakthrough best-seller with themes of sexual freedom and liberation.
• Bob Dylan is signed to Columbia Records after a New York Times review by critic Robert Shelton.
• Berlin is separated into West Berlin and East Berlin, and from the rest of East Germany, when the Berlin Wall is erected on August 13 to prevent citizens escaping to the West.
• The Bay of Pigs Invasion fails, an attempt by United States-trained Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro.

1962

• Lawrence of Arabia: The Academy Award-winning film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence starring Peter O'Toole premieres in America on December 16.
• British Beatlemania: The Beatles, a British rock group, gain Ringo Starr as drummer and Brian Epstein as manager, and join the EMI's Parlophone label. They soon become the world's most famous rock band, with the word "Beatlemania" adopted by the press for their fans' unprecedented enthusiasm. It also began the British Invasion in the United States.
• Ole' Miss: James Meredith integrates the University of Mississippi
• John Glenn: Flew the first American manned orbital mission termed "Friendship 7" on February 20.
• Liston beats Patterson: Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson fight for the world heavyweight championship on September 25, ending in a first-round knockout. This match marked the first time Patterson had ever been knocked out and one of only eight losses in his 20-year professional career.

1963

• Pope Paul VI: Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the regnal name of Paul VI.
• Malcolm X makes his infamous statement "The chickens have come home to roost" about the Kennedy assassination, thus causing the Nation of Islam to censor him.
• British politician sex: The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, has a relationship with a showgirl, and then lies when questioned about it before the House of Commons. When the truth came out, it led to his own resignation and undermined the credibility of the Prime Minister.
• JFK blown away: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 while riding in an open convertible through Dallas.

1965

• Birth control: In the early 1960s, oral contraceptives, popularly known as "the pill", first go on the market and are extremely popular. Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 challenged a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives. In 1968, Pope Paul VI released a papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae which declared artificial birth control a sin.
• Ho Chi Minh: A Vietnamese communist, who served as President of Vietnam from 1954–1969. March 2 Operation Rolling Thunder begins bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line from North Vietnam to the Vietcong rebels in the south. On March 8, the first U.S. combat troops, 3,500 marines, land in South Vietnam.

1968

• Richard Nixon back again: Former Vice President Nixon is elected in the 1968 presidential election of the United States

1969

• Moonshot: Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing, successfully lands on the moon.
• Woodstock: Famous rock and roll festival of 1969 that came to be the epitome of the counterculture movement.

1974

• Watergate: Political scandal that began when the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC was broken into. After the break-in, word began to spread that President Richard Nixon (a Republican) may have known about the break-in, and tried to cover it up. The scandal would ultimately result in the resignation of President Nixon, and to date, this remains the only time that anyone has ever resigned the United States Presidency.
• Punk rock: The Ramones form, with the Sex Pistols following in 1975, bringing in the punk era.

1977

• Menachem Begin becomes Prime Minister of Israel in 1977 and negotiates the Camp David Accords with Egypt's president in 1978.
• Ronald Reagan: President of the United States from 1981 to 1989; first attempted in 1976 to run for president.

1976

• Palestine: a United Nations resolution that calls for an independent Palestinian state and to end the Israeli occupation.
• Terror on the airline: Numerous aircraft hijackings took place, specifically, the Palestinian hijack of Air France Flight 139 and the subsequent Operation Entebbe in Uganda.

1979

• Ayatollah's in Iran: During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the West-backed and secular Shah is overthrown as the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gains power after years in exile and forces Islamic law.
• Russians in Afghanistan: Following their move into Afghanistan, Soviet forces fight a ten-year war, from 1979 to 1989.

1983

• Wheel of Fortune: A hit television game show which has been TV's highest-rated syndicated program since 1983.
• Sally Ride: In 1983 she becomes the first American woman in space. Dr. Ride's quip from space "Better than an E-ticket", harkens back to the opening of Disneyland mentioned earlier, with the E-ticket purchase needed for the best rides.
• Heavy metal suicide: In the 1980s Ozzy Osbourne and the bands Judas Priest and Metallica were brought to court by parents who accused the musicians of hiding subliminal pro-suicide messages in their music.
• Foreign debts: Persistent U.S. trade deficits
• Homeless vets: Veterans of the Vietnam War, including many disabled ex-military, are reported to be left homeless and impoverished, the country unable to yet handle its failure to succeed.
• AIDS: A collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is first detected and recognized in the 1980s, and was on its way to becoming a pandemic.
• Crack cocaine use surged in the mid-to-late 1980s.

1984

• Bernie Goetz: On December 22, Mr. Goetz shot four young men who he said were threatening him on a New York City subway. Goetz was charged with attempted murder but was acquitted of the charges, though convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun.

1988

• Hypodermics on the shore: Medical waste was found washed up on beaches in New Jersey after being illegally dumped at sea. Before this event, waste dumped in the oceans was an "out of sight, out of mind" affair. This has been cited as one of the crucial turning points in popular opinion on environmentalism.

1989

• China's under martial law: On May 20, China declares martial law, enabling them to use force of arms against protesting students to end the Tiananmen Square protests.
• Rock-and-roller cola wars: Soft drink giants Coke and Pepsi each run marketing campaigns using rock & roll and popular music stars to reach the teenage and young adult demographic.

     John Mayer - Walt Grace's Submarine Test, January 1967

This is a song that almost sent me into the asylum because it was so intense. It’s a fiction song and maybe it’s not fiction is what someone said, maybe it’s actually not. This came out of nowhere.
It’s the most moving song I ever wrote. I invented a man and I got to know him through writing this song. I know it sounds very pretentious. I’d never written a narrative before and I got to know this guy. It was the strangest thing that ever happened to me as a writer. You can give birth to a person in a song and they live there in this little menagerie. It’s the most gorgeous thing that’s ever happened. His name is Walt Grace.

JOHN MAYER ON WALT GRACE’S SUBMARINE TEST, JANUARY 1967 - BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC

I love this song, and though it's not about a real person, it tells a wonderful story that can be parallelled by John Mayer's life. This link is to a legal document for misconduct of Walt Grace.

http://www.uscg.mil/legal/CDOA/Commandant_Decisions/S_and_R_1479_1679/1648%20-%20GRACE.pdf

My "Guitar Face"

     Guitar faces, oh where to start. I've been notified several times in my life that I make distinct faces when playing the guitar. I come to defend my funny-looking faces with two words: John Mayer. I do love his music and guitar playing, but his guitar face justifies all. Here come the face:

Not to mention he looks ever sillier when singing..

Needless to say, I'm not the only one with a wicked guitar face. Here's a couple more from some other famous guitarists:


B. B. King and Prince

Carlos Santana

Angus Young and Steve Vai

Joe Satriani

B.B. King and Steve Vai

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix

The "War on Women"

I've been hearing about a "War on women" recently and thought to share my thoughts on a certain aspect of the war on women.  This brings me to the highly controversial political debate of abortion.  There is the typical debate of whether women should retain their rights to decide what to do with their body, and then the other side which argues for the life of the baby to be born.  While I have an opinion on this already, this is not what I feel is the problem.

I believe that all human beings have the right to choose anything they want, but this does not mean that consequences will not follow.  If one chooses to use speech to speak out against a government the consequence could be that people will understand his opinion, or in another country it could possibly be death.  So we are always free to choose what we want to do, but we are not free to choose what the consequences of our decisions are.  

This brings me to my point. Women have several wonderful choices to make before having to make the decision to abort their child.  They have the choice to have a relationship with someone, a choice to be sexually active with that person, and a choice to have unprotected sex.  These choices are all made by that women before the decision to abort surfaces (except in cases of rape or incest).  The next part is the consequence that sometimes follows, being pregnant.  Now becoming pregnant is not always a choice, it is generally a consequence of a choice.

Sometimes in life we can make a decision when a consequence arises.  For example, I have spent $500 extra than I have been making for the past 6 months and now I have to pay off credit cards. There is now a choice for this individual.  Another situation could be not having filled up on gas, and now I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere. The choice to react to that consequence could be who you call, or where you walk to. The consequence dictates your choices.

There are also times where you cannot make a certain decision after a consequence, or that the consequence now limits your ability to make certain decisions.  If I smoke for 40 years and then get lung cancer, my decision to stop smoking and avoid the damage of smoking is now not so much of an option. The time has passed for that individual.  I can't choose to raise my children in a house of peace if they've already grown up in a house of contention and left the home. I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples that are similar or fit into each category.

The choice to not have a child is not a choice that is made after you realize that you are pregnant. It is a choice that you make before you already have the consequences. The choice was yours when you weighed the decision of having sex or not having sex, and the decision of having protected sex or unprotected sex. You understand that sex can lead to pregnancy way before you made the decision to have sex.

The idea of abortion in the US began more or less in the 60's. At first they sought abortions only when:
"substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the woman, or that the child resulting from pregnancy would be born with grave physical or mental defect, or in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest." - http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortiontimeline.html 
 While claiming other reasons for wanting abortion to be legal "as long as it was performed prior to fetus viability," I believe that the development of the sexual revolution was responsible for the increased demand for contraceptives and abortions. Both have become more affordable and more available. Today we have plenty of ways to help avoid unwanted pregnancies. The problem is that people choose not to use them.

My beef with abortion comes in here. Why are we changing the law to accompany people that are irresponsible? (Not to mention I do think it is murder to abort a baby). Would we make laws to protect the future of people that kill people drunk driving? No, they get charged with manslaughter, they live and learn from their mistake. Their choices were to drink, to not have a designated driver, and to drive drunk or not. Their consequence of driving drunk and killing someone in an accident is not unavoidable, or changeable. They made an irresponsible choice, well multiple really, and have to live with their consequence. If we support and help to accommodate people as they act irresponsibly we will only multiply and fail to discourage responsible behavior and responsible choices.

The reason I am against abortion is because it encourages bad behavior in an indirect way. I also want to point out that people that are against abortion does not equate to a "war" on women. This is indirectly including women, but it is not intended to attack women's personal rights. The constitution was stretched to be able to include abortions and it was initially meant to protect the health of women. Women should have the right to decide what happens to their own body in terms of health, because it is their own life. What a women should not have the right to do, is alter the outcome of her choices regardless of whether it will affect her health or n


ot.

Bob Dylan Tribute

     I have recently been educated on the awesomeness of Bob Dylan.  You might be saying "Hmm do I know any of his songs?" and I assure you that you have, whether you knew it or not.  Bob Dylan is a singer/songwriter and has written music for so many people it'll make your jaw drop. Not to mention how many times he has been covered by other musicians.  Some familiar Dylan tunes that might ring a bell are: Knocking on Heavens Door, All Along The Watchtower, Like A Rolling Stone, Forever Young, etc.

     I know, you're thinking "Wait, I'm pretty sure Jimi Hendrix wrote All Along the Watchtower, and Guns n' Roses wrote Knocking on Heavens Door!"  This only further proves that Bob Dylan is the man. I did look online to find how many people had covered Bob Dylan songs and to my surprise there is a lengthy Wikipedia post dedicated to it.  Secondhangsongs.com  also has an awesome post which shows songs that Dylan has written that have been covered, and how many bands have covered that particular song.  It shows that "Blowin' in the Wind" has been covered by 98 different artists.

Though Bob Dylan's voice is...well...an acquired taste, I hope you decide to venture into the wonderful world of Bob Dylan. Here's a good starter that I like a lot.

The Pursuit of Happiness, not The Waiting For Happiness

"We can't let surroundings control our happiness." -Anonymous  Although surroundings can play a part in our happiness, we ultimately have control over our own happiness. After hearing a talk in church about how to be happy, I've wanted to share my personal opinion and feelings towards the idea of choosing to be happy and understanding how we can be happy. I feel there's 3 general areas of happiness that contribute to our overall happiness, those being: Heart, Future, and Physical.

Heart: Spencer W. Kimball said that being loved is something that everyone yearns for. No matter who we are, we all long to be loved by someone. Loving and feeling loved are huge components in being happy. I personally am a huge believer in doing all i can to make other people feel loved, needed, and important, it makes me ecstatic to see other people glowing in confidence and having a heap of self worth. Feeling loved can sometimes be a battle that's hard to overcome. People don't generally go running around parading their real feelings for you for everyone to hear, so we might not get to hear how much certain people love us enough to please our needs. This part takes a lot of self discipline to be able to overcome. To be able to recall and remember how people feel about you is difficult because there is something that has a different effect when they actually say it. I remember back a few years my mom was a leader over girls that were my age in a church group, and they had a sleepover at our house. My brothers and I all went to our friends house down the road. When i returned the following day I found tons of little notes with compliments on them all around my room. I didn't necessarily know who wrote which ones, but that happened around 5 years ago, and i still have those compliments on the little ripped pieces of notebook paper. That is one of the ways i tend to remember is by keeping tangible things that i guess "prove" peoples love and appreciation for me. Now I'm not expert at any of this, so that's just one of my ideas, but if you happen to have a problem with feeling loved, i hope you'll find a way to see the many great things about you that you know you have. So the two parts of Happiness in Heart are loving others, and being/feeling loved.

Future: I feel this part is the most important parts of being happy. We all know ourselves quite well, what we do, think, and desire regardless of situations, people, or places. A lot of happiness comes feeling that we are worth something. We can evaluate ourselves and see where we are currently. When some of us do this, we feel that we've been making progress in our lives, and see the worth in ourselves. Many people tend to look at the other end of the spectrum, the I-keep-on-failing-at-this-this-and-this-Wheres-my-worth?  side. No matter who we are we have this side of the spectrum, whether we focus on it a lot as some do, or whether we tend to ignore it, its there. What worth we measure ourselves to plays a big part in the difference that each person feels with their own set of circumstances. Some use their religion to help measure where they should be at, others use relatives, successful friends, or people portrayed by media influences. This is where a lot of people get mixed up and choose a wrong point from which they judge their personal standing. While a religion is ok to use as a point, what most people get mixed up in is putting themselves up against other people of that same religion. To me, finding self worth in ourselves has more to do with whether we are progressing forward and becoming a better person or not. It doesn't matter if I'm running a race where I am, if I give up 98% of the way through or 4% of the way through, I still gave up. If I'm running, jogging, or walking  I'm still getting closer to the end result. Therefore what we need to do to start feeling a self worth is start heading towards the finish line! Doesn't matter if you're running or not, before you do anything else, turn that direction and start walking. We gain self worth as we plan for how we can improve and work towards the goals we set. We break unwanted habits, and replace them with better ones that have more worth to us, which in turn helps us feel more self worth. When we lack happiness in this area, I think a lot of it comes from failing our goals and/or not working hard enough towards our goals to feel satisfied, which is a long constant battle we all have with ourselves. Something we'll deal with forever. Personally when I look back in my life I've come a long way from where I used to be, so I can clearly see how I've been slowly but surely growing in my personal worth. At sometimes I feel different, but taking the time I realize that I'm still growing and I'm ok with that. We all need to step back and take a look at the big picture sometimes to be able to feel that self worth we all look for.

Physical: As much as I'd like to believe that its all mental and we can control that purely by thinking right, its still got something to do with our bodies. How healthy we are and our physical state can play a big part in our evaluation of our self worth, but that's why its important to eat well to keep out body working in a normal working state if possible. A lot from this part comes in the Future part and setting goals to fix this category. Another thing that comes into play is that your body actually can do things that produce endorphins which make you happy, such as exercising to relieve stress, smiling, laughing, and being in the sun.

Now although i may not have covered everything or been a perfect fix for your personal problem, I hope that I was in some way able to help you recognize the problem or maybe help is some other way. To end I'd like to leave another good quote.

"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions." - Dalai Lama