and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

No Impact Man is a blog by a man in NYC who is trying to be environmentally neutral. I know this is the big rage these days, but he has a down-to-earth voice and it's generally interesting to hear what he and his family is trying to do each day. He is up front and admits that all the answers are not available, but he is making educated guesses as he goes. A New York Times article highlights their new lifestyle - The Year Without Toilet Paper.

Last week he made a post that strayed a bit from the head-on environmental message and talked about happiness, friends, and where that gets us:

The problem, if what you're looking for is happiness, is that putting friendships on the back burner in favor of more material pleasures puts you in the futile position of running in place on the “hedonic treadmill,” according to Martin Seligman, Ph.D., founder of the relatively new field of “positive psychology.” He writes that the hedonic treadmill…
"…causes you to rapidly and inevitably adapt to good things by taking them for granted…The deeds and things you worked so hard for no longer make you happy; you need to get something even better to boost your level of happiness..but once you get the next possession or achievement, you adapt to it as well…"
...For the last ten years, we have generally spoken on the phone once a day and seen each other once a week. In the last three months, though, Tanner both got a new job and prepared to take the bar exam. Plus, I’ve been busy with the beginning of No Impact Man. The result was that, while we waited for the season of crazy busyness to be over, we barely talked.

Yesterday, at last, Tanner and I debriefed about our marriages, our work, people we know in common, hot chicks we saw on the street, the first coffee I was having in three weeks (social exception from the local food rule), movie stars, our therapists, computers, and politics. I felt, after all that time without each other, like a dry sponge soaking up water.

And you want to know something? I would take another ten years of talking on the phone every day with Tanner over 100 Mercedes-Benz. The great news is that the best things in life don’t hurt the planet one bit.

There are certainly people in my life - environmental impact or no - that have a larger and more positive effect on my happiness and well-being than any number of material things. This is not a revelation. This is not lip-service. This is not a declaration against consumerism. This is just the truth.

People matter.