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Quote of the Day: What’s happiness all about, anyway?
“I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition. The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.” — Martha Washington
There is something quintessentially American about this assertion. You can make of yourself and your life whatever you choose. Sometimes it means blinding yourself to events that can easily ruin your day. I do a fair share of counseling and I often ask someone with a tendency to complain if they are an optimist or a pessimist, to which they frequently respond, “I’m neither. I’m a realist.” To which I respond, “You mean you’re a pessimist.” What people define as reality invariably appears bleak and dark to them.
I must admit, though, I have come to regard being joyful as a much more realistic goal than being happy. Happiness seems terribly abstract and fleeting, but joy (or joyfulness) can be a constant in our lives if we make a commitment to it.
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It’s interesting that reality should appear bleak, but I guess we focus on that one faucet that’s broken instead of the others that work (hypothetically, of course).
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I know the answer to this one! A warm puppy.
This is my top advice. Go see a Rolfer for 10 sessions. Then go to the Chinese massage guys at the mall and have four people beat on you for two hours five weeks in a row. Do a ton of yoga and kettle bells. Qigong is even better, but most people can’t get into it.
Interesting. Is Qigong how the Chinese cope with totalitarianism?
There is a really interesting story about that. When the commies took over, they literally outlawed Qigong. Then everybody got sick. So then it was OK to teach tai chi, which is a lot more complicated and a lot harder if you simply want the health benefits. That is why everybody knows the term “tai chi” far more than they know “qigong” even though it’s more to the point and it’s a hell of a lot easier and simpler to do it right.
Most people can’t get into kettle bells, either.
My wife found some on e-Bay in a size XXXL, and even though I can get into them (except for the High E flat) I once got stuck and couldn’t get out, even though she tried reciting a Chinese folk chant she found on YouTube for, it must have been, 3 hours at least.
So she called the Fire Department, but they said they have stopped doing kettle bell rescues, because a woman sued them after a particularly embarrassing rescue, and now you can’t get insurance for it.
Some guys in our Neighborhood Watch group came over and were able to hoist me into the back of a Tacoma compact truck, and take me to the Hot Yoga spa. They dropped me in a vat of hot lemongrass-infused water, which caused the copper to expand and I wriggled out.
That sounds like a real kettle of fish, Mark.
I’m having a little trouble with the distinction you’re trying to make. Which one of those two is more like an all-day bicycle ride?
There’s a lot to that. You could have two people in the exact same circumstances. One chooses to count his blessings and is pretty happy most of the time. The other person spends time each day reciting her list of complaints and looking for the flaws in everything. Try telling the second person that they ought to be grateful for the good things in life and you will wish you had kept your mouth shut.
I have heard “Happiness is not having what you want; happiness is wanting what you have.”
A “live in the present” sort of philosophy, which rules out neither goals or striving to achieve.
Happy I believe is an abstract term since it means something different to each person. Joy is a more tangible, unmistakable feeling, as in “jumping for joy.” After an all-day bicycle ride, you feel exhausted and full of inner joy (and inner peace), perhaps, for having completed a physical challenge.
That’s not how I would describe it. Maybe I am splitting hairs, but I would say that contentedness means being satisfied with everything the way it is, with no desire to change everything. I think someone can be striving for goals and be happy because they believe they are working for a worthy purpose. I think I’ve read somewhere that ancient Greek philosophers described happiness pretty much like that.
That’s the thesis of Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
This is something I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about, and I’ve come to a similar conclusion. For me the difference is between happiness and satisfaction. A satisfying life does not mean you are happy all the time; in fact, I have come to the conclusion that to feel satisfied, I must be challenged and pushed to do things that I don’t necessarily feel like I want to do.
More to your point, though, I’ve found that there is a sometimes-difficult balance to be struck between living in the moment and striving for goals. Focusing on goals means that your attention is always on something you don’t have, which is not a recipe for satisfaction.
What I’ve arrived at is that it is important to set goals, because they give you a sense of purpose; but your happiness (or satisfaction) should not be contingent upon achieving those goals. Instead you should then turn your attention toward living your life in such a way that you make continual progress toward those goals. You can then derive satisfaction from that in-the-moment feeling of progress and purpose.
Actually achieving a goal does not confer happiness, except maybe for a fleeting moment. Mainly it just means you need to set a new goal.
Psalm 100 says it all:
“Serve the Lord with joy.” A relationship with God requires a joyful disposition. Perhaps this explains why conservatives are a generally joyful bunch. Their disposition invites a sustaining relationship with their Creator.
That’s got to go on the “I have never heard anything like that before” list.
Joyfulness in the Torah is always something shared with others. Joy is found in relationships, which is why it is so much more valuable and real than mere happiness, which may be nothing more than a fleeting state of mind in one person.
I agree that those are very important distinctions: sharing vs self, lasting vs fleeting. I’m still skeptical that those are distinctions between joyfulness and happiness as the words are generally used, or even as they are used in the scriptures.
To the best of my knowledge, the Pentateuch uses the Hebrew word for joy (simcha), not happiness, exclusively, whereas the writings also employ a word for happy (ashrei), such as in the first word of the first psalm. However, ashrei has other translations as well, such as “blessed,” “praiseworthy,” and “approved.”
I have been assured that Happiness is a Warm Gun.
I totes agree.
I din’t know John Lennon was a second amendment kind of guy.
“Imagine no more leftists . . .”