happiness

If You can…

Temper yourself so that you don’t always search for the easiest, but rather the best.

Learn to rise above ignorance, short-sightedness, entitlement, and the acceptance that will inevitably surround you.

Push yourself to learn, to be better, not necessarily the best and not necessarily everything.

Choose wisely and have fun! Understand that happiness is fleeting and that to search for it is futile.

Keep your body and mind as fit as possible because they are truly the only things you have.

Be fair. Be honest. Be understanding but be stern and reasonable.

Don’t accept anything because it becomes acceptable. Don’t be lackadaisical with right and wrong.

Some Aphorisms

To be a master you must feel like a novice.

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Don’t dumb down the divine

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Ignorance is a challenge; stupidity a choice

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Happiness is not constant pleasure; nor is it unending progress

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Fear is a hammer. It can be a useful tool or a violent weapon

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There is no purpose, only process. There is no point but only progress

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Time knows that it is all there is

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Know what is necessary and take the rest in stride

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It is not that we let loose. It is that we don’t tighten up again

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Laziness is not a virtue. Popularity is not a talent

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The drive to be better at the cost of everything else is an empty bargain with the devil

Celebration

We want to live and enjoy life. we drink and we are merry. We eat what we want to eat because it tastes good. We enjoy our respite from the world and from ourselves and sometimes we desire to be nothing more than lazy and irresponsible, if only for a while. We might ask for too much, but most of us probably do not.

And yet, just for a little time in the sun, just for a beer or two, or a large, filling meal we pay the cost. We are guilty.

“I’ll gain weight.”

“I’m lazy.”

We might say. And still just for that short time living beyond our own strict regiment the fun of doing so is taken away. Relaxation turned to regret. This is not how it is supposed to be but often it is how it is. We reach goals only to have them swept away because we have dared to celebrate.

But we must smile every now and again because misery is our only other option. Take a piece of celebratory cake and our week is ruined. But savor the sweetness and the texture, and savor the slight smile on your lips.

The universe does not exist for us, but we must always remember to rise above the universe.

Compromise

The word “compromise” sounds good in our modern ears. It rings of progress and of social good. And it is good. It is even necessary. One of the arguments in its favor is that it allows all to sense contentment and happiness. It is for the common good after all.

But there is a price for everything. Not even death is free from this. And compromise is a much more expensive commodity than mortality. With every compromise we make we sell happiness. It is important to remember that all commodities have two aspects: quality and quantity. It is also important to remember that happiness is a quality and compromise is a quantity.

We chip away at the quality of one to allow more of the other.

Compromise is a necessary component of civilization and is becoming more important as we over-populate this planet but to say that compromise is always better is a fool’s game. We compromise our own happiness for numerous reasons but only one reason is worthy. Compromise is warranted when it causes the quality of each of our lives to be greater, not lessened.

Compromise in most of its forms is a lie wrought by those who know nothing of happiness.

Search for Truth

Happiness is fleeting and probably overrated. This seems cynical but it is not meant to be. We in the west tend to desperately desire to be happy, all of the time. In Denmark, rated the world’s happiest country for several years in a row, the question was asked: how? How is Denmark so consistently happy?

The answer: lower your expectations. This also seems cynical, but it is not. The truth does not always lead to happiness. It does not always feel good or adhere to your particular ideology. The truth is often in simple statements. The truth is often simple and most often does not meet our personal expectations. It does not always give us what we want. But it is the epitome of human existence, at least that part of human existence that matters.

But what is this truth? What is this concept that matters so much?

True, justified, belief is the short answer. But there is one other possible answer. Consider it.

Truth is the quality of the relationship between an idea of a thing and the thing itself.

The search for truth is an unending process to raise that quality, the quality of our thinking and of our thoughts. We must raise the quality of that relationship. The search for truth leads down dark paths and contemplative nights but the search for truth is our only justified means. It does not rely upon happiness, but it is perhaps the only way of lowering our expectations.

Life is Short

Camus once asked what will matter in a million years. There is another question that perhaps is more to the point, more personal: You might die today. What will you do? Such questions seem platitudinous, meaningless. However, they are actually the most important questions we can ask. It’s not true that we don’t care, that we are apathetic about such ideas, it is that we are not hardwired to think about philosophical concepts such as purpose, meaning, importance.

It is not true that we do not have time. Think about it. How do we not have time to live our lives to their fullest? It is not true that we have obligations. Think about it. The only obligation we have is to be the best that we can be to those that we love, to ourselves, to our societies, to each other. It is not true that we are not capable. Think about it. Human beings have the capacity to think beyond ourselves, to create, to imagine. Our intellect gives us the ability to be free.

Be happy. Stay healthy. Don’t waste your time being angry. Fight that inner-voice that beats you down at night when you wake up from a dream. Love yourself and don’t sell yourself short. Love life and try not to forget:

The universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.

The earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

The average person lives for about seventy-two years.

What will you do with your 0.0000016% of the age of the earth?

Philosophy Revisited

If there were two concepts that define a healthy, happy and high quality life for all of us those concepts would most likely be happiness and truth, both philosophically difficult but important enough to warrant the work it takes to achieve and understanding of them.

Aristotle’s definition is a great start, but really a test of happiness rather than a definition: happiness is a good in itself.  If we really want to be happy then we must look to understand what it is to be happy.  If your happiness is reliant upon someone or something else it is not truly happiness, but a lesser version of the happiness that we all so desire.  A high quality of happiness is a good in itself.

Truth is perhaps a bit more difficult, but I’ve come to a definition of it that through the years I’ve found is helpful.  [T]ruth is:

The quality of the relationship between the idea of a thing and the thing itself.

So, [T]ruth comes in degrees of quality.  Through the years I’ve claimed that philosophy is the most important human endeavor and have been looked at with incredulity.  But, given this definition of both happiness and [T]ruth and their importance to the quality of our lives philosophy is the only path by which we can understand the quality of those things that we deem most important to us.

The conclusion of this is simply that we must understand the quality of our relationships.  This has the funny and further inductive property of applying to all of our relationships, political and personal; an interesting consequent in itself.

Ideals

Hopefully we all have ideals: those beliefs, those ideas that are just out of reach; those things that motivate us to act.  Ideals are often defined by what we do when no one is looking; what we think when no one is around.  Some ideals are lofty and unattainable, and sometimes the bar is simply set too low.

There is a correlation between ideals and happiness, and yet often our ideals can make us miserable.  We do not live up to the ideals that we have set for ourselves.  Failing to live up to our own ideals is worse than failing to live up to others’ expectations.  In philosophy those with less experience  often pose the question: “What is the meaning of life?”  There are problems with this question, but one of the main issues is that it does not answer the question that we all really want to know.

Our ideals often lead us down a path, a rabbit hole.  We presume to know the consequences of our idealistic actions, but we are often wrong.  We find, with time, that our ideals do not lead us to the one thing that we all crave: happiness.  Our ideals, ironically enough, can easily lead us to the sense of failure and doom.  Not only can no one else live up to our ideals, but neither can we live up to our own.

A conversation had of late reminded me of that.  If our ideals are making us miserable it is perhaps because we are not asking the right question.  As Daniel Dennett pondered, cranes must be built from the ground up.  In the same way our ideals must be built upon what makes us happy.  If we start from a belief that we can be happy, then our ideals will follow.

So, what is the meaning of life?  There probably isn’t one.  However, How can we be happy?  That is  an ideal that is up to us.

Unexpected Places

Happiness from the most unexpected places, even for moments in a day.  There is a certain look in the eyes of creatures that if we learn to read them let us know that we are not the only ones that experience the world in ways that make us wonder.

When I go out to the workshop I must often wander my way through hens running for a snack.  I pet a few as the clucks of anticipation follow me to the barn.  The younger pullets are sometimes like the dog that follows me around the house when I’m in.  Her comfortably perched on my bed after the morning walk.

The cat, not to be left out, nibbles a bit of food and then runs to the door to roll in the dust of the farm; old tree scratching posts and sun spots offering the warmth of the world.

At the corner store.

“I love that smell.”  she says as she hands me my sugar for the bees.

“What smell is that?”  I ask.

“The smell of wood; you’ve been working with wood.”

I nod and tell her that I have and I notice that happiness comes from the most unexpected places.

The Custodian

the-custodian

When we have land we do not own it.  Rather, we are custodians.  What we do with our newfound role is, of course, up to us.  But ought we do good?  A custodian is a caretaker and the land, if we listen, will speak, will tell us its wants and needs.  It takes time and a few long walks through the forests and the fields.  In time, though, we can come to understand the language of the land.

I am afraid that the custodial role is a disappearing one.  It seems that landownership is taking over the caretaker’s careful and thought out intentions.  When we own land it seems that we assume that we have rights to do what we want…no matter what the land needs.  Ownership is economic; taking care is ethical.

Out in the forest, chainsaw in hand, I cut dead fall (those dead trees that have fallen and have hung up on other, often young, live trees.  Caretakers change the land for a reason, like landowners, but caretakers change the land for reasons that have to do with the land and not ourselves.  Caretakers must make choices.  Do we manage (if that is possible) our land for beauty, for use, for both?

To be a caretaker is difficult work, but to recognize the importance of being a custodian of the land is perhaps harder yet.  This concept is not an idea that we wake up with.  We must realize our roles as custodians and also realize that such work, such roles (as so many are) are thankless.  In a world measured by profit the custodian lives in poverty.

If land needs a custodian at all, shouldn’t the custodian recognize that their very existence is dependent upon the land and not the other way around.  Perhaps, in the end, this is the difference between owning land and caring for land:  the custodian recognizes his dependence and the landowner does not.  I would hope that most people get a chance to care for land if and only if they can also recognize that their very existence is dependent upon what they do with it.