I posted yesterday on National Belly Laugh Day. I think this is one of the greatest ideas I have ever run across. Why? Because when you ask people how they are they never say "happy", they always say "busy."
BLAHH BLAHH. Of course you are busy, welcome to life, if you are not busy living, what are you doing?
I am sick of the word busy. I may post on that later - a rant against BUSY (of which I too am very very guilty, but rant I may do). But at the moment, I will spare you.
In thinking about the word "busy" and saving up my vitriol for later days, I got to thinking about happiness. There is a lot of attention on happiness these days. But what is that attention leading to? Pills, alcohol, credit card debt, divorces justified by "I deserve to be happy"? Yikes. That sounds like the fast track to misery paved with self-indulgence to me (and I speak with authority as I relate to some of it). So there - nobody can say I am on my high horse - damn it, this is self-flagellation you are witnessing!
Perhaps we are defining happiness incorrectly. I mean, with all these people studying it, pursuing it, changing their lives to achieve it, and yet everyone is still miserable, it begs the question, have we gone Ready Shoot without even saying Aim?
I found this great article on happiness I wanted to share. Very good stuff. Here is a teaser:
"Chuang-Tzu had it right. No more need be said. But such is human nature that the more succinctly we state the truth, the better we become at ignoring it. So, despite the completeness of the above homily, I'll proceed, hoping that my volume may insinuate into your worldview what Chuang-Tzu's brevity might not.
Here's what I believe. I believe that extolling the pursuit of happiness was a toxic stupidity entirely unworthy of my greatest American hero, Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, it is a poison that sickens our culture more wretchedly every nanosecond. I wish he'd never said it.
It produces a monstrous, insatiable hunger inside our national psyche that encourages us ever more ravenously to devour all the resources of this small planet, crushing liberties, snuffing lives, feeling ourselves ordained by God and Jefferson to do whatever is necessary to make us happy.
And yet the American people are miserable. Or so it would appear."
Read the whole thing. I wish I had written it.
