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Do you agree with Thoreau?
moremojo:
Del, I just read through your post, and I realize how lucky I am to have family members with whom I am close, who I know love me and who I love. There is definitely dysfunction in my family (what family isn't at least a little dysfunctional?), but there's enough sanity and compassion there to instill in us a sense of shared community and destiny.
I think there's a difference between happiness and contentment. Happiness isn't merely the absence of pain or sorrow--to my mind, there's a connotation of exaltedness, a joy that transcends the everyday (though everyday pleasures can be the source of much happiness). I'm not even sure that happiness, in the sense that I'm thinking of it, is an emotion that could be sustained on a regular and frequent basis. It is like little refreshing sips of nirvana in a world enmeshed in suffering, or, less dramatically, complacency. Contentment is often good enough, and is definitely worth striving for. Perhaps true happiness can be our enduring lot when we are free from the material constraints of our bodily existence. It's an interesting, perhaps even comforting thought.
What is happiness? What is love? How is a life well lived to be measured? These are ostensibly simple questions which are truly confounding, and lie at the very heart of what it means to be human.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: moremojo on December 18, 2006, 07:34:32 pm ---Del, I just read through your post, and I realize how lucky I am to have family members with whom I am close, who I know love me and who I love.
--- End quote ---
You are very fortunate.
--- Quote ---I think there's a difference between happiness and contentment. Happiness isn't merely the absence of pain or sorrow--to my mind, there's a connotation of exaltedness, a joy that transcends the everyday (though everyday pleasures can be the source of much happiness). I'm not even sure that happiness, in the sense that I'm thinking of it, is an emotion that could be sustained on a regular and frequent basis. It is like little refreshing sips of nirvana in a world enmeshed in suffering, or, less dramatically, complacency.
--- End quote ---
I agree completely. Perhaps the wording in my post wasn't as precise as it should have been. :P
--- Quote ---Contentment is often good enough, and is definitely worth striving for.
--- End quote ---
I think it must be.
--- Quote ---Perhaps true happiness can be our enduring lot when we are free from the material constraints of our bodily existence. It's an interesting, perhaps even comforting thought.
--- End quote ---
It is. That's how I deal with it. I think of the most perfect life I ever wanted and that's what I look forward to having.
--- Quote ---What is happiness? What is love? How is a life well lived to be measured? These are ostensibly simple questions which are truly confounding, and lie at the very heart of what it means to be human.
--- End quote ---
Well said.
injest:
my favorite quote that explains happiness:
What is happiness? To have achieved one's longings, yes.But also when all one's mind and body are stretched to breaking, when one hasn't a thought beyond what to do next moment; one looks back after, and there it was."
I think sometimes happiness is not something we live in but what we remember? A culmanation of experience??
Front-Ranger:
That's beautiful, Jess. Who wrote it, do you recall?
injest:
Mary Renault
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