Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though. ~ Douglas Adams
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Most people do not comprehend, [no matter how] they encounter such things, nor do they understand what they learn; they believe only themselves. ~ Heraclitus
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Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apple, don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious. ~ Bill Meyer
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All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see stars.
“There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.”
~ Watchmen
“I will do today what you won’t, so tomorrow I can do what you can’t.”
~ Anonymous
“I do not much care for that man… I must get to know him better.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
“If there is no enemy on the inside, the enemy on the outside can do us no harm.”
~ African Proverb
“Our greatest problems often yield our greatest breakthroughs… fierce frustration is a precondition for a tremendous triumph.”
Teach compassion…”If you see someone who is struggling to make friends or being bullied because they don’t have friends or because they are shy or not as good looking or not dressed in the best clothes PLEASE step up. Say hi or at least smile at them in the hallway. You never know what that person might be facing outside of school. Your kindness might just make a BIG difference in someone’s life! Pass this on and share with your kids!”
”If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.”
~ Dalai Lama
“Let your life be a testimony to your truth. Every day be an uncompromisingly true witness to your authentic self. The world needs no more dull carbon copies, folks shrinking from their truth. One stubborn soul, ignited from within, despite the crushing darkness of circumstance, can illuminate the world. We must illuminate the world. We must be brilliant.”
~ @CoryBooker (via @LiliBalfour)
“The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”
Out of every hundred people,those who always know better: fifty-two.Unsure of every step: almost all the rest.Ready to help, if it doesn’t take long: forty-nine.Always good, because they cannot be otherwise: four — well, maybe five.Able to admire without envy: eighteen.Led to error by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus.Those not to be messed with: four-and-forty.Living in constant fear of someone or something: seventy-seven.Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most.Harmless alone, turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure.Cruel when forced by circumstances: it’s better not to know, not even approximately.Wise in hindsight: not many more than wise in foresight.Getting nothing out of life except things: thirty (though I would like to be wrong).Balled up in pain and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later.Those who are just: quite a few, thirty-five.But if it takes effort to understand: three.Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine.Mortal: one hundred out of one hundred – a figure that has never varied yet.(translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)Source: Caterina.net
People searching for a purpose in life — whether or not they are consciously aware of this deep-seated desire — will be attracted to others who have arrived at an answer.
Oliver Goldsmith said that first, but every moment we get to put that attitude into practice, making it into a habit, by being excellent. As Ralph Marston said…
You can watch the highlights on your favorite Interweb site, but they won’t really give you the feeling of 90 minutes of tense, do-or-die buildup , culminating in a super charged score in the final minute that propelled Team USA from elimination into first place in their group!
But I realize this is a temporary happiness that comes from adrenaline and other juices pumping through my headmeats. Soon that rush will subside, and I will go back to reflecting my baseline happiness.
A hundred days ago I created this ifindkarma posterous because bakadesuyo inspired me with his. I love to read what he writes, and in particular I love when he reflects about subjects such as happiness.
If I had to distill all of bakadesuyo’s happiness musings into essential reflections, here are the key takeaways I’ve internalized… so far…
Which brings me back to me. If I had to distill all of my happiness musings into eleven essential reflections, here are the key takeaways I’ve externalized… so far…
11. Read these musings, especially the one you’re reading right now. Reflect! Repeat!!! 🙂
And if all else fails, take a step back, breathe, think about a kitten wearing a tiny hat eating a tiny ice cream cone, and regroup. For tomorrow is another day, and we cannot waste today’s time cluttering up tomorrow’s opportunities with yesterday’s troubles.
Raindrops on roses and tiny hats on kittens aside, I want to take a moment or two to thank Jennifer Aaker and Gretchen Rubin and Tony Hsieh and Niki Leondakis and Caterina Fake for driving me to keep reflecting on happiness as I walk the earth. The tension between being and becoming has become more than an avocation for me… it’s something I’d love to work into my vocation, someday, someway. It is love incarnate.
We conclude this tapestry with a trinity of TED talks that reflect on happiness: Tony Robbins on why we do what we do (emotion!) and how we can do it better (focus!); Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice; and Dan Gilbert on why we are or are not happy:
“Life gives answers in three ways… It says Yes and gives you what you want; it says No and gives you something better; it says Wait and gives you the Best!” (via @IlzeSuna)
“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everyt
hing is ready, we shall never begin.” ~ Ivan Turgenev (via Persia Pele)
“If everything seems under control — you’re just not going fast enough.” ~ Mario Andretti (via Marianne Borenstein)
“I am a professional guitar player. People pay me to stop.” ~ Bob Cleveland (via me)
“Sue Sylvester has hourly flare-ups of burning, itchy, highly contagious talent…” ~ GLEE (via @AmyKeefe)
“Twitter is really going through a detox right now, and it’s trying to get some of the toxins out of its system.” ~ Michael Abbott (via the Merc, still doing better than Yahoo)
“Violence is never the answer, unless the question is, ‘What is never the answer?'” ~ Cleveland Brown (via me)
“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” ~ Mother Teresa (via @IlzeSuna)
“It is not difficult to love good people. It is difficult to love people as they are.” ~ Juris Rubenis (via @IlzeSuna)
“Death is not sad; the sad thing is that most people don’t really live at all.” ~ Peaceful Warrior (via Amie Valenzuela)
“Goodbyes are not forever. Goodbyes are not the end. They simply mean I’ll miss you Until we meet again!” (via @IlzeSuna)
And then we LOOK closer and more carefully. We could see that there was nothing. Which is a funny thing to say because sometimes words are inadequate, and sometimes words have two meanings.
And we added things. And the universe expanded. And we added more things. And the universe kept expanding to accommodate adding more things. And everything was awesome. Fundamentally.
It might seem like everything was added randomly. And perhaps that is the case. But that’s not what we believe.
We believe in the interconnectedness of all things.
This idea was kept in the dark for billions of years. Instead, the reigning belief was detachment: “I don’t really want to know how your garden grows, ’cause I just want to fly.” And so, we lived forever…
…and life was but a dream. Edgar Allan Poe waxed poetic, “All that we see or seem… is but a dream within a dream.” (Thanks Ankita!)
And we thought about the words of Rumi…
“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.“
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.“
“The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your
perception.“
“They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?“
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.“
And the Primitive Radio Gods whispered quietly in the corner…
Am I alive, or thoughts that drift away?
Does summer come for everyone?
Can humans do what prophets say?
If I die before I learn to speak,
can money pay for all the days
I lived awake but half-asleep?
Suddenly we woke up with a kick. And we were no longer detached when we woke up with the idea. Not to spoil Inception, but merely to praise Inception:
“What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.“
I’m very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic’ refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson. Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson? No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye.
— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency
Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged — people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t. Everything is deeply intertwingled.
I love The Little Prince. Whi
ch reminds me of some of my favorite words that Robbye Bentley has posted recently…
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” ~ Og Mandino
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The singularity of every man and woman is Jah’s gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth.” ~ Bob Marley
“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” ~ Stephen Covey
Thank you, Robbye. I have some favorites of my own, too.
The words of Rumi echo in eternity, “The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your perception.”
“Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” ~ Henry James
“Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for…” ~ Bob Marley
“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” ~ Marilyn Monroe
“If success or failure of the planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do… How would I be? What would I do?” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
“We are all connected to each other, in a circle, in a hoop that never ends. How high can the sycamore grow? If you cut it down, then you’ll never know…” ~ Colors of the Wind
And are there things that cannot be taught? Richard Feynman refuses to explain how magnets work. Feynman concludes, I really can’t do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you’re more familiar with, because I don’t understand it in terms of anything else you’re more familiar with.
Breathing is neither learned nor taught. It just is. And yet sometimes we must remember to breathe. And to be here now. And to be grateful for every breath.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have
to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.“
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky. — Ojibwe Saying
(Gathered in a hospital room, watching a boxing match on TV.)
Paulie, watching a boxer get hit: It’s a life of abuse.
John Schwinn: Well, he is a boxer. Heh.
Paulie: It’s the same for everybody. (To Tony:) Look at you, T. You do your uncle a kindness, you get shot for your efforts. You think you got family, but in the end, they fuck you, too.
Tony, to John: He’s grieving. His aunt just died.
Paulie: I tell ya, we each and every one of us are alone in the ring, fighting for our lives. Just like that poor prick. (Points to boxer.)
John: Well, that’s one way to look at it.
Paulie: You got a better one?
John: Don’t get me started. It’s complicated…
Paulie: Think I’m stupid?
John: Well, it… It’s actually an illusion those two boxers are separate entities.
Paulie: What the fuck?
Rapper: Illusion?
John:“The separate entities” is simply the way we choose to perceive them.
Tony: I didn’t choose nothin’…
John:It’s… it’s physics. Schrödinger’s equation. The boxers, you, me… we’re all part of the same quantum field.
Rapper’s girlfriend: You ever substitute teach at Carlton middle school?
Tony: He’s a rocket scientist, fer chissakes. Bell labs. (Boxer beats on other boxer.) You were saying?
John:Well, think of the two boxers as ocean waves or currents of air. Two tornadoes, say. They appear to be two things, right? Two separate things? But they’re not. The tornadoes are just wind, the wind stirred up in different directions. The fact is, nothing is separate. Everything is connected.
Rapper:Everything is everythang.(Raises cup.) I’m down with that.
Tony: Get the fuck outta here!
John:The universe is just a big soup of molecules bumping up against one another. The shapes we see exist only in our own consciousness.(TV picture goes out.)
Paulie: You’re so fuckin’ smart… fix that TV.
John:(Laughs.) Okay…
…
Tony: So, Mr. Wizard, you were talkin’ about tornadoes. Know what the Indians say about the wind?
John: No.
Tony: They say that sometimes we go around feeling pity for ourselves, but behind our back a great wind is carrying us.
John:We don’t see we’re part of a much bigger reality.
Tony: And then we die.
John: Why are you so interested in all this?
Tony: I was in the coma, and I… look, I don’t remember nothin’. But before I woke up, I felt like I was being pulled towards something. And I don’t wanna go back… Then my wife told me I woke up at one point. I said, Who am I? Where am I going? You know, it makes you wonder. About… heaven… and, uh… hell…
John:That presupposes a duality of good and evil. You know, it gets us ba
ck to the idea of separate, opposing entities. You know where I go with that.
Tony: Well, this Bible guy I know says you’re going to hell.
John: Maybe he’s right. Got my test results back. Laryngial cancer.
Tony: Jesus, I’m sorry.
John: Yeah, I was thinking maybe you could do me a favor, and, uh, you know, what’s the term? “Whack me”? Sorry. Bad joke.
…
Paulie: All I’m saying, [your mother] Livia with all her faults never abandoned you.
Tony: Fer chrissake, Paulie, you know what your problem is? You go around in pity for yourself! You think you got it bad. You’re not stuck in some hospital with fuckin’ tubes coming out of you. You can eat food like a normal person…
Paulie: T., I never meant to trivialize your situation…
Tony: Well, you gotta get beyond this petty bullshit, Paulie… You… You’re part of something bigger. When you gonna learn that?
RT @ifindkarma: Is there a better song than “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music to expedite Donald Trump’s exit from our White Hous… 8 hours ago
RT @ifindkarma: “President* Trump sought to overturn results of a fair election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies… What are… 9 hours ago
RT @ifindkarma: “If we refuse to learn anything from the Capitol domestic terrorist attack and we don't hold the traitors who are responsib… 9 hours ago
RT @ifindkarma: "If you want to tell a Big Lie, which leads people to storm the Capitol… then you have to expect that people are going to c… 9 hours ago
RT @ifindkarma: "THEY COULD HAVE KILLED US ALL... It is a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our gover… 10 hours ago
RT @ifindkarma: “No one is above the law, not even the president of the United States. Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our co… 10 hours ago
RT @ifindkarma: “Everyone who came into that Capitol should have been arrested regardless if they didn’t take anything.” Source: https://t.…10 hours ago
RT @ifindkarma: “It was absolutely my pleasure to crush a white nationalist insurrection… and we’ll do it as many times as it takes.”
—… 11 hours ago