I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.
-- Mary Chase, Jimmy Stewart in "Harvey", 1950
I love characters who are sort of out of phase. What they call "reality" is a tyrant.
The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.
-- C. P. Snow
I think that's true. But why?
10 comments:
Happiness is what you have when you don't feel the need to pursue it.
I like:
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." -- Adam Savage, "Mythbusters"
I dunno... ever since Karl Rove of the Bush Administration dismissed Bush doubters as representatives of "the reality-based community," I've been firmly in favor of reality.
It's a two-edged sword, to be sure.
Robert Frost said: "Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length."
Albert Schweitzer said: "Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory."
Jane Austen said: "A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."
Samuel Goldwyn said: "If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive."
Elwood P. Dowd was an independently wealthy drunk, though. Keep that in mind. :-)
Jean de LaFontaine tells in one of his fables the story of a person (or pigeon? maybe there are two fables) who had true love, but then decided to roam the world in search of happiness. After years of vain quest, he returned home, only to find happiness waiting for him on his very doorstep.
Does this answer your question, Eolake?
Happinesss is like a bird: pursue it, and it'll flee you. Welcome it calmly like a friend, and it may just come to land in your hand.
Like most things beautiful, happiness is fragile, it doesn't like brutality.
Jeremy,
Nice definition. :-)
And there exist many more. I like websites of famous quotes...
Michael,
Talk about an unplanned effect of reverse psychology! :-)
My own aphorism : "The same life makes one person happy and another dissatisfied. Happiness comes from within. Chasing after happiness is like running away from yourself."
Call me Amapsa Hinhán [Lakota for Laughing Owl]
Me, I don't dance with the wolves. I snore with the cats. :-)
My old teacher (Vernon Howard) used to say that someoneone obsessed with being happy never will be.
I think the problem is that people have ideas of what it means to be happy which are based on particularly good times they had in the past, and try to recreate them in one way or another; however, life never repeats itself exactly so they're always disappointed to find they have to leave those good times behind.
Ever elusive moments. Spend less time expecting its arrival and you'll have more time to enjoy it.
Part of Capitalist indoctrination is finding your happiness somewhere else almost as if you can 'buy' it somehow. It drives industrial societies. It's an illusion that most of society falls for hook line and sinker.
When you pursue happiness the basic assumption is that you are not happy now and you will get it sometime in future. As you move with this thought frame in time, you can never ever be happy
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