Happiness

[.Spectator]

What do you think about these statements:

“Nothing can bring you lasting happiness but you have it already…”

“Serving others, you can find yourself…”

“The job of religion is to give people an experience of their spirit. (of their own origin).”

“You are the mantra…”

[StregaModerator]

I’d say it was either lifted from a Deepak Chopra blurb or from a Chinese fortune cookie.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

You can make your own words of wisdom here. Kifflom!

[NoelParticipant]

Serving others you can find yourself:

Someone once told me that if I want to get out of my head do something for someone else. We were discussing addiction at the time and he had asked me to cook a turkey and donate it to the local church for thanksgiving. I got up at three in the morning, seasoned the bird, and threw it in the oven. Dropped it off  and noticed the line of homeless people waiting outside the church. I said to myself, “one turkey isn’t going to be enough”. When I entered the kitchen there were about 20 more turkeys on the counter. My problems? That day they were teeny.

[.Spectator]

@Reg mine says
“Perception results from descriptions of balance”

 

lol

[PopeBeanieModerator]

In case there are any questions to take sersiously here 🙂 …

“Nothing can bring you lasting happiness but you have it already…”

Hmm, like I’ve always had it? No makey ’nuff sense here

“Serving others, you can find yourself…”

Often, yes. In fact I’ve learned to always assume that if I can think of a way to help other people solve their problems, at least some of those solutions should also work for myself.

“The job of religion is to give people an experience of their spirit. (of their own origin).”

Ok, but job descriptions vary across the religion industry. Generalizing it more, I’d say religion’s one of those communal constructions that cultures invent and promulgate to bring common jargons, cohesion, motivations, and invented “purpose” to the group, for better and for worse. So yeah, that can include one’s personal/group’s sculpting and promotion of  “spirit”, whatever it might possibly mean.

“You are the mantra…”

What? No! You are the walrus.

 

[Daniel W.Participant]

These quotations from Robert Green Ingersoll have helped guide me.  One can quibble about details, and most people do. However, I remember that Ingersoll wrote, and spoke them in the late 19th century.  Some nuances may have changed, and there is poetic license. Why quibble?  Ingersoll was a century ahead of his time.

“Happiness is not a reward – it is a consequence.
Suffering is not a punishment – it is a result.”

“Justice is the only worship.
Love is the only priest.
Ignorance is the only slavery.
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here,
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Wisdom is the science of happiness.”

― Robert G. Ingersoll

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/156323.Robert_G_Ingersoll

I choose happiness, intentionally. I cultivate it. I try to find happy people for happiness ping-pong – they make me happier, I make them happier, back and forth. I try to learn new ways to deal with trials and tribulations, and live with gratitude because the probabilities were that I would not be alive now, and so many people have not had the luck and opportunities that I have had. I used to post on another atheist site – for 10 years – but the people who posted the most there, seemed to like fear, judgementalism, and a obsession with the sense of the world going bad. Every time I looked there, I felt bad. I finally quit that site, and feel better about that too.

So many people have no choice. Poverty, war, enslavement, abuse… I feel unbelievably fortunate. Someone else with my medical history – cancer, joint disease, partial gastrectomy, eye problems, partial nerve deafness – and personal history – we wont go there in this post – might wallow in self pity. Why do that? It makes you miserable! Doing a favor, sharing a success or joy, baking a bread loaf or pie for a friend, reading science, learning new things – those things spread and return happiness.

There will be bad times. I like to invest in a mental happiness savings account, to get me through them.

Bottom line: I choose happiness.

[Daniel W.Participant]

@regthefronkeyfarmer, hilarious Chopra site! Reminds me a little of the old Vogon poetey generater, now defunct. I loved those awful Vogon poems!

[NoelParticipant]

@ Daniel W.

Very well put!

I retire in two and half years and every day I roll into work I tell someone, anyone, how grateful I am that “I still have this gig”. I have ton’s of gratitude today. I hold no grudges against anyone because I learned to forgive and have asked for it too. I’m never happier as when I can be of use to someone. Especially a perfect stranger. I try to wake up with a smile and greet everyone with the same. My life could have gone so many ways and I know that this happiness I share today can be gone at the drop of a hat. When I was in the Navy and we pulled into Hong Kong all my buddies pleaded with me to go with them to get a tattoo. They were cheap in Hong Kong. I thought about what my uncle once said, “The way you feel today is not the way you’ll feel tomorrow”. Later on I learned that feelings are not facts and that I may love that tattoo of the words GO NAVY today but twenty or thirty years from now I may be asking myself, “Now why in the wide, wide world of sports did I do this?”. Today though I’m doing cartwheels and somersaults… (No not literally, I would probably break neck…) Thanks for sharing that.

[StregaModerator]

You know, Noel, the Greeks have an old saying which, loosely translated, says that the first expression/face you see on any day will dictate your mood for the rest of that day.  The idea is that the first face you see in the morning is your own, in a mirror.  You set your own mood. It sounds like you’ve got that covered!

[NoelParticipant]

@ Strega: and that’s why I’m always the first one out of bed. My wife runs hot or cold. She can have bad dreams and wake up in a mood and Debbie Downer. Them Greeks had this all figured out.

[StregaModerator]

@ordy. Noel, a huge part of my tranquility was attained by learning how to not be affected when strangers do something that might be considered annoying.  Example being if someone drives particularly poorly in front of me, or ‘steals’ a car space I was waiting for.  The old me would have been annoyed.  This me learned how to imagine the driver had just discovered their partner was having an affair, or their dog just died or something else that would distress them, and immediately any irritation evaporates.

The benefit is that there’s no build up from minor events into a big heap of frustration.  I put every potential flashpoint away for good.  I don’t build up annoyance like death from a thousand cuts, I release any and all of it as I go along.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by  Strega. Reason: Usual typos

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