Category: Happiness
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The Absurdity of Envy
You envy me? What a wretch you must be to feel diminished in your sense of self-worth by comparison with me! I have something you lack? Why isn't that compensated for by what you have that I lack? You feel bad that I have achieved something by my hard work? Don't you realize that you…
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What It Takes to Be Happy
Attributed to Gustave Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless." Witty, but false. Comparable and less cynical is this saying which I found attributed to Albert Schweitzer on a greeting card: Happiness is nothing more than…
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It’s Enough
Standing on a hill behind my house, looking down on it, the thought occurred to me: It's enough. One modest house suffices. And then the thought that the ability to be satisfied with what one has is a necessary condition of happiness. Satisfied with what one has, not with what one is. Perhaps it is…
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Old Man, Happy Man
It's a bit of a paradox. Things are bad in the world, very bad, and the future looks grim. The country slides, the ship of state, 'manned' by fools, lists, and the center will not hold. But I've never been happier! I am sure my experience is not unique. I expect many of you who…
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The Extremism of Simone Weil
A longish essay of mine, Weil's Wager, ends like this: Although Weilian disinterest may appear morally superior to Pascalian self-interest, I would say that the former is merely an example of a perverse strain in Weil’s thinking. One mistake she makes is to drive a wedge between the question of the good and the question…
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The Wise Live by Probabilities, not by Possibilities
The worldly wise live by the probable and not by the possible. It is possible that you will reform the person you want to marry. But it is not probable. Don't imagine that you can change a person in any significant way. What you see now in your partner is what you will get from…
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A Question About Marriage
For many years now I have been an occasional reader of your blog, and I greatly appreciate your insight on many subjects, particularly your criticism of the Left. I am, I hate to admit, an aspiring academic who is taking on enormous debt to finish a Ph.D. in sociology of religion, and am immersed in…
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A Formula for Happiness
Excerpt: For many years, researchers found that women were happier than men, although recent studies contend that the gap has narrowed or may even have been reversed. Political junkies might be interested to learn that conservative women are particularly blissful: about 40 percent say they are very happy. That makes them slightly happier than conservative…
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The Stoic Insight and Its Limits
Within limits we have the power to control our minds, our moods, our responses to people and things, and in consequence our happiness. Happiness is in some measure made or unmade in the mind. We all know people who make themselves miserable by their refusal to practice very elementary mental hygiene. Just as I can…
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Happiness Maxims (2013 Version)
These maxims work for me; they may work for you. Experiment. The art of living can only learned by living and trying and failing. 0. Make it a goal of your life to be as happy as circumstances permit. Think of it as a moral obligation: a duty to oneself and to others. 1. Avoid unhappy…
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Worldly Success
Seek only as much worldly success as is necessary for the pursuit of unworldly ends. What the deeper natures want, this world cannot provide. It cannot offer ultimate satisfaction or true happiness. You say there is no ultimate satisfaction or true happiness? My point stands nonetheless. This world cannot supply them. To think otherwise is delusional.
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Gratitude: A Thanksgiving Homily
We need spiritual exercises just as we need physical, mental, and moral exercises. A good spiritual exercise, and easy to boot, is daily recollection of just how good one has it, just how rich and full one's life is, just how much is going right despite annoyances and setbacks which for the most part are…
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Attitude, Gratitude, Beatitude
The attitude of gratitude conduces to beatitude. Can it be said in plain Anglo-Saxon? Grateful thoughts lead one to happiness. However you say it, it is true. The miserable make themselves miserable by their bad thinking; the happy happy by their correct mental hygiene. Broad generalizations, these. They admit of exceptions, as goes without saying. …
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Gratitude
Every day find something to be grateful for. It might be the regularity of nature. Without it, how would you make coffee? And then there is coffee itself and its wonderful taste. What a marvellous, yet harmless, drug! And then there are the thoughts that percolate up under its agency. There are so many of…
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Conservatives, Liberals, and Happiness
It turns out that conservatives are happier than liberals. But why? Conservative explanation. Marriage and religious faith are conducive to happiness. More conservatives are married than liberals, and more practice a religion. Ergo, conservatives as a group are happier than liberals as a group. Liberal explanation. Conservatives are happier because they turn a blind eye…