I've spent the last 17 years learning, growing, healing, and discovering who I truly am, so that I'm now living every day aligned with my life's purpose.
I think that takes a fairly negative view of people. This quote presents as fact that "you are not going to want other people to be happier than you are". A cynic doesn't, but if I always want to bring people down to my level - who am I going to look up to?
It often takes a choice to be happy, but sometimes it's ok to be sad. Then your friends can help you. But how do you become a person who is happy most of the time?
King Solomon in the Bible proverbs says "A glad heart makes a happy face; a broken heart crushes the spirit." - perhaps what we really need to do is make sure that our heart is nourished and set on good things. Then happiness will flow.
Happiness is a feeling - making feelings a moral responsibility seems a little opressive to me.
But then this is a short out of context quote, maybe I should read the book ;)
I see it as the opposite ... I guess because I've been ingrained with the belief that I should be apologetic about being happy. This says I shouldn't, in fact it's my moral responsibility to my coming child and to the world :)
Yes I see - presenting the middle ground is not going to reverse a mindset. It takes a radical view at the other end to start the thought journey...
Interesting :)
I stumbled across a quote from another great man of our times C.S. Lewis (possibly less known outside of native English speaking countries) that sounds the opposite of what many people expect:
"It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can." <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060688246/qid=1109129823/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0670641-2903026?v=glance&s=books">*</a>
I have not noticed Lewis to get things wrong very often, and he agrees 100% with the original premise!
It came in contrast to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant who stated that the value of a good deed is diminished if the do-er recieves benefit. Crazy Europeans ;)
It's so tiny, and weighs nothing. And I have it set to shuffle mode, using AutoFill, so it plays completely freely. I just smile when I'm listening to it, not knowing what I'm going to hear next. I guess I can do the same with my big iPod, put it on shuffle of everything, but then I never did that.
But that's just an attempt to explain, and as Gladwell has taught us, you shouldn't trust that. What's real is the feeling: It really does make me a happier person. Weird, isn't it?
True. But I've been buying music at the iTunes music store for a while now, at US prices, with my Apple.com account which I created when I lived in the US, and with money that a friend gives me as gift certificates.
And I'm probably going to continue doing that even after the music store launches in Denmark (if it does), because I doubt that they'll be selling cheaper than the DKK 5.59 per song that the US music store currently charges (apart from the fact that I'm not paying my friend for the gift certificates, so it's free for me ;-))
7 comments
Leave a comment