In a bid not to focus my entry today on the fact that I'm doing a discussion on the quote of failure and perseverance (for english homework), once again just thinking.

What makes people happy? The answer many would give's that happiness in itself gets compounded from various factors (that will then determine the range in which euphorism is experienced). Most people would then go on to talk about doing the things they enjoy doing. Be it freedom from the mundane, hobbies, love and associates, these things that make them want to forget the world and just focus on what they're doing.

Its pretty much a peculiar fixation, this bizarre craving for something that you know wouldn't last. But you just want to have it, to be happy because you'd know for that few minutes that it lasts, it would be priceless. Don't know why it works that way but does happiness last? Somehow the same difference between being happy, not being happy and then upset, if one's happy all his life therein lies the contradiction in his/her definition in happy. I guess my demoralizing point of view's may be contested by the idealistic afficionados of optimism, but very well my thoughts.

Its just pretty amusing how my favourite book in childhood was Pollyanna. Not because she lived in a utopic world, but from the unnerving irony that her cynic perspective of everything caused her to look at everything from a depreciatory view that enables others to think "things aren't so bad after all". So much so the way we think in life, like part of the happy claim evolves from the reasoning that it would be worse off. Perhaps some'll finally see the contradiction now, but to insist that one is happy, I suppose a single piece of advice would work: smile, and the world smiles with you.

Something to think about, from the transcript of Heroes.
Linderman: You see, I think there comes a time when a man has to ask himself whether he wants a life of happiness or a life of meaning.
Nathan: I'd like to have both.
Linderman: Can't be done. Two very different paths. I mean, to be truly happy, a man must live absolutely in the present and with no thought with what's gone on before, and no thought of what lies ahead. But a life of meaning, a man is condemned to wallow in the past and obsess about the future.

Labels: Thoughts