Happiness

Someone recently wrote a book about it but I cant remember name of book or author just that he was supposed to be a psychoanalyst. Just strikes me that chasing something means one does not experience the moment.

This suggestion is indeed only the same as the oft repeated notion that we should all live in the moment. My feeling is, that whilst it may always be best to be sure that one is as fully present in the present as one is able to be, the idea that letting the past die and the future look after itself can be a recipe for fatalism. It is easier to embrace the idea of not striving when one is already replete with life's gifts. I prefer to advocate as necessary steps to a better world: struggle, justice, liberty and revolution; the odd moment of righteous rage and possibly a little revenge. How on Earth can you tell someone whose children are starving or whose whole life is devoted to senseless labour to pay for someone else's sports car that what they really need to do is live in the moment so that they can have a good time? Whether hippies and aesthetes like it or not, we are, most of us, human beings; we live in a world of past, present and future and often a good time cannot be brought about by changing one's state of mind; neither should it be! For fuck's sake do not walk quietly through the gates and under "Arbeit mach frei" without at least raging that you deserve more.

Gratitude is a healthy state of mind.It can be gratitude towards internal objects as well as external objects and circumstances. Being in touch with good objects does not mean one cannot have agency,be angry or fight against injustice. People in tight spots often have very very intense emotions like people in the heat of battle. One can't say that people in tough circs have no possibility of beauty in their lives or moments of great happiness. If to make an example someone is nearly Christopher Reeve (the situation of a friend of mine). He can either wallow in despair which he does sometimes or he can draw friends to him by virtue of his capacity for conversation and lively mindedness.He has had to accept what he cant change and value what he can have but it is an endless battle to keep hold of whatever happiness or contentment he can experience.You are right about memory though.Good memory keeps us warm on a cold night . Perhaps "happiness" is a concept only relevant to very comfortable places and times.Everyone else has no time to think about it they are too busy surviving.

I've been told that it is okay preparing or planning for things that will make me happy but I shouldn't project about them! I have so far been unable to distinguish between the two. jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

"No matter how much I struggle and strive, I'll never get out of this world alive." Hank Williams Planning has to do with my own actions. Projecting has to do with the outcomes. I control the former. Outcomes are a calculated gamble, at best. In any case, I find that the less I think about happiness the more of it comes my way. The reverse is also true. "I'll be happy when...." is a lie. "You don't need the light of the Lord to read the handwriting on the wall." Copies of Warsaw Tales available through www.new-ink.org