酷我-北美枫

[LavenderSwing]

by Martha Brockenbrough

My two-year-old daughter is a genius--a genius at doing things that drive me nuts, that is. Just last week, she was in the dog food bin, feeding herself handfuls of kibble for at least the millionth time.

"Lucy!" I said. "You know that makes Mama mad!"

"Mama," Lucy replied, barely pausing to swallow. "Be happy."

This made me stop and think. How is it that a two-year-old already knows about happiness? Where does she get the idea that happiness is something you can control? Most important, how can anyone be happy with dog food slurry dribbling down her chin?

So many times I've wondered about the secret to happiness. Why are some people naturally so cheery, and other people--like me--so prone to seeing the dog food sludge and not the happy smile?

Happiness has been a mystery for eons. Philosophers and religious thinkers have dissected it (much to the torment of freshman philosophy students). What's more, novelists have written books disparaging happiness. One of my favorites, Brave New World, describes a society where happiness and comfort are engineered. One implication is that the pursuit of happiness is a path to corruption.

But what modern scientists are learning is that happiness isn't such a bad thing. Psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, who researches happiness at the University of California, Riverside, says happy people are more productive and make more money. They have more friends and their marriages last longer. They feel healthier. They're more creative, helpful, generous, and disciplined.

What's more, happiness helps you solve problems. In one study, 75 percent of the people who'd watched a funny movie were able to solve a problem, as opposed to 13 percent of the people who hadn't seen the funny movie.

Another scholar, Rotterdam-based professor Ruut Veenhoven, goes one step further.

"Happy people live longer," he says. Veenhoven should know; he manages the World Database of Happiness, which compares happiness levels in societies around the globe, among other things.

Here in the United States, we take happiness seriously. Our Founding Fathers even included it in the Declaration of Independence. We have a right to pursue it, along with life and liberty. But while the meanings of the first two things are pretty obvious, happiness is harder to define. Without instructions from the Founding Fathers, we've been left to figure it out ourselves.

Lucy seems to have come up with her own answer. Happiness is a forbidden bucket of dog food. That doesn't really do it for me, though. To find my answer, I decided to start with the classics.

[[我还没有昵称]]

by Martha Brockenbrough

My two-year-old daughter is a genius--a genius at doing things that drive me nuts, that is. Just last week, she was in the dog food bin, feeding herself handfuls of kibble for at least the millionth time.

"Lucy!" I said. "You know that makes Mama mad!"

"Mama," Lucy replied, barely pausing to swallow. "Be happy."

This made me stop and think. How is it that a two-year-old already knows about happiness? Where does she get the idea that happiness is something you can control? Most important, how can anyone be happy with dog food slurry dribbling down her chin?

So many times I've wondered about the secret to happiness. Why are some people naturally so cheery, and other people--like me--so prone to seeing the dog food sludge and not the happy smile?

Happiness has been a mystery for eons. Philosophers and religious thinkers have dissected it (much to the torment of freshman philosophy students). What's more, novelists have written books disparaging happiness. One of my favorites, Brave New World, describes a society where happiness and comfort are engineered. One implication is that the pursuit of happiness is a path to corruption.

But what modern scientists are learning is that happiness isn't such a bad thing. Psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, who researches happiness at the University of California, Riverside, says happy people are more productive and make more money. They have more friends and their marriages last longer. They feel healthier. They're more creative, helpful, generous, and disciplined.

What's more, happiness helps you solve problems. In one study, 75 percent of the people who'd watched a funny movie were able to solve a problem, as opposed to 13 percent of the people who hadn't seen the funny movie.

Another scholar, Rotterdam-based professor Ruut Veenhoven, goes one step further.

"Happy people live longer," he says. Veenhoven should know; he manages the World Database of Happiness, which compares happiness levels in societies around the globe, among other things.

Here in the United States, we take happiness seriously. Our Founding Fathers even included it in the Declaration of Independence. We have a right to pursue it, along with life and liberty. But while the meanings of the first two things are pretty obvious, happiness is harder to define. Without instructions from the Founding Fathers, we've been left to figure it out ourselves.

Lucy seems to have come up with her own answer. Happiness is a forbidden bucket of dog food. That doesn't really do it for me, though. To find my answer, I decided to start with the classics.

[LavenderSwing]

Part II: Ancient ideas about happiness
As a hard-core dog food enthusiast, Lucy is a hedonist. A hedonist is someone who thinks pleasure is the principal good in life, and that the pursuit of it is the best thing you can do (even if it makes your mom mad). I'll admit, there are some definite benefits to this philosophy, which a Greek philosopher named Aristippus helped form around 400 BC.

After all, who doesn't like pleasure?

It didn't take history long, however, to find someone who thought pleasure was overrated. In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle argued that equating happiness with pleasure is what the vulgar masses do.

"The mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes," he sniffs, "preferring a life suitable to beasts."

Though he wasn't talking about human consumption of dog food here, I can understand what he was saying. Shouldn't there be something, well, nobler than endless bouts of feasting, drinking, and napping?

Aristotle considered honor and wealth as two additional, yet problematic, sources of happiness. The problem with honor, he said, is that you could be asleep and be honorable and thus not benefit from it, or you could also be afflicted with great misery and still be honored--something that wouldn't exactly lead to happy feelings. And the problem he had with wealth is that it's useful for something else, as opposed to being a good all by itself.

So, if happiness is an end and not just a means, then what generates it? Aristotle argued that it comes from self-sufficiency, and from using your reason to fulfill your abilities.

All of that sounds logical and reasonable. Until you read a different viewpoint--one that says that all life is suffering.

• Next Page--Happiness is understanding that you're miserable

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Part II: Ancient ideas about happiness
As a hard-core dog food enthusiast, Lucy is a hedonist. A hedonist is someone who thinks pleasure is the principal good in life, and that the pursuit of it is the best thing you can do (even if it makes your mom mad). I'll admit, there are some definite benefits to this philosophy, which a Greek philosopher named Aristippus helped form around 400 BC.

After all, who doesn't like pleasure?

It didn't take history long, however, to find someone who thought pleasure was overrated. In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle argued that equating happiness with pleasure is what the vulgar masses do.

"The mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes," he sniffs, "preferring a life suitable to beasts."

Though he wasn't talking about human consumption of dog food here, I can understand what he was saying. Shouldn't there be something, well, nobler than endless bouts of feasting, drinking, and napping?

Aristotle considered honor and wealth as two additional, yet problematic, sources of happiness. The problem with honor, he said, is that you could be asleep and be honorable and thus not benefit from it, or you could also be afflicted with great misery and still be honored--something that wouldn't exactly lead to happy feelings. And the problem he had with wealth is that it's useful for something else, as opposed to being a good all by itself.

So, if happiness is an end and not just a means, then what generates it? Aristotle argued that it comes from self-sufficiency, and from using your reason to fulfill your abilities.

All of that sounds logical and reasonable. Until you read a different viewpoint--one that says that all life is suffering.

• Next Page--Happiness is understanding that you're miserable

[LavenderSwing]

Part III: Happiness is understanding that you're miserable
About 200 years before Aristotle came to his tidy conclusions, the man who came to be known as Buddha was preaching some different ideas. When he saw the light, Buddha realized four things:


Life is suffering--pain from birth to death, and beyond.
Ignorance and grasping causes suffering.
You can end suffering by overcoming your ignorance and attachment.
You have to follow an eight-fold path to do this.

If you do follow the path--and generally, only monks were thought to be able to--you'd achieve the enlightened state known as nirvana. In an improvement over the Western idea of heaven, a person can achieve nirvana while still alive, and then, in this happy place, shuck off remaining karma until the final nirvana, called parinirvana, is reached at the moment of death.


Unlike Aristotle, who thought happiness came from applying yourself to the world, and squeezing your sustenance from it, Buddha argued that the exact opposite led to bliss.

Obviously, this is a heavily simplified view of an ancient, complex, and widely popular belief system. What makes me unhappy about it, though, is that I like being attached to things and people, even if they make me miserable by eating dog food. I don't want to be a monk, not in this life or the next.

� Next Page--How can a modern person be happy?

[[我还没有昵称]]

Part III: Happiness is understanding that you're miserable
About 200 years before Aristotle came to his tidy conclusions, the man who came to be known as Buddha was preaching some different ideas. When he saw the light, Buddha realized four things:


Life is suffering--pain from birth to death, and beyond.
Ignorance and grasping causes suffering.
You can end suffering by overcoming your ignorance and attachment.
You have to follow an eight-fold path to do this.

If you do follow the path--and generally, only monks were thought to be able to--you'd achieve the enlightened state known as nirvana. In an improvement over the Western idea of heaven, a person can achieve nirvana while still alive, and then, in this happy place, shuck off remaining karma until the final nirvana, called parinirvana, is reached at the moment of death.


Unlike Aristotle, who thought happiness came from applying yourself to the world, and squeezing your sustenance from it, Buddha argued that the exact opposite led to bliss.

Obviously, this is a heavily simplified view of an ancient, complex, and widely popular belief system. What makes me unhappy about it, though, is that I like being attached to things and people, even if they make me miserable by eating dog food. I don't want to be a monk, not in this life or the next.

� Next Page--How can a modern person be happy?

[LavenderSwing]

Part IV: How can a modern person be happy?
Happiness researchers--and yes, there are people who study this full-time--will tell you that the definition of happiness is liking your life. Veenhoven says you know you're happy when you feel good most of the time.

Veenhoven believes that being happy requires having your overall needs met. It doesn't come from comparing yourself to the Joneses and feeling good if you have more than they do. Choose where you live carefully. And choose work you like to do, because your happiness won't necessarily depend on how much money you make.

A study described in The Psychology of Happiness, by Michael Argyle, found something interesting. If you take two people, one an introvert and one an extrovert, researchers have found that the extrovert is more likely to be happy 17 years later than the introvert is.

Lyubomirsky, the happiness researcher at UC, Riverside, has found that chronically happy and chronically unhappy people have different approaches to daily life. The unhappy ones, she has found, dwell more on the negative, and on things that could potentially be construed as negative.

It's the emotional equivalent of picking at a scab.

"Such 'dwelling' or rumination may drain cognitive resources and thus bring to bear a variety of negative consequences, which could further reinforce unhappiness," Lyubomirsky writes.

In other words, thinking about unhappy things only makes you feel worse.

Keep Learning
Find online classes and degree programs.Lyubomirsky and her students are in the midst of an experiment to measure whether positive thinking and kind acts can make a person feel happier. If you'd like to test yourself, you can follow along. For six weeks, keep a journal where you count your blessings. During that time, also practice altruism and kindness. And, for 15 minutes a day for one week, think positive thoughts, and talk about your happiest and unhappiest life events.

You might just end up happier. As for me, I'm going to stop obsessing about Lucy and dog food. I won't dwell on it or write another word. Starting now.

There. I feel better already.

[[我还没有昵称]]

Part IV: How can a modern person be happy?
Happiness researchers--and yes, there are people who study this full-time--will tell you that the definition of happiness is liking your life. Veenhoven says you know you're happy when you feel good most of the time.

Veenhoven believes that being happy requires having your overall needs met. It doesn't come from comparing yourself to the Joneses and feeling good if you have more than they do. Choose where you live carefully. And choose work you like to do, because your happiness won't necessarily depend on how much money you make.

A study described in The Psychology of Happiness, by Michael Argyle, found something interesting. If you take two people, one an introvert and one an extrovert, researchers have found that the extrovert is more likely to be happy 17 years later than the introvert is.

Lyubomirsky, the happiness researcher at UC, Riverside, has found that chronically happy and chronically unhappy people have different approaches to daily life. The unhappy ones, she has found, dwell more on the negative, and on things that could potentially be construed as negative.

It's the emotional equivalent of picking at a scab.

"Such 'dwelling' or rumination may drain cognitive resources and thus bring to bear a variety of negative consequences, which could further reinforce unhappiness," Lyubomirsky writes.

In other words, thinking about unhappy things only makes you feel worse.

Keep Learning
Find online classes and degree programs.Lyubomirsky and her students are in the midst of an experiment to measure whether positive thinking and kind acts can make a person feel happier. If you'd like to test yourself, you can follow along. For six weeks, keep a journal where you count your blessings. During that time, also practice altruism and kindness. And, for 15 minutes a day for one week, think positive thoughts, and talk about your happiest and unhappiest life events.

You might just end up happier. As for me, I'm going to stop obsessing about Lucy and dog food. I won't dwell on it or write another word. Starting now.

There. I feel better already.

[LavenderSwing]

Rex Barker here again with “Staying Young”. Today (Feb is Boy Scout Day and as I reminisce about my own youth, I am reminded just how fast time flies.
Did you ever realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions. "How old are you?" "I'm four and a half, going on five.”

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number ... or even a few ahead. "How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life … You BECOME 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony.

But then you TURN 30. (Makes you sound like bad milk.) You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes ... it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 ... and your dreams are gone. But wait!!!

You MAKE IT to 60. You didn't think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE IT to 60. You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.

And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards ... "I Was JUST 92." Then a strange thing happens.

If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!" ..

These simple suggestions will help us all be youthful for life.

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay "them!"

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down. 3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often ... long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath. .

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves so Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love whether it's ... family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your sacred refuge.

8. Cherish your health. If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall… even to the next county ...to a foreign country, but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them. ..at every opportunity

[[我还没有昵称]]

Rex Barker here again with “Staying Young”. Today (Feb is Boy Scout Day and as I reminisce about my own youth, I am reminded just how fast time flies.
Did you ever realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions. "How old are you?" "I'm four and a half, going on five.”

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number ... or even a few ahead. "How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life … You BECOME 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony.

But then you TURN 30. (Makes you sound like bad milk.) You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes ... it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 ... and your dreams are gone. But wait!!!

You MAKE IT to 60. You didn't think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE IT to 60. You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.

And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards ... "I Was JUST 92." Then a strange thing happens.

If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!" ..

These simple suggestions will help us all be youthful for life.

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay "them!"

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down. 3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often ... long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath. .

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves so Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love whether it's ... family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your sacred refuge.

8. Cherish your health. If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall… even to the next county ...to a foreign country, but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them. ..at every opportunity