I was raised by my grandparents. They were born in the 1910s, and grew up in the midwest during the dust bowl and great depression. My grandfather lost most of his buddies in Guadalcanal and Burma during World War II, and, in his own words, fully expected to become worm food himself.
He said little, but one phrase he did repeat more than any other was simple: "Any day you're breathing is a good day." To him, every day, every year, every one of the six decades past 1944 was a cherry on top gift.
Growing up in the 1970s in the United States, conducting nuclear attack drills with regularity, many of us felt that it was fairly likely that we would be incinerated before our 21st birthdays.
"Every day you're breathing is a good day."
There are certainly limits to these 8 simple words, but radical gratitude is at their core.
It's quite likely that everybody reading this post is having a FAR better life than 99.9% of every other human being who exists and has ever existed.
I'm a generally happy person because, from a young age, I have chosen to focus on that simple truth.
This perspective need not lead to complacence. Those who know me will say that I've always been a driven person, personally and professionally.
Every day you're breathing is a good day. Thanks, grandpa, for the wise words. He would have celebrated his 100th birthday last month.
> He said little, but one phrase he did repeat more than any other was simple: "Any day you're breathing is a good day." To him, every day, every year, every one of the six decades past 1944 was a cherry on top gift.
My father, B-17 navigator, said he accepted that he was going to die in combat. The odds at the time of surviving were terrible (about 80% casualties).
He did survive (hence my existence), and told me that whenever he felt down about something he'd remember his buddies who died in the war and how he'd been given a chance to live through it, and he'd re-appreciate his life.
Upon his return to the states, the crews were led to tables to eat. There was nothing to order, the staff assured them "we know what you want." Sure enough, they did - steak, eggs, tomatoes, etc.
Upon return to civilian life, he said he was astounded by the triviality of peoples' everyday life concerns. They were going to live another day, what did they have to be concerned about?
This seems trivally easy to counter. Should the starving homeless person look at every day as a blessing? How about the sex traded slaves? "They were going to live another day, what did they have to be concerned about?"
I'm not trying to discount your point that you should have some gratitude or put things in perspective but happiness requires much more than just not dying. If nothing else your father had a wife and you as other hopefully joys in his life. Some people have no one.
Starvation and rape aren't everyday life concerns for Americans. Everyday life concerns are my car won't start, my date stood me up, will I get that promotion, I haven't got a thing to wear, the cabbie overcharged me, etc.
Going through any traumatic experience will change you in ways you can't imagine until it happens. It moves the bar to a point from which it will probably never fully come back, something will always be there to serve as a reference. To anybody who went through trauma looking at other people's lesser trauma looks like "trivialities". But it never works the same way the other way around. You can imagine lesser trauma but not really greater trauma.
> happiness requires much more than just not dying
Probably not for the people who don't have just the hypothetical appreciation of being alive but actually "cheated" death when it was all but certain.
> Upon return to civilian life, he said he was astounded by the triviality of peoples' everyday life concerns. They were going to live another day, what did they have to be concerned about?
Perhaps the key to a well-adjusted view of life is trauma? To show you how good the rest of life can be.
I've learned the most about life from "character building experiences". They are usually unpleasant. They could be as simple as somone telling you not to be stupid, or as complicated as finding lessons out the hard way.
The experiences give you the resolve or clues or whatever to avoid bad choices, or appreciate good ones. Or help others understand (if they're receptive).
My grandfather was a teenager during WW2. He was a Polish Jew and lucky to have seen the writing on the wall and fled eastwards when the Nazis invaded (almost the entire rest of his large family died in the holocaust - his only living relative was his brother, who died as a soldier in 1948 in the Israeli war of independence).
He had a horrible time during the war but eventually found safety as a refugee in the soviet union (after they put him to 2 years of forced labor in a coal mine). He met my grandmother in the Ukraine & together they fled to Uzbekistan where my mother was born a few months after the end of the war.
He used to say that during those time he fantasied about owning/operating a flour mill after the war, so that he could always bake bread and never be hungry.
He had a psychotic episode in the 70s and was put on medication that he continued taking his entire life afterwards. He was a deeply harsh, grumpy & unhappy person the entire time I knew him (roughly the last 20 years of his life). According to what my mother told me about her & my uncle's upbringing he would also be considered a terrible father these days (due to his own emotional/psychic state no doubt).
So I would personally put a strong recommendation against experiencing extreme hardships in order to "build character" - I rather my character remain unbuilt than experience war, genocide & forced labor camps.
Pretty much the same story here. My granda was a Polish teenager who got thrown into Stallinist right prison after surviving 5 years of German WWII occupation. I think the abuse there pretty much wrecked his psyche for life, with signs of mental illness and a pretty miserable character in general afterwards.
I tentatively agree that character isn't built by extreme hardships. But I do suspect that being shot at would determine what kind of a man you are, and there's no way to know that in advance.
For example, being a navigator, my father sat up front behind the bombardier. There's a plexiglass hemisphere in the nose. The Me-109's favorite attack plan was the head on attack (because the B-17's had a gap in coverage in the front). He said you can see the cannon flash as they fired at him (usually aiming for the pilots, who were right behind my father's position, thinking "how can they miss".
What would you do in such a situation? Nobody can tell in advance.
It seems obvious that living and pushing through real hardships can have highly variable impacts on people, depending on the person and the circumstances.
I suspect that one element that makes such experiences more likely to provide positive long-term impacts is perceived or real personal agency during the events in question.
If, during the difficult times, a person feels like they have some material influence over the outcome, and then the outcome is neutral or good, then it's more likely that the whole mess will end up being a net positive life influence.
Can’t you just read about others stories like this and put yourself in their shoes, I guess it’s enough.
There is suffering on an immense scale daily.
* Warning - Following is Graphic not for sensitive people *
For example I read from the comfort of my bed last night that a beekeeper just lost practically everything in Australia and when fires ripped through his property, to add insult to injury, when he went into the Forrest, all he could hear was a choir of moaning, wounded or dying animals. Koalas, kangaroos etc.
One can easily be grateful this day they didn’t experience something this catastrophic and that you’re not one of those animals. You can also realise one day you might be, so while your ok, make the most of it.
I have to admit that the warning (multiple) for sensitive people bugs me. I believe you mean well but I think this meme should die. If this is not overprotectiveness then I do not know what is. You are not leading people to fire, you are leading them to an article about fire. Everybody reading it should be happy they can just read about it and they do not have to live it.
Indeed, nothing says condescending and self absorbed like a disclosure that is code for "you may be too mentally challenged/fragile to participate in an open exhange of ideas, particularly these, child"
It seems you might be the one who is over sensitive?
I didn’t mean it to be condescending at all, I genuinely found that story super disturbing and I didn’t want to put others through it unless they wanted to be put through it.
The scene the guy is describing real sounds like an apocalyptic hellscape, if you’re not somewhat disturbed by it, then I’m not sure what to say.
I am not the one who finds what you wrote condescending but I would like to ask you a question - you seem to believe that being disturbed by an article is something bad - where does this come from? Is this common where you live?
It is just that this view seems to be gaining popularity and I don't get it. Being disturbed by something is an emotion and emotions serve to orient us. They are useful - both pleasant and unpleasant. Filtering out unpleasant emotions is like wearing glasses that only let you see things you like - why would anyone want that? Do you believe this is a good thing?
And BTW, if you find that article disturbing, I would really like to know what would you think about things like reading The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell... or visiting Auschwitz?
I think climate change and the current climate emergency will cause more unimaginable suffering, as bad as imaginable, if you read the article you’d might realise the fires are a result of severe drought predicted by climate scientists and caused by climate change.
Therefore I feel some will find this article disturbing because humans and many living beings have suffered horrible deaths in what I’d call unnatural ways (fire isn’t new to these animals, the intensity of the fires is). It’s also a glimpse of more very tragic times ahead.
I put a link to the article and a warning, what do you find so concerning about it ? Maybe people don’t read hacker news to feel like shit? Maybe some people are reading who have been directly affected too. So I gave people the option to skip that article and the details if they weren’t in the mood for it right now Who cares? I just wanted to give people the choice.
I agree with your point about good and bad emotions. I mean, I read the article in the first place.
If you have trouble seeing why some would find a forest full of crying animals who has been partially burned to death sad or troubling with more to come, maybe you’re someone who has trouble feeling empathy? Which is ok, but you would have trouble understanding people that might.
By the way, I am from Earth, just like you. I don’t see how that question was relevant.
>>> If you have trouble seeing why some would find a forest full of crying animals who has been partially burned to death sad or troubling with more to come, maybe you’re someone who has trouble feeling empathy?
I have no trouble seeing why some would find it troubling - what I do not get is why you would think this is a reason to put there the warning. You say it yourself - we are going to have a lot of problems. Shouldn't you encourage people to face them? Is it not a good thing to be disturbed by disturbing things? What is better - that people face the hard truths or that they cover their eyes in front of them? This is what bugs me on those warnings - that I perceive them as making our society more fragile and less able to handle the problems. There is such a thing as too much sensitivity. Coddling is not good for us.
Agreed. Assuming you're someone who is in this club, may I ask: do you think there's a material difference between being shot at in a military sense (for both, say, proper battles as well as what our people were subject to in Iraq, 2003 and later) and being shot at in the city sense (random drive-bys, verbal altercations turning into gunfire) ? Thanks for your consideration.
I'm not, hence I'm not fit to answer your question. I've been robbed at gunpoint, but the thief wasn't trying to kill me. It does still set my teeth on edge when someone comes up behind me.
When people would greet my dad with "hey, how are you doing?" he'd often reply "shot at and missed".
My father was a healthy, fit, active guy who suffered from a bit of acid reflux which turned into esophageal cancer which claimed his life at 46. I was in my early twenties and just starting my career when that happened. I'm 44 now, and that experience has shaped my approach to life and it's been both a good and bad thing. On one hand, it's made me live more in the now and not for a distant future. On the other hand, I experience guilt when I don't take advantage of every day I have.
I find this a cavalier attitude. I'm glad that your grandpa seems to have life a life fulfilled, but that's not the reality for many folks.
If his biology allows him to trudge on, to always see the silver lining, how can you call this wisdom? Some people have a lower tolerance for suffering. Some people do not find life worth living, maybe for biological reasons.
The reason I don't call this wisdom is because for many or most people, this is not an idea that can be realized through words or knowledge alone.
I don't need someone to tell me to be happy. I need the ability to be happy.
I understand your sentiment, but I disagree. I think everyone should put their frustrations into perspective every now and then, instead of living to compartmentalized or as on a schedule.
How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood
And then just be in a good mood?
That's all I have to say because it's a straight up fact
You control your emotions it's as simple as that
That's the core of the argument in basically all these things. I'm not saying it's true, but it is a perspective on life. :)
To give far from proper 100% analogy: I don't need somebody to tell me to start exercising to lose weight, I need a goddamn pill to make it happen!
The path to happiness can be complex one, but there are myriads of possible, non-guaranteed routes - exercise, meditation, yoga, drugs legal or not, backpacking in 3rd world, fulfilling jobs, good relationships, kids, etc. Even trying will take you on a path to be a better, more balanced human being.
Nobody will ever 'give you ability to be happy'. Either you will reach it yourself, in your own unique way, or you won't.
Indeed. To select one data point: had you been born in Russia in 1923 you had only a 32% chance of making it to 1946. infant mortality, famine and then WW2 meant that 68% of the 1923 cohort died before they were 23.
Yup, it's good to point that sort of thing out. Most of the history that (I suspect) most of the readers of HN are exposed to will be quite western focused, and yes, a lot of things were fairly bad in the first half of the 20th century in the United States.
But damn...things were fucking terrible in a lot of other parts of the world during that time. And more importantly, such terrible times existed, all over the world, going back forever.
Don't forget the Stallinist terror (innocent people dying in concentration camps).
EDIT: why the downvote? Wikipedia estimate for the victims of The Purge is at 600k-1.2m level (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), certainly enough to make a dent in the stats.
my grand father was a resistance veteran back from WWII in Europe. He didn't talk much about it except to express the famine and misery they went through those years. He had it rough, lost his first wife young and just about everything.
He never told me how to be or who to be, or what to think, he just was content to have me around, grateful for everything.
Later in life, he became blind for many years, and just kept trucking along, not the complainer type. Always keeping it light-hearted basically, humouring and never judging, just caring deeply for others but himself, never wanting to be in the way of anyone, even the people paid to help him.
Frankly, I'd be more interested in knowing what your grandfather didn't say, than what he did. Lots of people who've been through traumatic experiences use positive messaging to cope. "Every day you're breathing..." is a soundbite, and can't paper over the hard work and self-reflection that's needed to heal. And even then most trauma survivors don't heal 100%. Of course your grandfather isn't obligated to talk about those parts.
My parents survived a genocide in their home countries. One parent commonly says things like "God has a plan". It is the same thing: a soundbite, and not a one-size-fits-all way to live your life.
"Every day you're breathing is a good day." isn't something that happy people or grateful people say. If you are happy or grateful, you wouldn't even think to say it. Being happy is a state of being that doesn't require rationalization or justification. Happy children or even happy dogs are in the state of happiness and don't require lies like "Every day you're breathing is a good day.".
It's been my experience that people who are unhappy or discontent try to "persevere" with trite mantra like "Every day you're breathing is a good day.".
My father used to say that a lot like your grandfather. And I suspect, like my father, your grandfather was dissatisfied and unhappy. He, like my father who fought in vietnam, probably also suffered through PTSD for his entire life from the horrible things he saw and did in war.
Honestly, if the only thing you can be grateful for is "breathing", then you might as well be a plant.
During the happiest times in my life, I've never even thought to say "Every day you're breathing is a good day.". It was only during the unhappy times in my life, that you have to resort to such quotes and mantra.
I think I understand the basic sentiment behind all of what you're saying, and I do appreciate you sharing it. I only have time to respond very briefly.
I suspect there are some (fairly reasonable) assumptions behind your assessment here.
First, my grandfather didn't say much at all. He was quiet and reserved, with only a few friends. He said "...breathing is a good day.", perhaps eight or ten times in the 18 years I lived with him, and the following 15 years I'd visit. And it was always in response to me or someone else complaining about trivial stuff.
To be clear: he wasn't repeating that statement like a mantra.
> Honestly, if the only thing you can be grateful for is "breathing" ...
Far from it; it's a baseline of gratitude, not in any way exclusive.
> During the happiest times in my life, I've never even thought to say "Every day you're breathing is a good day.".
For me as well! And likely my grandfather's perspective as well.
> ...grandfather was dissatisfied and unhappy ... PTSD ...
My grandfather definitely dealt with PTSD for many years, but he was 49 years old when I was born, and there were few signs of it left while I was growing up.
To be clear: my grandfather was far from dissatisfied and unhappy. In simple, straightforward ways, he enjoyed his life, through and through.
Finally, I'll note that I am I just sharing this personal anecdote with the deep understanding that every experience and circumstance is different. It is my hope that your father found or is finding peace.
Agreed. Also on the topic of complacency it's hard to understand why the 2 thoughts would be linked (as I'm sure they are for many people). You've been given an opportunity so try take advantage. Trying your best is a minimum and I'm not even from the school of protestant work ethic thought. I suspect that conditioning from early age to submit to authority (school) plays a huge part and is ultimately very destructive for society.
Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) said (at around 70 as well), "The notion that one's goal in life is to be happy, that your own happiness is the goal... I just don't buy it"
I think as we focus on mastery or craftsmanship, happiness finds us.
Not everyone, but I'd say modern society is hedonistic—we seek happiness instead of achievement and get neither.
>we seek happiness instead of achievement and get neither.
Probably because we've been conditioned (through billions of dollars, spent yearly, on marketing) to believe that happiness comes with the acquisition of certain items, status or experiences.
We've conflated happiness with dopamine rushes and short-lived pleasure, and believe the feeling can be elongated by merely emulating the actions which either provided both or could provide more of both.
Many of us have also altered our lives to support the above mentality - living in densely packed cities with air and sound pollution, or poor commutes, working around the clock, or in chaotic and stressful companies, doing ultimately purposeless or even outright destructive work, with the hopes of gaining more money or more status to fund the above, etc.
Coupled with the increasing social isolation and division, the never-ending outrage we're told to feel over today's new issue, which we as a civilization are going through, it's not hard to see why people are finding it hard to say they're happy.
> Not everyone, but I'd say modern society is hedonistic—we seek happiness instead of achievement and get neither.
I agree on the hedonism but I'm not sure the happiness-achievement struggle is as simple. There are plenty of people who have achieved stuff my some metric (fame, wealth, etc.) and are still deeply unhappy
The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (from which I believe that quote originates) actually affected me quite a bit. Rather than some kind of hedonistic bucket list, the film's depiction of Miyazaki gave me a very different model for later life: To spend a lifetime mastering one's craft, and to take joy in the everyday process of exercising and improving it.
Most of us will not become acclaimed directors like Miyazaki, or renowned sushi chefs like Jiro Ono (Jiro Dreams of Sushi is another documentary in this vein), but in my view, any skilled craftsperson, from a tatami weaver to a software developer, can follow this path. You don't have to be famous, or even best in class, to enjoy a life of mastering the craft that inspires you.
All very well and inspiring, but how am I meant to make enough money to pay rent and buy groceries when trying to master my craft? This works great if your dream lines up with capitalism, but for a lot of us software development is just a means to pay the bills, not a reason to live.
I believe we have missed it by concentrating so much on Happiness instead of Joy. Joy is a much more wholesome emotion, long lasting and once you are in a state of joy, happiness follows.
I think human emotional state is nature's tool to get us to procreate and improve the chances of our offspring to survive.
If at anytime we become truly happy this hurts these goals. For example, if an old man could be building a wall or an arsenal of bows an arrows, or inventing a better way to go fishing, his tribe would be more likely to survive. But if he just sat there, content to being alive, this is bad for his offsprings' future.
You could say, well why can't he do these things and be happy at the same time? I can't really explain why not being happy leads to a better outcome for the safety and procreation of society in general, but I would assume that it must serve some purpose in that goal, or the whole concept of it would have been removed by evolution long ago.
So, I think it's better just to resign yourself to the fact, barring using mind altering drugs, that you'll never be much happier than you were on average before, or much sadder, either.
And as far as this 70 yo lady is concerned, I'd bet when this was written she was simply riding the high of accomplishing something, and probably soon crashed back down below her baseline, only to recover back to it sometime later.
Yes, but not everyone is like that. Just as some people are taller, smarter, more artistic, etc. some people have a baseline happiness that is higher than others. Consider yourself lucky.
What if the human emotional state is a byproduct of human consciousness. In that way, it isn't something that can just be chopped off as unnecessary. Not to say that it doesn't help with procreation but I think your view point is a little too cynical. What does this suggest about people that don't have kids?
> What if the human emotional state is a byproduct of human consciousness.
I have no idea what “human consciousness” is. I'm not deriding you, but I have never heard a satisfactory explanation. I kind of suspect it isn't actually real.
> What does this suggest about people that don't have kids?
There are a lot of species of wild animals that will not procreate in captivity. Take a group of these creature that is adapted to a certain environment and then place them in a completely different environment and they will for some reason lose their will to procreate even though they are physically able to do so.
I think it's the same with human beings. Technology has pushed so far and fast away from how we used to live, some of us, for whatever reason, don't procreate anymore.
How to start a business: Start working, believe in yourself!
Now that I've read OP article, I realize what I've been doing wrong all my life. I had disabled my "fun" switch. Glad someone finally pointed it out. Everything is so much better now, wow! Thank you!
I value this comment. I find the original article akin to associating a good "soul" or a condemned "soul".
It is hand waving simplicity against the complex reality of biological limitations. Some people simply have more endurance for the suffering of life, better motivation or better opportunity and environment.
I want everyone to live to seek their potential, but there is no answer to finding peace (or happiness) in life.
At least not an answer that can be communicated through words.
> It is hand waving simplicity against the complex reality of biological limitations. Some people simply have more endurance for the suffering of life, better motivation or better opportunity and environment.
I expected the general population of HN to be well trained enough to instantly realize this. I guess it was my fault for tricking myself in believing I could find such a place.
This reminds me of the Monty Python skit, "How To Do It". To rid the world of all known diseases, "become a doctor and discover a marvelous cure for something, and then, when the medical world really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be diseases any more." The secret to a happy life is to be happy now instead of waiting for stuff!
Dr. Bik Kwoon Tye could be a poster child for Dr. Seligman's work in the field of positive psychology! This story reminds me so much of a book I just finished reading: The Happiness Advantage.
"Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around."
God I tortured myself growing up thinking that once I achieved the next big goal I would “be happy”. I don’t know why it took me 30+ years to realize that state was never achieved, I just have to be happy now without waiting for it to happen to me.
I don't know, and I'm not sure it's a good idea. I think it's a feature, not a bug, though it has very clear downsides, which you can take steps to ameliorate. Talking of steps:
Walking and talking are pretty ancient ways of taking stock and finding new perspectives. Talk to people outside your usual age range and social class. Get out into nature. These things usually help in ways I can't explain very well, but I find them vital to sustainably integrating who I am in here with where I am in the world. In my experience, major health crises of the mental kind tend to be down to this.
Does it? A lot of the people I know who've accomplished significant things did so not because they were happy, but because they tried harder than anyone else. They were not satisfied with the way things were and put a lot of effort into changing them. I myself didn't lose half my bodyweight because I was happy, quite the contrary, I hated --and still hate-- my body. That kind of motivation is incredibly helpful for overcoming the suffering required to accomplish big things.
Success will not make you happy, this my experience agrees with, but I'm equally sure that happiness will not make one successful.
I didn't read the book the OP quotes, but it rings true to me on many levels.
While happiness doesn't guarantee success, it sure has hell makes it easier to work hard!
The darkest year of my life was sophomore year in college. I wasn't doing well in my classes, so I dropped some hobbies to make more time to study. I got out of shape, gained weight, lost touch w/ my friends, put more pressure on myself to make all of these sacrifices "worth it," and welp – my grades never improved.
The next year, I fell in love w/ this boy.
After what most people call a downward spiral, I essentially fell straight into an upward spiral! Falling in love was (and still is)... inspiring. I got back into shape, rejoined all of the teams and activities I had quit, and also got straight A's in not four, not five, but all six of my classes (at MIT).
Being happy doesn't magically transport you to the finish line, but it certainly makes running the race more enjoyable. As the quote says, happiness is indeed fuel.
And lastly, I don't know if you're proud of yourself for losing so much weight, but you ought to be! When I get out of shape, my goal usually starts out as "I want to feel good in my body." But every time I start the process (and it happens frequently because I'm a bit of a yo-yo-er), I start to get really geeked by the progress. Progress is one of the only things that reliably and consistently makes me happy. (It's the best!!!)
> Progress is one of the only things that reliably and consistently makes me happy.
My experience is that if you rely on progress for your emotional wellbeing you will not have a good time. Progress too easily slips backwards or plateaus for long periods of time. It sounds like the kind of ting someone would say during the easy beginning stages of of a thing.
They say a journey of 10,000 steps starts with a single step. And then you have a journey of 9,999 steps, which starts with a single step. That is, there's never a time when you take 10,000 steps in one go, or when you do an entire journey in one go, the whole journey ends with a single step as well.
Given that the entire journey is single steps, if you take one step and then beat yourself up because one step is nothing, and tell yourself how much of a loser you are for only moving one step, and how other would people disapprove .. that makes the entire journey thousands of steps where you beat yourself up because each step isn't enough. How are you going to face, and endure, such a miserable journey?
By contrast, if each step is a rewarding piece of progress, which you cheer yourself on for, then (in a recursive sense), the entire journey ahead of you unfolds into thousands of rewarding, cheerful pieces of progress encouraging you forwards.
I myself didn't lose half my bodyweight because I was happy, quite the contrary, I hated --and still hate-- my body.
You've worked hard to go from self-hate to self-hate, through thousands of steps each full of self-hate. What kind of progress is that, really? What kind of life is that? In a fraction of the time and effort you could have gone from self-hate to self-approval, without changing anything except thoughts and without doing anything except thinking.
I'm equally sure that happiness will not make one successful.
If you were happy being fat, what use would you have for "success"? What if you die half way through the journey and never reach the end - is success a goal that only exists at one point in time, and if you don't live long enough, you can't have it? Why not feel happy and successful at every moment of calorie counting, grateful at having the opportunity to buy chicken and salad instead of fried chicken and gravy, happy at the scenery around you when you go out to exercise, instead of filling each moment with self-hate and bitterness and what have you?
If every moment you play a tune, you hate how badly you play, and it drives you to play more precisely, but you hate playing and feel bad afterwards, are you better off or worse off than someone who plays imprecisely, but loves every moment they play and can't wait to play more and feels better afterwards?
> Given that the entire journey is single steps, if you take one step and then beat yourself up because one step is nothing...
When did I ever say to do that? What I'm saying is, if you're so happy, and happiness is so important as people claim, then what motivates you to go through the pain of 10000 steps in the first place?
No, I submit that happiness is at best orthogonal to success.
> You've worked hard to go from self-hate to self-hate
Yes, and now without the comfort of being able to eat a pint of ice cream when I've had a bad day or pick up a pizza on the way home from work, or enjoy a carefree dining experience with friends. Such is life. One must sacrifice to attain goals.
> Why not feel happy and successful at every moment of calorie counting
Good fucking luck with that.
> If every moment you play a tune, you hate how badly you play, and it drives you to play more precisely, but you hate playing and feel bad afterwards, are you better off or worse off than someone who plays imprecisely, but loves every moment they play and can't wait to play more and feels better afterwards?
That depends on if your goal is to play better or be happy. To attain success one must not be satisfied with being not successful or one will have too little motivation to succeed. The fact that people put themselves through miserable, agonizing slogs to succeed at things should tell you something about happiness: it isn't actually what people want, deep down. If it were, I know from first hand experience that opioids are a great way to make yourself feel good pretty much all the time without doing anything.
No, people want to be satisfied, and are sometimes confused into thinking that satisfaction will bring happiness, but it won't. Likewise, if someone wants to accomplish something, happiness and failure will not satisfy.
Weirdly enough, I was having a chat with my mom about this sort of thing last night (she's 69, not 70, so I'm not sure she's old enough for her opinion to count, yet). Both of us were chatting about our tendency to be solitary and only see family and a couple of core friends. Past that, we'll hide away in books and study for days and not notice, perfectly happy but when we have to come out of our houses we are out of sorts with the world and it scares us a little that we are so very happy in this hermit way. We have to force ourselves to be social, which is supposed to be the key to long life and happiness - and we try, but it comes so foreign to some. I have to wonder if these 'keys to happiness' are as universal as advertised.
And for the record - we both are social, but it isn't our natural state =)
If socializing feels uncomfortable at first, but rewarding after, then it sounds like it's a good thing to "force" yourself to do. But if you're doing it just because you think you're supposed to and it actually isn't enjoyable, then maybe you can rethink what "being social" means. Or rather, rethink how you practice it. You don't have to leave your house in order to make friends, build relationships, or feel connected to other people! Invite people over. Or if you prefer 1-on-1 interactions, just invite one person over at a time.
My husband is super introverted and will always choose being alone over being in a big group of people. I'm the complete opposite. But we're both still social animals. We both get energized by camaraderie, interesting discussions/debates, and human connection – we just have different preferences for how we engage w/ and achieve those things.
which is supposed to be the key to long life and happiness
I often wonder about that. I'm sure if someone is gregarious and outgoing then they would suffer if they were deprived of social contact. Is this the same for introverts? I wonder if any of the studies on this control for introversion/extroversion.
Happiness is not about achieving your goals or having a stress free life or anything related to wealth.
Happiness is about being able to live in the present moment and share your life with the people that you love. Of course a minimum of wealth, health, etc. is needed and that minimum could be quite an effort to reach depending on where you start with.
I´ve never met a happy unloved person no matter how rich or powerful.
Can't intentionally smiling release the same chemicals in your brain that are released when you are happy about something in a sort of backwards effect?
Fake it till you make it?
I definitely think this helps in case of happiness, since a 'deliberate' smile makes folks around you friendlier and happier. That, in turn, enforces the same emotion on to you!
There is a lot of truth to "ignorance is bliss", a healthy dose of ignorance is often times necessary.
What do you really gain by being all knowledgeable (and miserable)? Life is not a videogame that you win at the end by learning more than other people, instead it's a game that we all LOSE when we die, so to my eyes the only thing we should optimize for is to be happy while we live. If knowing more things make you happy, go for it but keep an eye on the potential negative effects on one's mood/happiness that I find inherent in knowledge.
The secret is something else, I think: happiness is a temporary emotion. It is not meant to be a constant long-term state of being. What people really want is contentment, but because the narrative tells them they must be happy all the time they seek that out instead, and through suffering often achieve it for moments at a time before returning to baseline. Then they have to set a new goal for the next hit.
My grandpa is an agriculture scientist. He graduated from university before the Culture Revolution disaster, and still served the country selflessly. In the 1980s he won Chinese national science first prize.
He raised me up and I am proud of him. All the difficulties and chaos that happened in this country doesn't affect his perseverance doing researches and making my family better off. He is still optimistic and healthy today. With your stories, I found that as human being, we are really seeking for and sharing similar happiness, which can go beyond ideology.
Haven't seen anyone talk about it but I believe happiness is partly hereditary. It's genetic (not totally, but it must play a big part, since depression is heredity[1]).
Just think about yourself and your own natural happiness level. For my siblings and I, it seems very similar to our parents. Of course not everyone is this way but I definitely believe some people are born a lot happier than others.
Isn't this the nature vs nurture debate? It seems like this could just as easily be attributed to growing up in a good/happy family. Not to say that genes have no effect, I just think the environment you are raised in has a more significant effect.
If bad genes are sufficient to make you depressed, then that doesn't imply they are also sufficient for making you any more happy in any point in time.
Even as homogeneous as the set of HN readers tends to be, we can't agree on anything. The idea that there is a singular "key that unlocks everything" in life is downright bizarre. You probably wouldn't copy her diet or sleep schedule or religion or footwear or anything else. Why would anyone look to adopt her life philosophy? Monty Python and Douglas Adams mocked this very idea.
The author has her MBTI on her profile, and it's nearly the opposite of mine. That suggests to me that her preferences are likely quite different from mine.
FTA: "Making "have fun" the goal is the key that unlocks everything"
This is enticing blanket statement. However, there are many things you'll need to do that will not or should not be fun. And if you fully believe this sentiment, during those times you are not having fun, you may feel like you're "doing it wrong" when this is just how it is and that's ok.
Happiness is more related to contentment than fun.
Wow, I went to Cornell and actually remember a professor Tye! It's something we all need to be reminded of — happiness isn't the destination, but rather our mind-frame along the way. It's easy to get trapped in the mundane, daily grind if we forget to keep prioritizing (and re-evaluating) our happiness, especially when it sometimes flies in the face of what's "societally important".
The secret to a happy life is ignorance. As in not caring about stuff.
There's too much depressing shit in the world, too many injustices happening to other people and lifeforms, to truly be happy with that knowledge even if your own life is perfect.
You might find that stoicism is the better approach rather that pure ignorance.
Living in ignorance and seeking to learn nothing is just fueling the dystopian world we're walking into.
The most content people in the world are people who know everything there is to know about physics, philosophy, chemistry etc. That deep knowledge opens their eyes to the big picture.
Ignore the news, but learn everything there is to know about humanity.
When I step back and look at my life, I have to say it is pretty good. I get agitated when I lose perspective and magnify some particular bad thing. Also, as a Christian, this gives me the ultimate relief, because I can step back and say whatever unimaginably horrible thing is happening God is ultimately in control orchestrating things for maximal good, of which maximal good is also at some fundamental level in line with my intuition of maximal good, so I'll be satisfied in the end of it all. And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry? Either way, no reason to worry in any ultimate sense. Sort of like the opposite of Pascal's wager. Worry has no rational basis regardless of one's worldview.
> And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry?
I'm not trying to start a pointless debate, your comment really made me curious.
Let's imagine the Christian god doesnt't exist. How does that logically lead to nothing mattering?
As a lifelong atheist there are plenty of things that matter to me: the well-being of people (particularly those around me), peace, justice, climate change, etc.
Are these goals not valuable in themselves?
It's a shame that we've done such a poor job at teaching the wisdom brought to us from the abrahamic religions (judaism, christianity, islam).
The real seed of the message is that the one true God is not a noun, it's a verb. Can a verb have an agenda and a plan?
By my own experience, the common misunderstanding that God is a noun is nothing more then a projection of our human egos. In a way, using God(verb) to project through our minds and out our mouths/hands that there is one true Supernatural Organizer(noun) is idolatry.
By my beliefs you're acting at a very high level of spirituality by avoiding servitude to any Supernatural Organizer.
An atheist myself, but I imagine this has to do with the lack of eternal life after death in that case. Religious people find the idea of life after death comforting, and it's easy to understand why: most people fear death and can't comprehend their consciousness ending at some point, for the same reasons why we can't comprehend things like the big bang or infinity. There is, by definition, no example that we could perceive to comprehend it.
No, I mean something more practical, not based in religious reasoning. If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything. I believe this was pointed out by Epicurus.
> If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything.
That is exactly the threat of death, if, while alive, you value your ability to continue existing and caring about things.
Threats inherently operate by reference to your preferences before they are realized, not your preferences after they are realized. Once you have the post-realization preferences, it can't be a threat any more, because there is no longer a possibility of not realizing the consequences.
If death is non-existence, you can't be threatened after death, but death can still be a threat. You can't use the complete indifference that comes with non-existence to say that death is not a threat: it is only not a threat if you are indifferent to death while alive, which is possible (as is it's opposite) whether or not death is non-existence.
It was pointed out, but it was always a cheap parlor trick.
"You cease to exist after death, so what's to fear?"
"Well, my fear is that I will cease to exist, Einstein!"
Fear doesn't have to be with something in the future being painful. We also fear something not being how we want it to be (in this case, we want to continue existing, and death prevents that).
>since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything
That's an argument about we wont feel fear after death.
It's not an argument about we can't fear death itself...
why is death a "threat"? im not sure what you are intending to say.
Epicurus said death is the end of body & soul, therefore not to be feared. Im not sure I agree with that nor the inverse, if god exists, death is to be feared? Why?
According to Christianity (and a number of other religions), no one is good enough for heaven. We have to be perfect, and no one is perfect. So, if Christianity is true, one cannot be a 'good atheist' and hope to get an eternal reward, i.e. being a 'good atheist' is not a loophole that works in both worldviews.
What do you mean when you say you can't think about it rationally? There are enough survivable experiences physiologically similar to death that we can make some pretty good guesses as to what the experience leading up to it is like. And it would be incoherent to talk about the experience of being dead, because it is no experience at all (as before we were born). We know quite a bit about what happens when we die, and we have literally billions of exemplars of the event. I would say in almost every meaningful way we can think about it fairly rationally. (Whether we choose to is another question.)
But they aren't "death" death, like Whoopi Goldberg would say. You can't comprehend something that requires your consciousness to cease to exist in order to fully comprehend it.
In other words, "we" have some abstract ideas about what happens when "we" die, but it's fundamentally impossible for you, the individual, to imagine what happens when _you_ die.
>What do you mean when you say you can't think about it rationally? There are enough survivable experiences physiologically similar to death
That makes no sense. There are some experiences of coming close to death, or what doctors consider death -- which is the mind/organs shutting down, etc.
There is (and can't be) no experience of actual permanent death though, nor has a dead person recounted their experience while a dead person.
The ones retelling the experience are always alive when they do it.
Of course. But I would think the experience of falling into a coma after a hypoxic event would convey all the same conscious experiences of death. That would be what it would feel like, until you were unconscious. Then, by definition, you would feel no more.
> Let's imagine the Christian god doesnt't exist. How does that logically lead to nothing mattering?
The entire book of Ecclesiastes is about this. I wouldn't presume to summarize it all in a comment box, but it does cover a lot of grounds in different approaches to the meaning of life. It claims none of them really work all that well.
And no, it doesn't say, "But you die and go to heaven or hell anyway" over and over. It's not very supernatural at all, actually.
Things that matter to you, as with anything else, do not matter by themselves.
Things are. Their value is determined by a mind. Only God's mind can determine the value of a thing. Whether God exists or not, the statement stands.
Because, we do not know all the consequences an action but God knows. By your own set of values, by some twist of fate, what you are doing could be counter-productive.
That's true even if God exists; the fact that some things subjectively matter to God doesn't make them matter objectively. It may mean that there are consequences that matter subjectively to you for not prioritizing them, though.
>As a lifelong atheist there are plenty of things that matter to me: the well-being of people (particularly those around me), peace, justice, climate change, etc. Are these goals not valuable in themselves?
Well, they can be valuable subjectively. Then again, useless things can also be valuable subjectively (e.g. a person obsessing about hoarding BS at their home).
But objectively, and in the long scheme of things, everybody will just be dead forever, so what's the point?
At best it's better enjoying a small intermission bookended by an eternity of nothing.
The universe, for one, doesn't care. It could just throw some asteroid at earth, and kill everybody removing all traces of history, culture, civilization, etc too.
The point is that life has value, that good experiences have value and that you should build a future for the life to come and not be so self centered. Thank the ones who came before you to make your life possible.
And challenge the political ways of these who came before you.
I inherited and wear my grandfather's hat, I remember him, I drink tea in his honour, but I fight against some of the things he believed and fought for.
That's funny, because as an atheist, I can step back and say that for whatever unimaginably horrible thing that's happening, it's all just a random walk.
So I find satisfaction in that nothing matters anyways, and the best we can do is try to live a good life while we're here, and not take any of it too seriously. Because it's all random and largely out of my control, there's no rational basis for worry.
It's nice to see a Christian that reached the same conclusion with a totally different process :)
> I can step back and say that for whatever unimaginably horrible thing that's happening, it's all just a random walk
Can you, really? Say your kid disappeared a week ago after soccer practice, and the police has no leads about their whereabouts. Could you really distance yourself and "not worry because everything is just a random walk"? Or would you spend all night restless, like a normal human being?
To an extent I agree. But, a counter point, I've experienced significant depression (very first world problem), and reasoning about my situation objectively has actually helped me. I try to distance myself from my feelings and acknowledge what my real state in life is, and make choices accordingly. That has kept me out of some trouble, and also helps turn my feelings around.
The very act of choosing based on reason instead of feeling gives me a feeling of power, and depression tends to be accompanied by a feeling of powerlessness. This seems to be the mechanism of how reason helps me with depression.
Of course, it is not a complete cure, and it would be trite to say so, but reasoning does help.
Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me? And if the kid never comes back, what's an appropriate "normal human" duration of restlessness?
People go to therapy for years to get over that restless stuff and replace it with some version of accepting that the world is not under your control.
No doubt that upsetting things are upsetting, but the guiding principle is that you have to accept the things you can't control, and do the best with the things you can control.
>Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me?
People don't respond to things just because it "gets them somewhere", and even less for such events.
One doesn't do a calculation "I'll grieve for X amount of time, because this has the best effects", except if they are a sociopath.
At best they can say after some time "I feel like I've grieved enough now, I should try to get back with life" -- and even that is not a decision, it's a gradual process with regressions, etc.
We're in agreement. I'm just saying the goal is to process events, grieve, and find a path back to "normal". Where, ideally, "normal" isn't constant anxiety and existential crises. Eventually, you have to learn to let even the most traumatic stuff go, or it'll haunt you forever.
Yes, that is the flaw in my reasoning. If someone used my reasoning to just check out and not be concerned about their children being abducted, then we'd rightly believe there is something wrong with that person.
And if the parent became manic and left no stone unturned in their search for their child, like Taken, we'd be understanding.
Yet, our world is not the world of Taken, and we are not ex-CIA agents capable of destroying anyone in our path. There are truly evil people in this world capable of harming us, whom we have no power to thwart. Think of people living in the land of a drug lord, who can swoop in and take their children if he feels like it. Or the Uighurs and Falun Gong of China, who are regularly captured and organ harvested, and there's nothing they can do about it. There is great evil in our world, and little we can do about it but do our best to fight it and never give up, and even then there is no hope of truly eradicating evil from our world. What is the appropriate response?
As an atheist, I take quite a different approach. There is no God with an ultimate plan of good, so the only ones who can address "unimaginably horrible" things is us.
Yes, in the end nothing matters, but in the present and near future many things matter.
House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
He said little, but one phrase he did repeat more than any other was simple: "Any day you're breathing is a good day." To him, every day, every year, every one of the six decades past 1944 was a cherry on top gift.
Growing up in the 1970s in the United States, conducting nuclear attack drills with regularity, many of us felt that it was fairly likely that we would be incinerated before our 21st birthdays.
"Every day you're breathing is a good day."
There are certainly limits to these 8 simple words, but radical gratitude is at their core.
It's quite likely that everybody reading this post is having a FAR better life than 99.9% of every other human being who exists and has ever existed.
I'm a generally happy person because, from a young age, I have chosen to focus on that simple truth.
This perspective need not lead to complacence. Those who know me will say that I've always been a driven person, personally and professionally.
Every day you're breathing is a good day. Thanks, grandpa, for the wise words. He would have celebrated his 100th birthday last month.