Fortune Cookie Friday - Happy Days

I really like this fortune. However, I have one little issue with it. Happiness, in my estimation, is not separate from struggle. Happiness is as achievable in the midst of struggle as it is outside of struggle. You know...the whole 'dancing in the rain' thing? I know, I know...way to ruin a good fortune. But I always have to make that distinction clear in my mind so I remember I don't have to get depressed when things get difficult. *I* control my attitude at all times. I mean, ex-squeeze me...I am no victim! My personal happiness is NOT subject to circumstances. Circumstances are subject to ME! As long as I think that my mood is a slave to my circumstances, I give up my power to choose the way I feel. So, yes...happy days ARE ahead of me! But they are ahead of me because I will choose them, not because of the absence of struggle, thank you very much!

Two Glasses of Water

"The world says . . . I am my own master; I am an independent being; I will take my own course, etc...'I am a free man; I will be damned if I don't do as I please, etc.' Well, I will tell you another part of that story. You will be damned if you *do* act as you please, unless you please to do and to keep the laws of God. We cannot violate his laws with impunity nor trample under foot these eternal principles which exist in all nature. If all nature is compelled to be governed by law or suffer loss, why not man?"

--John Taylor

Imagine one of these glasses of water represents someone that disciplines themself to live by a set of high moral standards, the other represents someone caught up in unrestrained pleasure seeking.

With each unrestrained act, the pleasure seeker loses a sip of water from the glass.

At first it sure looks like the pleasure seeker got something the disciplined person missed. Turn that thinking around. The pleasure seeker is clearly the one that’s missing something.

--Object lesson used by Brad Wilcox

Related Links:

The Freedom Paradox
Pleasure vs. Happiness
Happiness and Ice Cream

Happiness and Ice Cream

"My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate." 

--Thornton Wilder

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Happiness. It seems like such an enigmatic concept. The only real consistent definition of the thing seems to be that it defies definition.

I have found Happiness to be both sought and found, inside of me and in outside circumstances.  Sometimes a chosen attitude, sometimes it just…exists…for seemingly no reason at all.

Yeah. This is totally infuriating to a concrete thinker! I want it to be nailed down, dangit! To heck with all this elusive garbage, I want to define it and hold it in my hand and examine it. I want an equation. Then I want to apply it so I can be happy all the time.  Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is.

My husband is always harping on me because of this tendency. He’s always reminding me that if there were a fool-proof equation for everything, there would be no freedom. And he’s SO right! But that doesn’t make me want it any less.

Freedom of choice is such a pesky thing--like a double-edged sword! It requires the elusiveness which I detest, yet this very elusiveness plays such a huge role in emotions like Happiness.  

If at any time a person doesn’t feel fully in charge of the choices they can make in their life, there’s a definite decline in happiness. If the limitations are imposed from outside, people feel resentful and oppressed, not happy. However, if they feel like they had a fair say in choosing the limitation there is no loss of happiness. This is why democracy works.

But on the other hand, if we’re presented with an over-abundance of choices, we become overwhelmed and confused. Again, not happy.

Paul Rozin, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, “asked a cross-section of people from six countries (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland) a simple question:

“‘Imagine that you feel like eating ice cream and that you have the choice between two ice-cream parlors. One offers a choice of ten flavors. The other offers a selection of fifty flavors. Which ice-cream parlor would you choose?’

“In only one country, the United States, did a majority (56 %) of respondents prefer the ice-cream parlor with fifty flavors. The Swiss were on the other end of the spectrum. Only 28% preferred the ice-cream parlor with more choices.” (The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner, pg 45).

Okay, so since the USA has lower levels of Happiness compared to Switzerland (according to the World Database of Happiness), we can deduce that at least one indicator of Happiness is choosing to limit choices. 

When presented with the ice-cream-flavor study, a friend of mine observed that if one willingly chose to limit their ice cream choices to just vanilla, infinite flavor opportunities become possible with toppings. That plain old vanilla ice cream can now become anything based on our ever-changing whims. What a concept! Skillfully limiting choices can open up more freedom and therefore, more happiness.  (This concept was addressed in a previous Savvy and Sage post entitled The Freedom Paradox. Click here to read). 

In part, Happiness is freedom of choice…as long as we feel that we have chosen our own limitations.

But lest you start thinking that Happiness can be defined by Freedom, it must not be overlooked that even if we were unable to choose the flavor of ice cream, Happiness could be achieved through attitude alone.  See? I know nothing!

I guess I’ll just have to settle for the advice in my title quote. Whether it’s sought or found, chosen or served up without my choice, I just need to shut up and enjoy my dang ice cream, already! ;)

C.S. Lewis Sunday - Morality and Peace

"The price of peace is righteousness. Peace cannot be imposed. It must come from the lives and hearts of men. There is no other way."

--Ezra Taft Benson

"There are two ways in which the human machine goes wrong. One is when human individuals drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage, by cheating or bullying. The other is when things go wrong inside the individual--when the different parts of him (his different faculties and desires and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another. You can get the idea plain if you think of us as a fleet of ships sailing in formation. The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another's way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order. As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other. If the ships keep on having collisions they will not remain seaworthy. Or, if you like, think of humanity as a band playing a tune. To get a good result, you need two things. Each player's individual instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so as to combine with all the others. ...

"Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play. ...

"Almost all people at all times have agreed (in theory) that human beings ought to be honest and kind and helpful to one another. But though it is natural to begin with all that, if our thinking about morality stops there, we might just as well not have thought at all. Unless we go on  to the second thing--the tidying up inside each human being --we are only deceiving ourselves.

"What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs that they cannot be steered at all? What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think, and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realize that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society."

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Related Posts:
Tag, You’re It 
C.S. Lewis Sunday - Fuel  
The Freedom Paradox  
C.S. Lewis Sunday – Resistance: The Measure of Strength  
Two Glasses of Water

Look Up!

"Sorrow looks back. Worry looks around. Faith looks up! " 

--Anonymous

THE BUZZARD:

If you put a buzzard in a pen that is 6 feet by 8 feet and is entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of its ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of 10 to 12 feet. Without space to run, as is its habit, it will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top.


THE BAT:

The ordinary bat that flies around at night - a remarkable nimble creature in the air - cannot take off from a level place.  If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.


THE BUMBLEBEE:

A bumblebee, if dropped into an open tumbler, will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out.  It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.  

PEOPLE:

In many ways, we are like the buzzard, the bat, and the bumblebee. We struggle about with all our problems and frustrations, never realizing that all we have to do is look up!  That's the answer; the escape route and the solution to any problem!

 

Just look up!

C.S. Lewis Sunday - Free Will

This is why Communism/Socialism will NEVER work...

 

"God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata--of creatures that worked like machines--would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free."

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Tag, You're It!

"The more laws and restrictions there are,

the more people are impoverished.

The sharper men's weapons,

the more trouble in the land.

The more artful and crafty the plan,

the stranger the outcome.

The more authoritarian a system,

the more outlaws appear.

Yet, if I take no action, people are reformed.

If I enjoy peace, people become honest.

If I do nothing, people become rich.

If I do not impose myself upon people,

they become themselves.

--Lao Tsu

Tao Te Ching, 57th verse

Do you remember when you played Tag as a kid? Did you ever play with kids so bent on being in charge and/or winning that they kept making rules? Maybe you were that kid--I know I was a couple times. It starts out relatively harmless but before you know it, no one can even play the game!

No running outside the lines. No moving once you’re tagged. If you run in a circle, you’re automatically out, etc. The rules can get pretty outlandish!

Then it dawns on you. If everyone obeys all these ridiculous rules, no one can even move! So, first you try cheating a little here and there, but even that isn’t very fun. Any time you make a move someone shouts, “That doesn’t count, you cheated!”

Before you know it, everyone is reminiscing about the good-old, original game of Tag. You know, when the game was actually enjoyable. And finally there’s a collective decision to drop all the new rules and get back to playing and having fun.

I think that’s the point of the quote. An overabundance of rules and/or controls set up to shield yourself or others from problems can seriously limit enjoyment, increase resentment, and even create criminals and cheating. But when you let things be, no one has to resent the imposed limitations; no one feels the need to cheat; everyone is free to be themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we need to eliminate rules all together. Take the Tag analogy for example, if there were NO rules, there wouldn’t even BE a game! And I’m certainly not suggesting that the ONLY reason there are criminals and cheaters is because of the overabundance of rules. Some people cheat and raise mayhem from the get-go.

But sometimes don’t you think we’d all be better off if we all just went back to the good-old, original game?

Maybe every problem we encounter doesn’t need an immediate solution. Maybe somebody doesn’t have to pay every time something goes wrong. Maybe we can just enjoy life instead of trying so hard to mold the game to our benefit. In the end, isn’t the possibility of being tagged and taking turns being ‘it’ what makes the game fun?

Let it be. “The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem." --Theodore Rubin

Related Posts:

C.S. Lewis Sunday: Progress

C.S. Lewis Sunday - Resistance: The Measure of Strength
The Freedom Paradox 
C.S. Lewis Sunday – Morality and Peace
C.S. Lewis Sunday - Fuel

The Freedom Paradox

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” –Frank Herbert

 

Some would look at those who willingly limit their choices as living in a cage. But this is a clever mirage. One only has to try a little self discipline to see the mirage for what it is. If you look at self control from an undisciplined perspective, you see the limitations as captivity. I can’t do that, that, or that? Hmm. That doesn’t look like freedom.

What you find out once you try disciplining yourself, however, is that REAL freedom is inside that “cage” and the stuff you thought was freedom before is really the cage. Take drugs for example. When you exercise your "freedom" to take drugs, you become addicted and your opportunities and real freedoms narrow. Is this not a cage? This is complete captivity, not freedom! But if you discipline yourself and say no to drugs, you have real freedom—freedom of conscience, freedom from negative consequences, freedom of mind and body, and so forth. This is also true with less obvious disciplines like modest dress, clean vocabulary, honesty in word and deed, and so forth.

It’s a paradox in which Truth can only be viewed from the perspective of discipline and obedience. If you never try disciplining yourself, you’ll always see the mirage and never arrive at the truth or experience real freedom. Just like any truth, one must make a leap of faith to be worthy to receive it. “Some things have to be believed…” and I would add TRIED, “to be seen.” –Madeleine L'Engle

Discipline is freedom. Believe it. Try it. You’ll see.

Related Posts:

Tag, You’re It 
C.S. Lewis Sunday - Resistance: The Measure of Strength
C.S. Lewis Sunday – Morality and Peace  
Two Glasses of Water