Helen Garner on Happiness: ‘It’s Taken Me 80 Years to Figure Out It’s Not a Tranquil, Sunlit Realm’
Helen Garnertheguardian.com
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Helen Garner on Happiness: ‘It’s Taken Me 80 Years to Figure Out It’s Not a Tranquil, Sunlit Realm’
One of the biggest cows that we have is our narrow idea of happiness. You may suffer just because of your idea; and you continue to suffer until, one day, you are capable of releasing the idea and right away you feel happy.
Thich Nhat Hanh • No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk who has been called the “world’s calmest man,” has spent a lifetime exploring how to live in kairos, albeit by a different name. He has taught it as mindfulness or maintaining “beginner’s mind.” He has written: “Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize
... See moreGreg Mckeown • Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice. So often, it is a matter of attending to what Hermann Hesse called, as the world was about to come unworlded by its first global war, “the little joys”; so often, those are the slender threads of which we weave th... See more
Maria Popova • Essential Life-Learnings from 14 Years of Brain Pickings
We don’t, and it’s probably because we think we already know how to find happiness, which usually involves acquiring something we don’t have. More money, better security, more affection. In other words, we think happiness is created by making some kind of change in the material world. Putting something into our possession, eliminating a threat, sei... See more