I start to feel like I can't maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is. I don’t know. Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on? ... I don't know the answer, I know only that I can't. I don't want any more vicissitudes, I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I've had it. I am so tired. I am twenty two and I am already exhausted.
That was quoted from Elizabeth Wurtzel and it describes with tremendous accuracy how I feel sometimes. I so often embrace the inner ass in me because I get tired of the poorly scripted drama that is my life. I really feel that a lot of people go through life for the sake of going through it. While others go through life if only to prove to themselves that they are of value. I'm still trying to figure out why I'm going through it. Obviously happiness is a goal but I'm tired of that notion being embodied by my future self. There couldn't be a better word than stumbling that describes how we go through life. Some of us are the drunks stumbling through the streets living in the moment, not worrying where they're stumbling. Others stare at each step they take with no sight of what's down the road and they essentially have stumbled into a future they did not so precisely calculate. I just would like to stumble on some happiness.
I suppose this post sounds pretty depressing and you might have picked up your cell phone to see if I'm still alive. Far from it; I enjoy life very much. But I can't help but feel a little lost sometimes. This vague, albeit depressing posts are probably a hell of a lot more interesting than stories of me bar hopping with my buddies or visiting the Sam Adams brewery (which btw rocked).
can you hear the dolphin's cry?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Stumbling on Happiness
What would you do right now if you learned that you were going to die in ten minutes? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do in your final ten minutes, it’s a pretty safe bet that few of them are things you actually did today.
Now, some people will bemoan this fact, wag their fingers in your direction, and tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as though it was your last, which only goes to show that some people would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice. The thing we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor’s witless jokes, when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these thing in the charitable service of the people we will soon become.
Our brains have a unique structure that allows us to mentally transport ourselves into future circumstances and then ask ourselves how it feels to be there. Rather than calculating utilities with mathematical precision, we simply step into tomorrow’s shoes and see how well they fit. Our ability to project ourselves forward in time and experience events before they happen enables us to learn from mistakes without making them and to evaluate actions without taking them. If nature has given us a greater gift, no one has named it. And yet, as impressive as it is, our ability to simulate future selves and future circumstances is by no means perfect. When we imagine future circumstances, we fill in details that won’t really come to pass and leave out details that will. When we imagine future feelings, we find it impossible to ignore what we are feeling now and impossible to recognize how we will think about the things that happen later. Daniel Bernoulli dreamed of a world in which a simple formula would allow us all to determine our futures with perspicacity and foresight. But foresight is a fragile talent that often leaves us squinting, straining to see what it would be like to have this, go there, or do that. There is no simple formula for finding happiness. But if our great big brains do not allow us to go surefootedly into our futures, they at least allow us to understand what makes us stumble.
Now, some people will bemoan this fact, wag their fingers in your direction, and tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as though it was your last, which only goes to show that some people would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice. The thing we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor’s witless jokes, when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these thing in the charitable service of the people we will soon become.
Our brains have a unique structure that allows us to mentally transport ourselves into future circumstances and then ask ourselves how it feels to be there. Rather than calculating utilities with mathematical precision, we simply step into tomorrow’s shoes and see how well they fit. Our ability to project ourselves forward in time and experience events before they happen enables us to learn from mistakes without making them and to evaluate actions without taking them. If nature has given us a greater gift, no one has named it. And yet, as impressive as it is, our ability to simulate future selves and future circumstances is by no means perfect. When we imagine future circumstances, we fill in details that won’t really come to pass and leave out details that will. When we imagine future feelings, we find it impossible to ignore what we are feeling now and impossible to recognize how we will think about the things that happen later. Daniel Bernoulli dreamed of a world in which a simple formula would allow us all to determine our futures with perspicacity and foresight. But foresight is a fragile talent that often leaves us squinting, straining to see what it would be like to have this, go there, or do that. There is no simple formula for finding happiness. But if our great big brains do not allow us to go surefootedly into our futures, they at least allow us to understand what makes us stumble.
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