Thursday, February 09, 2012

not guaranteed to be taught

closeup of life's mind map

happiness.

as a mother, it is the goal that you want your children to set for themselves. it is also one of those goals that only they can set and attempt to achieve. one of my sons and i had another conversation about happiness recently. someone had asked him what his goal was and he said 'happiness'. he was informed immediately that happiness is not a goal. that remark still blows me away and makes me almost sad for the person.

srikumar rao's talk about the idea of tapping into our hard-wired happiness is super. this talk of nancy etcoff's on the science of happiness will make you think. matthieu ricard laughs about the dirty work of happiness in his talk about the habits of happiness.

tom robbins writes that happiness is a learned condition. yet, happiness is not a guaranteed-to-be-taught condition. i never really thought about it before, but being unhappy is one of those cyclical things that can be broken.

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