The Nature of Happiness
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Chapter two Target happiness the achiever. This has three stages. The anticipatory, the imperative and the conservatory being the kind of animals. We are intensely curious, exploratory and inventive. We are constantly anticipating new projects, new experiences and new challenges and their contemplation makes us happy. Then when we start to work at them, if our work is challenging and varied, we enjoy the business of simply being busy and productive. Then at the end of each venture. If we are successful we can enjoy an almost orgasmic happiness with the sudden satisfaction. We feel a short pause and we are off again. This is the hunters happiness that stems from our evolutionary past as risk taking predators. And it is dear that increasing the happiness of mankind in the future depends largely on finding more and more elegant ways of creating symbolic equivalents of the ancient hunting pattern with which to preoccupy are increasingly sophisticated populations. If we fail to do this and instead create boredom and frustration, then we may see more of the cruder bloodstained substitutes. The choice is ours. But we must always remember that happiness is a fleeting, flitting dynamic thing. As I said at the outset, happiness is not when things are good, It is when they are getting better. One important aspect of target happiness concerns how high you set your sights. Some individuals aim too high and live out their lives in a more or less permanently soured disappointed condition. This is the I could have been a concert pianist, pop star, great actor. If it hadn't been for my sick mother, Children demanding partner syndrome, others aim too low and waste their talents. This is the I enjoy singing, but I'm not good enough to face an audience syndrome. Lucky are the individuals who aim just high enough to match their potential. The truth is that since all our modern targets are symbolic, it really doesn't matter how grand or how modest our aims are, so long as they are ones we ourselves consider to be important. If a minor artist thinks he is a major artist, he will always be a failure to himself. And if a major artist thinks he is a minor artist, he too may fail because he never undertakes difficult major works and never stretches himself to the full. But if a minor artist knows he is a minor artist and accepts this truth, he may then be able to succeed in local art shows and achieve happiness at his modest level. If a major artist accepts that he has something great to offer, then he can drive himself on to undertake bigger and bigger challenges. And for artist, you can read engineer or shopkeeper or any other occupation.