There Is No Mystery to Happiness
Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live every day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn’t look ahead. He lives in the present.
But there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing; meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life- a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting that we choose between them.
- Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of Murder
**NOTE: since posting this, debate flared up within my peeps, with men generally arguing For the moment, and women Supporting the above perspective. I’m left wondering if there a possible gender consideration, aka more anthropological support of challenging, if not impossible communication between the two sexes?
Could ‘it’ really be a series of random manic moments, some happy, some boring, some sad, some painful, some angry? Where and how does choice come into play? Comfort? Anxiety? What about life deadlines? Environmental factors must also play a role here…
What’s wrong with living in this moment for a moment? What is right with it?
