Questions OCT 2

1. In light of Emerson's epigram, how stingy should you be with your "gifts"?
2. How often do you pay attention to "small" physical experiences like the wind in your hair or the sun on your face (or the ice cream in your oatmeal)?
3. Does the idea of constantly (or frequently) thinking about your life in terms of a time budget of unknown quantity appeal to you? 118
4. When you look back on your life, what do you imagine you'll wish you'd done less/more of?
5. What does it mean to you to (as Edith says) put things into perspective?
6. COMMENT?: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
7. Do you agree that "time and attention are the essential materials of happiness"? 120 Do you think you manage your attention well? If not, how will you improve?
8. Does Leo's & Grace's 80s life together sound appealing to you? 125
9. Do you regulate your online behavior in the ways suggested on 130-131?
10. Can you relate to what Rachel says about her parents? 136
11. Can "focused attention" slow down your perception of the pace of time's passing? 139
12. What does Leonard Cohen's song lyric mean? 140
13. "What is your philosophy for getting over rough spots?"
14. How do you answer any/all of the questions on 142-143?
15. Do you agree with *Proverbs, Epictetus, and the Buddha? 148
16. Do you try to "fill in the blanks" like Bob? 153
17. Do you ever reflect on your response to a challenge by questioning yourself in the way suggested on 157-8?

“A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22”

Russell's secret
"The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile." Conquest of Happiness

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“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt

More Eleanor...

Afterlife
What's the point?
https://www.instagram.com/p/CxxuA2uuIHV/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=ZGUzMzM3NWJiOQ==

arthurcbrooks

There's a reason America's founding fathers did not guarantee the promise of happiness, but rather the pursuit of it.

How to pursue happiness, you might ask? Not by valuing happiness highly—that is too vague, and overvaluing happiness as a goal can even lead away from well-being, just as saying, “I want more money” not only won’t make you richer but will make you feel more acutely that you don’t have enough. Instead, the right approach is to make noticeable progress in the habits that add up to making you happier.

Maybe in Your Lifetime, People Will Live on the Moon and Then Mars

Will they be happy to be there?

"We're at a pivotal moment, and in some ways it feels like a dream sequence," said Niki Werkheiser, NASA's director of technology maturation [and native of Franklin, TN]. "In other ways, it feels like it was inevitable that we would get here." nyt

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Wallace Stevens, peripatetic poet

He was one of WJ's students too.

It's the birthday of Wallace Stevens (books by this author), born in Reading, Pennsylvania (1879). He wanted to be a journalist, but after a couple years of writing for a New York paper, he decided that he would fulfill his father's desires and go to law school. After graduating, he took a job with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, where he was in charge of inspecting surety claims. He would remain at the job for the rest of his life.

Each day, he walked the two miles between his office and upper-middle class home, where he lived with his wife and daughter, and during these walks to and from work, he composed poetry. He said, "It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job." He would only let people walk with him if they didn't talk. He never ate lunch, except for once a week "to break up the monotony" — and on that day, he would always go to a place near his Hartford, Connecticut, office.

He claimed that "poetry and surety claims aren't as unlikely a combination as they may seem. There's nothing perfunctory about them for each case is different."

His first collection of poems, Harmonium, was published when he was 43 years old. Though the volume received only lukewarm praise at first, it later became considered a modernist classic. In 1955, just months before he died, he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his volume Collected Poems.

In his book Opus Posthumous, Stevens writes, "After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." And he wrote, "The whole race is a poet that writes down / The eccentric propositions of its fate.

https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=10759.html

--Resting bliss face...
Blue Zones...

How happiness varies by age

What's my age again? The best years of your life might not be when you think they are. A new study came to a surprising finding: life gets more satisfying as we age. Researchers looked at hundreds of data samples from studies involving a total of 460,902 participants. They found that life satisfaction decreases between the ages of 9 and 16, but then gradually increases until the age of 70. From there, it dips – likely because of issues with health and social life – but picks back up again after age 96. In addition to life satisfaction, the researchers also looked at positive and negative emotional states. "Overall, the study indicated a positive trend over a wide period of life, if we look at life satisfaction and negative emotional states," co-author Susanne Bücker said in a press release. As other researchers have pointed out: there's a good chance that the best years of your life are still awaiting you...https://news.hiddenbrain.org/p/how-happiness-varies-by-age?r=35ogp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web