Though I never got to do what I really wanted to do with my life - be a professional basketball or tennis player - I did the next best thing. I found a career that I learned to love that always provided the time to pursue the greatest values of my life, playing sports, learning philosophy (once I found the right one), and finding the girl of my dreams to spend the rest of my life with. I didn't have the talent or physical gifts to play tennis or basketball professionally, but I was good enough to have great success doing both and to get a free college education out of it. I still played tennis into my 50's, and still play lots of golf today at 69. And it wasn't until I found Objectivism at 42 that I discovered that I had been seeking a philosophy, an understanding of my life as it relates to reality and other people, my whole life. I had just never found one that made sense. And I was lucky enough to find the right girl at 18, and we're still going strong 50 years later. It was all made possible by learning accounting and working hard to get better and better at it each day. It provided me a great paycheck, but also the great joy of purpose, accomplishment and time for all the other great things in my life. So, I may not have been Jimmy Connors or Oscar Robertson as I had hoped in my teens, but with a focus on always trying to find the best that I could out of my life, I think I probably got a better life than had I become a great and famous athlete. I've seen the lives many of them lead and are forced into because of their fame, and I wouldn't have enjoyed that at all. Instead of 'Stop that', I would recommend "Do that'- whatever it is in life that makes you truly happy (for the long term).
This is a great article Don. Thanks much. I especially like the comments about savoring the times when you are achieving your goals. Celebrating success is something we don’t do enough of.
> the desire for praise from the masses is a sickness.
Context? Of course, given an irrational context, it is. But desire for popular praise, as a non-basic value, for something objectively good is a rational value.
There is a point at the end where you indicate that happiness has a function of allowing us to cope with the bad stuff, making us resilient. I hope that hits home to people who hardly consider happiness as possible or worthy of pursuing, as an impossible dream (or confuse it with mere pleasure seeking.)
As I slowly approach my golden years, I look back and note the difference in the quality of joy today and in my twenties.
Back then there was too much frustration, anger, sadness, pain. And yet I know I was still happy back then in a seemingly enigmatic way. Reading your article it strikes me: my happiness allowed me to cope.
I was very sad in the face of unrequited love, angry at the circumstances I grew up in, and I was angry at other people and society. I wanted to get along with people but I was encountering that there is too much manipulation and Machiavellianism. I wanted freedom and world peace and world prosperity, and I lived in a welfare-state that was also involved in a senseless war. I loved man qua man and his history was dark, tragic, and violent. I wanted to be a moral hero but I still knew too little of what that was really about.
But I was pursuing productive work, I was educating myself, learning my craft and improving, planning projects, dreaming of projects decades down the road. it was glorious. And I made it through the bad stuff; it only went down so deep.
When many years later, it started to become clearer that success in my chosen career, that I was obsessed about, might not be a realistic possibility, along with a health scare, crisis confronted me. The former plan would have to be reassessed, and a new one devised.
And yet my happiness (& acquired wisdom) got me through that crisis.
So much for the practicality of happiness (if it is well-defined.)
Though I never got to do what I really wanted to do with my life - be a professional basketball or tennis player - I did the next best thing. I found a career that I learned to love that always provided the time to pursue the greatest values of my life, playing sports, learning philosophy (once I found the right one), and finding the girl of my dreams to spend the rest of my life with. I didn't have the talent or physical gifts to play tennis or basketball professionally, but I was good enough to have great success doing both and to get a free college education out of it. I still played tennis into my 50's, and still play lots of golf today at 69. And it wasn't until I found Objectivism at 42 that I discovered that I had been seeking a philosophy, an understanding of my life as it relates to reality and other people, my whole life. I had just never found one that made sense. And I was lucky enough to find the right girl at 18, and we're still going strong 50 years later. It was all made possible by learning accounting and working hard to get better and better at it each day. It provided me a great paycheck, but also the great joy of purpose, accomplishment and time for all the other great things in my life. So, I may not have been Jimmy Connors or Oscar Robertson as I had hoped in my teens, but with a focus on always trying to find the best that I could out of my life, I think I probably got a better life than had I become a great and famous athlete. I've seen the lives many of them lead and are forced into because of their fame, and I wouldn't have enjoyed that at all. Instead of 'Stop that', I would recommend "Do that'- whatever it is in life that makes you truly happy (for the long term).
This is a great article Don. Thanks much. I especially like the comments about savoring the times when you are achieving your goals. Celebrating success is something we don’t do enough of.
a great person to follow!
> the desire for praise from the masses is a sickness.
Context? Of course, given an irrational context, it is. But desire for popular praise, as a non-basic value, for something objectively good is a rational value.
There is a point at the end where you indicate that happiness has a function of allowing us to cope with the bad stuff, making us resilient. I hope that hits home to people who hardly consider happiness as possible or worthy of pursuing, as an impossible dream (or confuse it with mere pleasure seeking.)
As I slowly approach my golden years, I look back and note the difference in the quality of joy today and in my twenties.
Back then there was too much frustration, anger, sadness, pain. And yet I know I was still happy back then in a seemingly enigmatic way. Reading your article it strikes me: my happiness allowed me to cope.
I was very sad in the face of unrequited love, angry at the circumstances I grew up in, and I was angry at other people and society. I wanted to get along with people but I was encountering that there is too much manipulation and Machiavellianism. I wanted freedom and world peace and world prosperity, and I lived in a welfare-state that was also involved in a senseless war. I loved man qua man and his history was dark, tragic, and violent. I wanted to be a moral hero but I still knew too little of what that was really about.
But I was pursuing productive work, I was educating myself, learning my craft and improving, planning projects, dreaming of projects decades down the road. it was glorious. And I made it through the bad stuff; it only went down so deep.
When many years later, it started to become clearer that success in my chosen career, that I was obsessed about, might not be a realistic possibility, along with a health scare, crisis confronted me. The former plan would have to be reassessed, and a new one devised.
And yet my happiness (& acquired wisdom) got me through that crisis.
So much for the practicality of happiness (if it is well-defined.)