Enjoy An Insight

Ever have one of those days? Everybody does. It’s a real bummer of a day (bummer is hippie speak for misfortune). It’s one of those days when you say to yourself, “Why me?” or “Why now?”

You’re up before the sun “working in a coal mine, going down down,” and someone says, “Lord! I am soooo tired. How long can this go on?” Not that you actually work in a coal mine (unless you do). We’re talking metaphor. We all work in a coal mine of one kind or another. Even those who don’t work, work in a coal mine of a kind.

It’s on a “one of those days” day that you look for a sign that there’s more to life. Not that you’re superstitious. It’s just that when life is boring, pointless and terrible, most of us look for a sign that there’s more to it. Even those who don’t believe in miracles look for them.

But few people see signs these days and those who do are maligned. We might crave a vision but all we have is TV. It’s not because the signs aren’t there that we don’t see them.

We don’t see them because we’re either not paying attention or we lack imagination. It takes a special kind of sensitivity to subtlety for a person to see signs and put it together.

In 1989 two math professors wrote “Methods for Studying Coincidences” in which they outlined four sources for most coincidences: 1) a hidden cause, 2) the psychology of a person, including memory and perception, 3) multiplicity of endpoints, including the counting of “close” or nearly alike events as if they were identical, and 4) the law of truly large numbers – given enough events, almost any coincidence is bound to occur.

They found that most puzzling coincidences arise in the mind of the observer. Therein is the magic! That’s the answer! You alone see the sign! You create magic by tuning into it!

Coincidence?

If you pay attention and if you lighten up and if you go for silly walks now and then you will become familiar with wonderful oddities (for complete instructions see: Ministry of Silly Walks) .

Call it coincidence. Call it ironic, moronic or divine. Call it just one of those things. Beyond rationalization, confabulation and logical explanation, there are times when weird things happen and you are in a perfect position to see them (see earlier post: “Enjoy What Is And Take What Comes“).

The Slant.

Let’s say you’re on your way to get your blood tested. As you peddle past a pretty storybook house with a fountain, you’re reminded of fairy-land pictures you’ve seen. The thought occurs to you that you and everyone you know will soon be dead.

It sounds gloomy, but at this moment it isn’t. Knowing that everything you know and have ever known will soon be gone has a way of putting things in perspective (see earlier post “Enjoy A Bad Day“).

What’s the worse case scenario in any situation? You could die. But you know that’s going to happen anyway so, as Dire Straits put it, “Why worry?”

No sooner do you have this realization when you see a sign. But it isn’t the sign that catches your attention. It’s the sign spinner. Stopped at a streetlight, you watch the sign spinner. Suddenly life doesn’t seem so bad.

And you hear music coming from somewhere. It’s Tommy James and the Shondells singing Draggin’ the Line which goes: “Makin’ a livin’ the old, hard way. Takin’ and givin’ my day by day. / I dig snow and rain and the bright sunshine…/ My dog Sam eats purple flowers.
Ain’t got much, but what we got’s ours… / I feel fine!”

What you thought was going to be “one of those days” changes into something beautiful when you open yourself to connection and possibility.

Jump forward: now you’re in a lab cubicle waiting for a nurse to take your blood. You’re listening to the Moody Blues sing “Tuesday Afternoon” and you think, “That’s funny. It is a Tuesday afternoon!”

The nurse comes in and prepares the syringe. You avert your eyes and on the wall you see a picture of a fountain. It looks like the fountain you saw earlier by the storybook house that reminded you of pictures that you once saw of a fairyland of love. They say that fountains symbolize joy and peace and water is the sign of calmness. All you know is that you like water fountains.

You may look back on your life like a Dickens’ novel. Life seems planned but little accidental meetings and experiences turn out to be main features of the plot. At this minute, looking around at the world as you do, you suddenly have an insight.

You marvel at the wonder of life and in so doing, enjoy it.

Where Are You? The Paradox of Happiness

A pair of docks.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Let us begin. “Take another sip my love and see what you will see. A fleet of golden galleons, on a crystal sea …” (Moody Blues, 1970). Let us “ride the winds of time to see where we have been” and then…we can ride the mother of all see-saws! 

Sing, “Ride My See Saw” (just for fun).

Today we enjoy the bewilderment of a long walk off the short pier of enlightenment. But few will read this and of those who do few will read with contemplation. There are just so many distractions to divide our attentions on the Internet.

Internet research.

Nicholas Carr tells us in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains that the days of deep reading and deep thinking are over. And yet, take heart, it is an irony of enjoyment that not thinking overmuch is sometimes a requirement.

Jakob Nielson of Nielson Norman Group summarized it thus, “On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% more likely” (Nielson, 2008).

Think about it.

Eye-tracking researchers say that you will scan this Web page in the shape of an F. You will skim words as you move down the left and only see 30% of the right (Nielson, 2006). Even a link to How Little Do Users Read? is enough to divide attention and break concentration.

On the Internet, you see, it’s about brevity. It is the nature of a web to entangle, but in this Web we’re both consumer and consumed.

In The Shallows Nick Carr writes, “In Google’s world, which is the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the pensive stillness of deep reading or the fuzzy indirection of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive…” (p. 172).

In observations of dwindling attention spans, machine-like thinking and disconnection from the garden, Carr points out how tools become part of us. Hold a hammer and your brain thinks it’s part of your hand. The more we use a tool, the more we mold ourselves around it.

Our brains get accustomed to typical activities. When these activities stop or new activities start it’s like our “neurons seem to ‘want’ to receive input” (p. 29). In other words, we become what our brains do.

As we extend ourselves artificially, we distance ourselves from natural functions. Like an industrialized farmer in a massive computerized machine who loses touch with the soil he serves, so too we lose touch with meaningful feelings found only in natural beauty.

It’s because of the paradox of happiness. We think that technology will make us happy, but happiness is better achieved when not pursued. Like the name of that menacing mechanic with the missing section of finger that you can’t you remember. Stop trying and out of the blue, the name comes.

“It’s Murray! The mechanic! His name is Murray!”

So too with happiness. It sneaks up on you. The trick is to enjoy living things more than the electronic crack of computer screens.

It’s like the line from John Lennon’s song Beautiful Boy except instead of life insert the word happiness: “Before you cross that busy street take my hand. Life (happiness) is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (see post Simple Enjoyment).

We’re pretty inept when it comes to making happiness-promoting choices (Eggleston, 2013). Based on our options, we overestimate how much happier we’ll be if we had more income and better technology but we underestimate the sacrifices we need to make.

If you ask, “What’s my situation? Do I enjoy the life I’m in?” The answer depends on opinion and your will and won’t power. Suppose you are in a situation and as you skim this in a distracted fashion, you want to get the point before it happens.

When you see that doing something about your situation is not going to help and not doing something is also not going to help, where are you? You’re nonplussed, as in “surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react” (Google). You are perplexed. Like a song and in bewilderment you are reduced to watching.

You enjoy the fuzzy indirection of contemplation like people of long ago.

On a warm day in 1844, novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne sat far from computers in a small clearing in Massachusetts, USA. In deep concentration he focused on the world around him like his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson recommended in his “transparent eyeball” idea where one absorbs rather than reflects what nature has on offer.

Hawthorne wrote of breezes, sunshine, fragrance and sound, “the gentlest sigh imaginable, yet with spiritual potency, insomuch that it seems to penetrate, with its mild ethereal coolness, through outward clay, and breathe upon the spirit itself, which shivers in gentle delight… sunshine glimmers through shadow... the fragrance of white pines… the striking of the village clock… But hark! there is the whistle of the locomotive, – the long shriek, harsh above all harshness…It tells a story of busy men, citizens from the hot street… men of business, – in short, of all unquietness; and no wonder it gives such a startling shriek, since it brings the noisy world into the midst of our slumbrous peace” (Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography, 1885, pp. 498-503).

And so, like Nathaniel Hawthorne back in 1844, you too can enjoy focused noticing in what remains of the natural world and in so doing feel a calm and heartbreaking happiness.

REFERENCES

Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York.

Eggleston, B. (2013). Paradox of Happiness. The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Blackwell Publishing.

Neilson, J. (2008). How Little Do Users Read. 

Neilson, J. (2006). F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content.

Enjoy A Simple Plan

We know what makes us happy (at least, in theory). If you’re not sure, just watch little children or read about elves and hobbits.

First, you enjoy something simple – preferably something in the natural world – and then, you, as an egotistical critic, get out of the way and let happiness happen.

How you value the world leads straight to enjoying it. With the right use of your senses, you can enjoy the world and accomplish a purpose for being in it. Without thinking about what you want or don’t want, you can convert a material world into a spirit of happiness.

People try to make themselves happy. When Judy Garland sang “Get Happy,” she did her best, but the song didn’t take. She was tired. She struggled to escape herself and died of an overdose at 47.

A clue as to why is in something she said, “I tried my damnedest to believe in the rainbow that I tried to get over and I couldn’t. SO WHAT!”

Judy wanted something magical to come from outside herself to make her happy. When she sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow, she saw happiness as somewhere out there – over the rainbow, way up high – but it’s not. Happiness is here. Beyond joy and sorrow, utopia is now! If only Judy could have experienced the world like it was when she was a baby. Then no crying she’d make.

You become an act of happiness by losing self-consciousness. Happiness is not in the intellect. It’s in the light that you see by. Let your eye and the object you see complete each other.

Imagine that you are a cloud seeing and replace a dead mechanized world bound by selfish motivation, mental manacles, debt and scientific manipulation. Recreate it with your sense of enjoyment.

Think about how a rainbow appears. It’s your eye at the right angle combined with sunlight and water drops. Without you to see, a rainbow doesn’t appear. But a rainbow is more than light refraction. It isn’t a symbol. It has no reason for being. It’s light playing. It’s fun. It’s beauty.

It’s a miracle! It’s you seeing!

Imagine yourself as a child. You are fed and content. Your world is not filtered by custom, interpretation, and analysis. The world is new. Imagine seeing a butterfly for the first time!

A child without want is as free as a bird or flower. No regrets or worries. As a child of whatever age, you are as you are and in this, you are humility and humility is happiness.

In The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy, Gregory Bassham lists six lessons in happiness we can learn from Tolkien’s elves and hobbits: 1) Delight in simple things; 2) Make light of your troubles; 3) Get personal (cultivate friendships); 4) Cultivate good character; 5) Cherish and create beauty; and, 6) Rediscover Wonder (it’s not just bread).

We know that we should live a simple life. We should find hope and humour even in dire circumstances. We should have close friends. We should have good morals. We should clean our psychological window so things don’t look drab and familiar. We should be less self-interested and more amazed by the world.

Even though we know what we should and shouldn’t do, something invariably happens to complicate simplicity and sour generosity. Irritation, frustration and sadness can shred good intentions.

We can remind ourselves to be wise and live uncomplicated lives like a hobbit in the Shire, but something in the outside world can happen to shatter our plan.

By the end of the day we’re tired. We wind up flaked out on a chair, covered in cheesie dust. What went wrong? We tried, but therein is our problem. Who was the one trying? Was the spirit willing and the flesh weak? Remember Dr. Schwartz’s scientific dictum, “You are not your brain” (see: It’s Not Me. It’s My Brain). A person must be detached enough to see himself objectively while at the same time committed to his own values (Kierkegaard).

Our brains can be like a Siren song luring us like sailors to shipwreck on a rocky coast. Thoughts become habitual through repeated pleasure-seeking and dopamine. Our heart may say, “No-no,” but our brain says, “Yes-yes!” Our brain often urges us to do what we probably shouldn’t.

We may have more luxuries and conveniences thanks to the magic of technologies, but that doesn’t mean we’re happier. We’re busier. We now lack time to focus on things that produce a quieter happiness.

What’s to be done? Nothing much. Just some rewiring of our brains by forging new pathways and enjoyable singing of a Tom Bombadil song.

Henry David Thoreau said in Walden: “Our life is frittered away by detail… But men labor under a mistake.

“The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before… Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! (Ch. 1) …a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone” (Ch. 2).

You don’t have to build a cabin in the woods to live deliberately. You can live deliberately anywhere. Randomly stop what you’re doing. Freeze! Take the world in and move your eyes to gaze and listen.

All it takes is an ever so slight shift in focus, not to see what you think is there, but to see what is and isn’t.

 

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For little friend Timmy. Who enjoys a good thunder storm.

Enjoy What Is And Take What Comes

What does a sparrow see? Science can explain how a sparrow sees colour, movement and so on, but she can’t relay the actual experience of seeing. You’d need a sparrow gifted with the ability to describe what she sees in a language better than, “Chirp, chirp,” for a human to understand.

We can imagine and simulate birdlike seeing with drones, skydiving and literature, but the experience itself: of bird seeing, as bird in bird form within bird reality, is unavailable to us. The same holds true for other animals and people too.

It’s like the chorus to Nik Kershaw’s song that goes, “Wouldn’t it be good to be in your shoes, even if it was for just one day. And wouldn’t it be good, if we could wish ourselves away. Wouldn’t it be good to be on your side, the grass is always greener over there. And wouldn’t it be good, if we could live without a care” (Wouldn’t It Be Good). Of course Nik is singing about wanting to be in the shoes of a lover and sparrows don’t normally wear shoes; nevertheless, a feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s life is common.

Wanting to be as free as a sparrow is pretty universal. They look so happy. “What is that?” asks an old man. “A sparrow,” says his son lacking patience. Some might think, “Wouldn’t it be good to be a sparrow? Zipping from tree to tree! Eat a seed and you’re good for the day.” That may be so. To be free is beautiful, but then again, it’s all fun and games until you fly into a picture window.

Scientists can explain the mechanics of eyeballs: how they function and how to fix them, but in terms of perception – the link between world “out there” as taken in by eyeballs, and the mind’s interpretation of that world – science can’t say.

It’s a bit like the sparrow scenario. Nobody but you can see what you see. You are a kind of sparrow, but one without wings, without a beak, without feathers or bird feet.

Science can identify your species and proclivities but not your mystery. Nobody but you knows what it’s like to be you and even then, you hardly notice.

Think about what you see. As you walk, arms not swinging, looking at your feet, eyes glazed like donuts, imagine that you’re in a silent helicopter or a balloon looking down at landscapes far away and small.

It feels like there are third person things down there and all around and digging deeper into the experience of being, you observe a strange first person phenomena where you are the one looking.

We each think of ourselves as a subject in a world of objects. We think we have an inner stream of consciousness that babbles, sometimes turbulent, sometimes calm, but are you in the stream, the stream itself or the one looking at the stream?

Are you the inner story you tell yourself?

The trick to enjoyment isn’t in self-absorption. It’s the opposite. It’s in going outward. Don’t ask yourself how you should move. Step forward and let the world move through you. Don’t second guess what you say, speak from your heart.

Mick Jagger said a mouthful at the buffet when he said, “You can’t always get what you want”, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.”

When you’re in the world without thought for gain or advantage, with humility and humour, you don’t feel self-conscious. When you’re in the moment, your inner story drops away and your consciousness and self-consciousness is gone (Hubert Dreyfus, 2013).

Science tells us we perceive only reflected colours. Red is not “in” an apple. An apple reflects wavelengths that we see as red with our light receptors. Our eyes and brain together “translate light into colour” (How Do We See Color). Reality is a merging of world and interpretation.

In the immortal words of Arsenio Hall who while driving in his car one day pondered certain thoughts and referred to them as “things that make you go hmm…” inspiring the C + C Music Factory to sing the same, so too we explore things that make us go hmm, except instead of singing about infidelity, we sing of coincidence and connection, of links in chains between what we see and do and what is seen and done. We enjoy.

No special powers are required to experience beauty. Enjoy peace and looking without knowing. Forget who you think you are. Answers to the deepest questions like, “What’s it all for?” are in the lives we lead. Observe your unfolding.

There is a double vision between self and situation. Inside and outside are two sides of one coin. You see through a massive window, not as a thing inside. The world out there comes inside with each step you take forward.

Ideas in this unhurried mental receptacle are fuzzy; fuzzy like a pussy willow is fuzzy; fuzzy like a little yellow duckling that goes, “Peep. Peep. Peep.”

And, like a peeping fuzzy duckling, your life is nature’s music without notation.

The trick to enjoying the life you’re in is to sing with humble tickled amusement a melodious duck song.

 

Enjoyment, Cookies and Purposeful Purposelessness

Imagine you’re in a conference room. It’s late afternoon. You are an unemployed interloper attending a conference session. You came in from the cold when you spied cookies and an empty chair.

You have food, warmth and health and the people seem nice. You enjoy the idea of people but not their irritating glances as if chewing a cookie were a crime. The conference room you’re in is well lit and warm (but not too warm) and the cookie you eat is sweet (but not too sweet). As Goldilocks would say, “It’s just right.”

Such is simple enjoyment so stumbled upon.

Everyone in the room is well fed and has their own chair. Your chair is fantastic. There’s nothing quite like a good sit, when you’re in the mood for sitting. Above your head like a halo is a speaker. You hear a barely audible Al Martino sing Somewhere My Love and imagine Russian sleigh-rides.

It’s a beautiful day for you to enjoy (until security arrives).

You watch a man sleep as a woman fiddles on her mobile device. You wonder if you end with your skin (are you a letter therein?) or are you like a leaf on a tree or a cell in a body? Is a bird no more separate from you than your fingernail is?

And you wonder if your presence here could have been predicted based on the temperature outside, your genes, propensities, location, desperation and desire for free cookies? How free are you?

Does the moon remain where it is when you look away?

Such are your thoughts as you eat your cookie and ignore the keynote speaker with all the answers.

You study each person and wonder: What’s it like to be another? Is another person’s feeling of awareness the same as your own? You think, “Yes,” but how do you know? Couldn’t you just as easily be someone else as you are yourself? If you were looking out of someone else’s eyes right now, how would you know? You can only see outward. You are always you to yourself.

When did you know you were you? Are you not in a different form from when you were born? Every year you change like a snake sheds its skin, could this be your own form of reincarnation?

The presenter up front is talking about competition, globalization and robotics as you float on the music of Love is Blue and ponder poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s words, “I am signalling you through the flames. The North Pole is not where it used to be. Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest. Civilization self-destructs… What are poets for, in such an age?” (Poetry As Insurgent Art, 1975).

At the back of the room is a coffee urn and cups. You get up, fix yourself a cup and return to your chair. No one seems to care. No one knows who you are. Such is anonymity in the city. Everyone here is a name tag to each other.

“L’amour est bleu… When we met how the bright sun shone. Then love died, now the rainbow is gone” (Pierre Cour, 1967) – gone like all these people will be in fifty years.

Busy talk and mental chatter about globalization, competition and robots keep realizations away, but of course, on this cold day in October, realizations don’t matter.
It’s a nice room with non-threatening people who keep themselves busy not killing each other. You feel peacefully purposeless. There is nothing to be or do. You are content. Could this be the essence of enjoyment?

Looking down you see a stain in the rose patterned carpet that looks like Bette Midler and hear “The rose” quietly playing on the speaker above your head.

It’s a miracle to you (and only you)!  (For more on this phenomenon of significance in coincidence see the free book “And Then“).

Aristotle said, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence,” but then again, he said women are monstrous, slavery is natural and the brain is of minor importance.

In the Secret of the Golden Flower a mythical Master said, “That which exists through itself is called meaning… It is contained in the two eyes… If one can attain purposelessness through purpose, then the thing has been grasped.”

Could purposeless purpose be enjoyment itself? Is this a spiritual paradox grasped? You look around with your two eyes – aware of yourself as you are where you are – and see just as two eyes saw thousands of years ago and will see thousands of years from now.

Only the name tags change.

With sudden gradual recognition of yourself as you are, you enjoy. You feel light sitting heavy. Sometimes all it takes is the taste of a cookie and a passing fancy.

With an appreciation of yourself – of your own particular idiosyncratic ridiculousness as you are, in the crazyness of where you are – you can lighten up and feel 65% oxygen (which you are). You can enjoy being a balloon in time.

Let go and fly by the seat of your pants on the waves of this little big planet of ours.

Smile with purposeless purpose and enjoy whatever comes.

Congeniality, Ideal Goodness and Enjoyment

Two guys are driving in a vintage car in Portland, Oregon. The driver says to the passenger, “I think you’re supposed to have fun in life.” “I’m right with you,” says the passenger shaking his head from side to side. “Great,” says the driver. “Right with you,” repeats the passenger.

They rattle on. “I’m really enjoying this car. Are you?” “I love it,” says the passenger.

As far-fetched as it sounds, this conversation happened. The guys are Jerry Seinfeld and Fred Armisen. The show is Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

It’s not hard to imagine two congenial friends like this having fun together, but what about someone who doesn’t have fun? What then?

Someone enters the words, “no enjoyment out of life” as a search term and finds this blog. Does it help or is it like John Steinbeck said in 1961, “No one wants advice, only corroboration?”

You can set the stage for enjoyment like they do in Comedians in Cars, but whether you get it or not, depends.

There’s a knack to it.

A banker.

Ask people: “What do you do if you have no enjoyment?” From a banker you get a loan. From a stoic you get, “Do what you can, not what you can’t.” From a positive psychologist you get, “Think positive!” (and take your damn anti-depressants!).

From a bartender you get a drink. From a hedonist you get hedonism. From a believer you get belief. From a radical you get radicalized. From Big Joe Turner you get Shake, Rattle and Roll.

What you get depends on who’s giving it. Things like receptivity (What Do You Enjoy?), determination (The First Step), awareness (Who am I?) and planning (Rules of Enjoyment) help, but there’s more to it.

It’s like what Chris Rock said in Comedians in Cars when Jerry asked him what he thought of a car. Chris Rock said, “I like you Jerry… everything is about the company … If we were in a cab, we would probably be having the same exact conversation.”

Someone who gets no enjoyment probably won’t get it from lighthearted banter and a Lamborghini. You need an ideal.

Life is justified by its fruits. Whether you eat or drink, do so for the sake of life, of enjoyment and the ideal of goodness. What is goodness? You know it when you see it. A good is a natural delight in the the senses, in affections, and in the mind. A vision of heaven on earth is ideal goodness.

That the end of life is death may sound sad, but what other end could anything have? At the end of a party you go to bed. At the end of a dance, you sit down. At the end of the day, you go home. After tea, you wash your cup.

Transitoriness is essential. Existence is change.

Things get sad with sentimentality. When we imagine that an end is untimely, we get sad. The trick is to live in the presence of ideal goodness. It’s all around. You die, but goodness doesn’t.

The world can be dangerous. We take shelter in human constructions, but the next storm, earthquake, or bomb can take it down. Despite the odds of catastrophe, pain and suffering, challenge the assumptions you have of a universe of desires and come to self-knowledge. You get it when you don’t. It’s a new order. The decision is yours.

The vision you’re having right now is your life. Here. Now. Reading this silly little blog, you can be completely aware of yourself in the place you are. Seeing with these eyes. The voice you hear is your own.

Marcus Aurelius as he looked in 151 AD.

If you are catastrophe free, count yourself glad. If not, as the stoic said, “You win. You lose.” Or, as Marcus Aurelius said when he stubbed his toe on a throne, “Misfortune nobly born is good fortune” (Meditations).

Forge on. Become goodness incarnate. Goodness shows as humility, kindness and a lack of self-centredness. Empathize! Enjoy updowns.

Henry Thoreau as he looked in 1861.

Breathe a silent sigh. As an animal with a mind, filled with folly, happiness and sorrow, a stupid dreaming creature with odd perspectives in the midst of a vast natural world, quietly observe the place you find yourself in and look for harmonies. Imagine yourself as the earth seeing itself seeing itself.

Ideal goodness is the enjoyment that emerges when you connect or as Henry Thoreau said to himself in the woods after leaving the pencil factory, “Goodness is the only investment that never fails” (Walden, 1854).

So, what do you do? Live the ideal of good. Live in the imagination of ultimate things and like Mother said, “Go outside! Be good!” Enjoy the music of strawberries in the summertime (even if they’re in your mind).

Wisdom Enjoyment

Enjoyment is a kind of longing. We long to enjoy but life gets in the way; yet life – at least, the bits we like – is the enjoyment we crave. We want to feel the freedom of enjoyment, but there’s stuff to do and not enough time. We feel the need to win the lottery but that’s a fool’s game or as Seneca (Stoic philosopher, 54 BC – 39 AD) put it, “A fortune is great slavery.” He also said, “A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature,” but… anyway…

Our longing grows until enjoyment becomes a fantasy unrealisable. We see the rich seemingly enjoying themselves and want to be one of them. We forget how real enjoyment – like the kind we felt as kids – feels. A kid doesn’t need millions of dollars. She enjoy listening to seashells. She doesn’t know the waves she hears is ambient noise coupled with imagination.

Enjoyment is like that. It’s in ourselves. We get confused and try to fill the enjoyment void with things unwise.

We think, “If only I had some time to just sit, outside, comfortably, with a cup of coffee and a book,” or, “if only I wasn’t so bored,” or, “if only I could go for a walk and feel peaceful and not bugged by the things I have to do.”

It’s like that song chugging along with the words, “Don’t know why I have to work. Don’t know why I can’t play. Turn me off. Turn me out. But don’t turn me away. Save Me a Place” (Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac, 1979).

How does a person who longs for enjoyment (and love, peace, contentment, kindness, humour, ecstasy and all the other happy emotions wrapped into one) ever experience enjoyment when the world seems bent towards making us feel the opposite?

The daily grind of work, boredom and problems makes enjoyment incidental or non-existent. If you long for enjoyment, how can you get it when there’s all this other @#$%… stuff to deal with?

One word: Discipline.

It isn’t the world that’s a problem. It’s you. It takes a few deep breaths and a disciplined surrender to what is. Stop resisting and enjoy yourself without expectation. Good or bad – it’s all good.

Things are rarely the way you want them to be. Enjoyment takes will-power and courage. It takes initiative and imagination. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are” (The Social Contract, 1762).

Rousseau in 1753. He freely expressed emotions, enjoyed solitary walks and longed to understand himself.

Say out loud to yourself, “Let go,” and then, “Enjoy!” Let “Relax!” be your battle cry! Who cares if people think you’re crazy?

Enjoyment is in your eyes. Fling open your senses. If you can do that, you are a philosopher of enjoyment. You are an intellectual yokel. You can gape freely at this weird and wonderful world as sensible people take it all for granted.

Here we are, living on a ball of rock spinning around an immense sphere of fire as organisms go through creature rearrangement, mutual slaughter and flourish by chewing each other up.

Nothing strange about that.

We struggle to find our way. Think about wisdom. It nudges you closer to it. Consider your life: your decisions. your values, your shortcomings. Wisdom understands the context of who you are, where you are and what is prudent to do. Enjoyment enjoys. It’s a matter of wise choices. Think big picture and notice little things.

Wise choices combine facts about reality and human nature with awareness of culture, history and the context of your life span. Wisdom understands values and priorities. It projects insight, good judgement and emotional regulation.

A philosopher of enjoyment memorizes wise sayings like: “Ageing can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it” (Clint Eastwood); “neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy” (Voltaire); “one should eat to live, not live to eat” (Cicero); “Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things” (Small). Ultimately, wisdom is to enjoyment what red is to a tomato.

Put a light bulb in your pocket. Pull it out. Hold it over your head and say, “I have an idea!”

Enjoy yourself. What have you got to lose?

Busy Bees and Peripheral Visions

Question anyone on a busy street anywhere in the world and ask: “How are you?” The reply could very well be, “I’m busy like everybody.” It’s the mantra of modernity. “Busy, busy” is said as humanity hives the world, but to complain is ineffectual, not to mention, unenjoyable.

You can’t stop busy bees any more than you can stop ants or humans. You can’t change them. Despite the malleability of the human brain (see neuroplasticity), most people don’t (or won’t) change their habits even if it made life more enjoyable for everyone, but there is a loop hole you can use to enjoy your life. What is that loop hole? Enjoyment (your own).

Enjoyment is its own reward. Life isn’t meaningless (see: The Great Big Huge Secret). Let this be your litmus test: In any decision ask: Is it enjoyable? Considering a new job? Is it enjoyable? Considering marriage (or divorce). Is it enjoyable? Whatever the decision, think: Is it enjoyable?

Sometimes the answer won’t be clear-cut. “Should I drive fast?” Is it enjoyable? Yes, but a speeding ticket or crash isn’t. Weigh present enjoyment against future enjoyment. Temper enjoyment with reason and go with the flow. Use an enjoyment strategy.

If you have to do something you don’t enjoy (such is life), you can endure for the sake of future enjoyment or for the enjoyment of having enjoyable thoughts as you do the unenjoyable.

The expression, “If you’re not busy living, you’re busy dying,” takes on significance when considered in light that both occur involuntarily. Life happens. Cause is in effect and vice versa. Society exerts pressures to keep us busy and people judge those who aren’t. If you don’t believe it, try this experiment:

Go some place busy and stand still (without being in the way – that wouldn’t be enjoyable). Look around. Watch the world. Imagine you have a special power to slow time down with your own boredom. Shift the focus of your eyes to the periphery. See from the sides. Listen. Imagine everyone is hypnotized except you. Be brave and look dumb.

No doubt you’ll get strange looks. You might get reported for statue behaviour. Serious people will think you’re odd, but who cares? Odd numbers are not divisible by two. If you’re an odd number, you’re alone, but this is your secret power. If you can endure the loneliness, you are home wherever you are.

Lonely souls enjoy a special bond with other lonely souls. Feel sorry for busy bee-people and be kind to them. They’re too busy to know what they’re doing.

People hurry. Don’t believe it? Look around. Millions of cars are visible at night like red and white corpuscles in city-bodies. Nature, as in “the wild” is designated, sectioned off, preserved. Animals are moored in small island parks, but it is pointless to complain. It is a human race we live, but you can enjoy the wild even when it’s tame because wherever you go, there you are (see: Where Are You?).

Some people seek thrills. That’s enjoyment to them. Waiting in line is torture, but if impatience is quiet, time slows down. If a watched kettle takes forever to boil, why not watch kettles? Live longer. Enjoy time not doing.

The counter argument is, “If I’m not busy, I’m bored. I may as well be dead!” This may be true, but if it isn’t, it could be that you’re not doing ‘not doing’ quite right.

To not do isn’t a lull between doings. You can be not doing and look busy. To not be busy is to take the time to watch something far away. It is to linger on a sensory memory (see Keep it Simple). It is to shift focus to the periphery as you walk down a long hallway without swinging your arms and feel amused in so doing. Enjoy yourself as yourself where you are. Why not? Is the alternative any better? What have you got to lose?

To not be busy is to take your time. You are here to be here. This isn’t serious. Enjoy a rock and roll groove as you watch trees shake and shimmy to distant thunder.

Knee Deep In Flowers We’ll Stray

Have you ever felt dull? The kind of dull that washes away beauty? Most people have. Some people have.

The mood could be described as a blah sort of feeling. It’s the feeling that drives lottery ticket sales and drug and booze industries – as if money or oblivion could make a difference to indifference.

At such times, when we feel dull, we may wonder where is my mind without realizing that’s what’s wrong. We’ve been sucked into the vacuum of our light-bulb heads.

When someone is stuck doing something that numbs the senses, when someone is stuck like an egg in an in an egg-carton world, it’s easy to forget how amazing it is to be alive here and now. If we’re reminded of the mystery of life while in such a mood, we get annoyed. We think, Yeah. I know. I know. Smell the roses. Blah. Blah. Big deal. Go away. Leave me alone. Smelling the roses feels like a vapid platitude. To see another person happy is to feel resentment. To hear advice from an optimistic fathead is reason for murder.

At such times we’re reminded that we’re social creatures so people push themselves to be with others and then feel irritated. There isn’t anything anybody can do to alter our mood. This is a project for the self. Solitude may be necessary, but then, even if alone, we don’t enjoy ourselves. We are lost in ourselves. The outside world doesn’t exist or we find fault with it.

Humans are plagued by a dry-rot of unhappiness. It’s not because of poverty, unemployment, sickness or death. It isn’t for lack of health care or education. Unhappiness of the kind described has a definite cause. Few people realize that it can be removed with the power of one’s will. It’s so easy that it isn’t.

Because we don electronic blinders and plug our ears with noise, we feel separated, but what if – what if – the world outside our bodies didn’t start at the edge of our skin?

Try this experiment. Stop what you’re doing and go outside or look out a window and imagine that the outside world is not separate from you. Imagine that the air in your lungs is the same air outside your lungs and that you are permeable. Imagine that what you’re made of is the same thing that makes up rocks, trees, and flowers. Imagine a flower, a rock, a blade of grass is as much you as your fingernail or hair. You don’t have to believe it or tell anyone. It sounds crazy. Just enjoy the notion without over-thinking it.

Moments of unhappiness come when we don’t notice anything outside ourselves. We get into a vicious circle of immediate thoughts and practicalities.

When you forget to lose yourself in the contemplation of the outside world – the not-you, or all that stuff all around – that’s when unhappiness strikes. We go on a head-trip. There will always be a part of yourself that can’t get out of thinking about itself and yet, only by losing yourself in the absorption of the world outside can you grow happy.

Madness comes when inward visions lose their imaginative outwardness. The more you can concentrate on the outside world, the more your real identity grows. You are an earth-creature just like other earth-creatures.

The next time you feel dull, take a break from what you’re thinking and look outside. Concentrate on the mystery of your being alive at all. Imagine the world outside your body is your outward vision. What’s outside is going inside. Call yourself a lonely soul with a sense of relief. Only the lonely soul can go into the outside world day by day.

With a calm and prolonged satisfaction, drink in your surroundings as if it were a mirror of yourself. Imagine tip toeing through tulips. Hear that song. Imagine being knee deep in flowers and you are.

Keep It Simple.

People dedicated to enjoyment enjoy the moment. Of course they do! They make the most of the moment even when it isn’t enjoyable. They imagine future enjoyment. They remember past enjoyment. They laugh instead of get mad (the double h of humour and humility) and they do it all without disgustingly fake good cheer.

Practitioners of enjoyment force themselves to enjoy no matter what’s happening. They know drudgery is necessary. Bumps are expected and tragedy strikes.

Dedicated enjoyers get into simple pleasures. They linger on ladybugs. They look out windows. They stare at the world like idiots and go into earth-trances. They squeeze enjoyment out of empty ketchup packets.

If someone is not dedicated to enjoyment, enjoyment is accidental or nonexistent. The question then becomes: Why? Why leave enjoyment to chance? What’s more important? Is it a job? Is it family? Is it foreign policy?

If someone isn’t enjoying, it could be: a) the person is dedicated to enjoyment without knowing it and thus not doing a very good at it, or b) dedicated to something that is not enjoyable.

For person a) we need to look at how a person spends her day. Is time taken to contemplate nature and/or whatever? Are hot beverages sipped slowly with much noise? Does the person send mixed messages by wanting and not-wanting at the same time?

For person b) we recommend a careful examination of the following question: Why be dedicated to something not enjoyable?

Enjoyment comes from the self. Imagine that the words you are reading right here and now are actually coming from you. These are your words. It is your silent voice you hear.

Someone, somewhere, writes in the present for you to receive in the future and remember in the past. Past, present, and future are thus not compartmentalized – they are one, like a river is one. Water upstream is not separate from water downstream. It’s one body from beginning to end. The same is true of time and your life. It is one event from beginning to end. It is a flowing. Your shape changes and thoughts come come and go, but the consciousness within is consistent.

If words of enjoyment come from you, you will obey. You cannot be told to enjoy. That doesn’t work. Enjoyment must come from your own motivation.

Words from the Philosophy of Enjoyment are like arrows shot into the air. By a fluke of chance, they hit you. They hit with a reminder: Keep enjoyment foremost. Cultivate happiness. No one else will to do this for you. This is you we’re talking about – not some abstract notion of a person. You! You looking at this. Right now! This is your mirror. These are your thoughts you hear.

Keep enjoyment on your mind like that Willie Nelson song, Always On My Mind. You are enjoyment. Disappear into it and keep in mind a few pointers along the way:

1) Enjoyment doesn’t come with negative consequences. If if does, that’s not enjoyable. (It’s an old Epicurean idea.)

2) Avoid being like the person in the Irving Berlin song, After You Get What you Want You Don’t Want It. Want what you get. Be selective. Keep it simple and in tune with nature and yourself.

3) Don’t think about what you don’t want. Anything that you don’t want can make you feel bad. Feeling bad is not enjoyable.

If you think about how you don’t want cancer or your friend to die or for you to twist an ankle, that’s a bummer. You cause yourself suffering by thinking about what you don’t want. Hypothetical stories feel real. Worry circles around and you cook up a bad-tasting stew.

4) Avoid mixed messages. If you decide to have ice cream and make arrangements, but then worry that ice cream is bad for you, that’s a mixed message. Not enjoyable. If you want ice cream. Enjoy ice cream. A treat is a treat. Too much isn’t enjoyable. A special meal isn’t the time to worry about money. Commit to enjoy.

5) If you’re not enjoying yourself, ask: why? Contemplate enjoyment. Become an expert in it. There’s nothing supernatural or selfish about it. Enjoyment is there.

Make yourself enjoy. It starts here and now with sensual awareness and contemplation. When you feel real enjoyment in simple things that are easy to get like a ladybug on a blade of grass, you are home, even when you’re not.