Enjoy Being Awesome

“Who can say where the road goes? where the day flows? only time” (Enya).

Today we ask ourselves, “Who am I?” It’s a straight forward question with obvious answers: I am a human, I have a name, a family history, I think and do such-and-such and want this-and-that.

With further examination, however, from a scientific, psychological and philosophical perspective, you might arrive at something unexpected. It could be that who you think you are is distorted by your way of thinking. You might be more than you think, and less than you know.

If you press the question beyond superficial, you might feel a light-hearted feeling. This is natural. When you experience the switch from thinking in terms of “little old me and what I want” to the feeling of being one with all things, you remain calm in any situation. You are free of mass confusion when you understand cause and effect and the big picture.

According to science, as a human being, you are a Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens is Latin for “wise man” or “wise creature.” It comes from homo, meaning, “creature, man, human,” from humus, “earth, ground, soil”—literally, “earthly one”—and sapiens, meaning, “one who knows” (source).

A Homo sapiens is described as a bipedal primate with large brain, vertical forehead and dependence on language and tools.

Homo sapiens call themselves the “wise creature” despite historical evidence and current affairs. No doubt other animals would argue that Homo sapiens are pretty stupid. According to experts “animals can have cognitive faculties that are superior to human beings” (see: Humans not smarter than animals, just different).

The Far Side by Gary Larson.

Despite intelligence, and to their own detriment, Homo sapiens are the most destructive Earth creature.

With their comparatively weak bodies and inferior senses, Homo sapiens would not have been able to dominate the planet if it wasn’t for their ability to cooperate, make tools and pass knowledge from generation to generation (source).

As In a Nutshell put it, “to survive, all living things seek to secure resources and multiply. Competition between species favours those with advantageous traits” and because humans are inventive, cooperative and expansionist, they’re able to put all other species at their mercy (see: Why We Should NOT Look for Aliens).

According to science, humans are complex machines composed of about 99% six elements and about 0.85% five other elements (source). All eleven are essential elements, meaning, they come from the air, water and soil (the Earth) and are “required by living organisms for growth, metabolism and development” (source).

This is you:

See: What Are the Elements In the Human Body.

As a subjective experience, however, you probably don’t feel like eleven essential elements. You probably feel like a single thing—like a walking, talking, hot-water balloon with interior armature—but your body isn’t one thing.

Source

Your body is composed of around 30 trillion human cells of about 200 different types and around 38 trillion non-human cells, which are smaller, each with its own structure and lifespan and all working together “in harmony to carry out all the basic functions necessary for humans to survive” (source).

Your body has more non-human cells than human and if you go even smaller, “the average cell contains 100 trillion atoms” (source).

Source: ABC Science “The big and the small“

Humans are, for the most part, except on occasion, oblivious to the highly complex operation performed by nature on its own without intervention.

Every human is a world unto itself. Each one is having private thoughts about economics, politics, pleasure, etc.. Each one is localized in a single point of awareness. Each one is living in a waking dream whereby reality is perceived by sensory inputs that are interpreted by the brain’s imagination.

Some of the smartest humans spend their time inside virtual reality or working on things like artificial intelligence, high-tech weapons and robots to replace human beings.

Psychologists are divided as to how to define the human species. Evolutionary psychologists say humans do what they do⁠—including invade countries, murder and rape⁠—because of genes and more than two million years of natural selection as hunter-gatherers; whereas, cultural determinists say humans are not defined by their genes but by what is learned as members of a community (source).

According to cultural evolutionary theory, however, it isn’t one or the other, as in, “nature vs nurture,” it’s both together.

source

If you ask yourself “Who am I?” and in answer make a list of achievements, failures, likes, dislikes and life events from birth until present, that is an excellent exercise for understanding yourself so as to make rational decisions and live a happy life based on reason, but that isn’t quite what we’re after.

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) said that we can acquire important knowledge of reality simply by thinking (source). As Bryan Magee observed, “Spinoza saw total reality as being one thing or substance of which all apparently different objects and indeed people like ourselves are merely facets, merely modes, merely aspects” (source). This matches with the phenomenon of entanglement (source) and with the First Nations, Inuit and Metis perspective of seeing everything in the universe as interconnected (source).

So far so good. Now it’s time to take off your thinking cap and glasses. As Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani observed, “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are” (source).

Go outside. Take a break. Enjoy the peace of looking at the world as yourself. Stop seeing things through your desires and your sense of self locally defined and separate from nature.

As Michael James writing of Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) advised, “we do not need literally to ‘seek’ ourself but just to be ourself… Self-attention is thus a state of just being, and not doing anything… a state of perfect repose, serenity, stillness, calm and peace, and as such one of supreme and unqualified happiness” (Happiness and the Art of Being, p. 347-48).

The stand-up comedian Bill Hicks (1961-1994) joked about seeing a positive drug story on the news:

It’s Just a Ride

“Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we’re the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather” (source).

What Bill didn’t realize, however, is that drugs aren’t necessary. By investigating your own consciousness beyond self-driven thinking, you can be enlightened. We’re all part of something bigger, something infinite, awe-inspiring and connected.

The trick to real enjoyment is to stop thinking from a self-deceptive perspective. Be one with all things. Be happy. Be wise. And most of all, enjoy the ride!

Enjoy Being Wise and Save the World At the Same Time

“You think that I don’t even mean a single word I say. It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away” – The Bee Gees, “Words” (1968).

As has been said before, “the world is a mess and getting messier still” (To think or not: Zen, Tolstoy, Depression and Enjoyment).

The number of problems we face is astounding (UN Global Issues). It’s like the world is going to hell in a handbasket and we’re the cause. Go to any zoo, refugee camp or suburb. See for yourself. How can a person enjoy with a clear conscience when so much is wrong?

Singin’, “All we are saying, is: ‘Give peace a chance.'”

Even though we know, “The whole surface of Earth is a series of connected ecosystems” and “every factor in an ecosystem depends on every other factor,” we continue to pave over ecosystems with joyous abandon (National Geographic).

But a change from soil and water to roads, suburbs and industry has a funny way of affecting plants and on animals depending on those plants.

We have pollution in the ocean twice the size of Texas (source). We have poverty, crime, racism, road rage, distrust, violence and an epidemic of death by drug addiction. We have cancers and viruses and the doctors and scientists who try to help us get death threats (‘I hope you die’: how COVID pandemic unleashed attacks on scientists).

Image by Martin Shovel

It’s like nature is out to get us and humans don’t get it. Plants and animals go extinct as economics drive global destruction. People are more irrational than ever and no amount of intelligence, Artificial or otherwise, seems able to save us from ourselves.

So, what’s the answer? Is it escapism and surrender? Is it global conflict and action? Is it ruining your life worrying and not enjoying?

How can a run-of-the-mill human (one of 7.9 billion no less) make a difference, be a good ancestor, live a good life and enjoy good times with love and a calm state of mind?

In such a messed up world what can philosophy do?

Well… a lot actually.

Philosophy comes from the Greek “philein” and “sophia” meaning “lover of wisdom” (source). A lover of wisdom relates to any area where intelligence is shown. Wisdom is the ability to think and act using “knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight” (source). If we valued wisdom more than money, celebrity and immediate gratification, if we practiced wisdom religiously, as in, “with consistent and conscientious regularity” (Dictionary), we could easily solve all our problems both individually and collectively.

Psychology was born from philosophies dating back thousands of years (source). Philosophy is logic. Philosophy is religion stripped of wishful thinking. Philosophy is understanding yourself, other people, the world, and your relationship with the world and other people (source).

“Understanding” means to “stand in the midst of” from Old English understandan meaning “to comprehend, grasp the idea of, receive from a word or words or from a sign the idea it is intended to convey” (Etymology Online).

The answer starts with attention and self-awareness.

According to Kruger and Dunning (1999) without mental tools we can’t see our own incompetence. For example: “hunters who know the least about firearms also have the most inaccurate view of their firearm knowledge, and doctors with the worst patient-interviewing skills are the least likely to recognize their inadequacies” (The more inept you are the smarter you think you are).

There are so many websites endorsing the Dunning-Kruger Effect most people don’t question it, but they should: “Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not Real“. Truth is, if we’re not paying attention, we’re all susceptible to cognitive biases, as in, “systematic errors in thinking.”

Research shows, for example, there is an asymmetry in our thinking towards negativity, meaning, we register the negative more readily and frequently than positive (Negativity Bias).

But on the flip-side, we’re also susceptible to Optimism Bias whereby our brains are overly optimistic. “If,” for example, “you were asked to estimate how likely you are to experience divorce, illness, job loss, or an accident, you are likely to underestimate the probability that such events will ever impact your life” (source).

Positive events lead to feelings of well being, while negative events lead to risky behavior and not taking precautions (source).

Consciousness is being aware of your environment and body. Self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness. Self-awareness is how you understand feelings, motivations and desires (source). Whether you think overly negative or optimistic can depend on your mood. People are less optimistic in a bad mood and more optimistic in a good mood (source).

A mood is a “temporary state of mind or feeling” (Dictionary). Thinking is a way of dealing with moods. We can think our way out of a feeling by finding solutions to meet the need behind that feeling (University of Cape Town).

According to the World History Encyclopedia (2005, p. 409) the first philosopher was Zoroaster (aka Zarathustra) who lived somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BC (source).

Bachi Karkaria’s Zarathushtra (1974) 

Zoroaster praised “Ahura” (Lord) “Mazda” (Wisdom) and founded “Mazdayasna” which means “Worship of Wisdom.” Before the 6th century BC, philosophy and science were not separated from theology which probably explains how Zoroaster, the world’s first philosopher, started the world’s first monotheistic religion (source).

Imagine that! The first monotheistic God was Wisdom itself!

Starting with Pythagoras (570-495 BC)—who, incidentally, first coined the word “philosophy” (source)—Zoroaster’s followers taught ancient Greeks about the love of wisdom (source).

Pythagoras influenced Plato and Aristotle who influenced Western philosophy which influenced Christianity through medieval scholars like Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who developed his own conclusions from Aristotelian ideas. 

Farrokh Bulsara before renaming.

Zoroaster’s religious philosophy is known for its motto ‘Good thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.’ It teaches sharing, generosity and kindness. What could be better? Even the rock star Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) born Farrokh Bulsara got into that.

Zoroaster was also the world’s first proponent of ecology through care of the earth (source).

Let us practice wisdom in thought, word and deed! Let us enjoy thinking, Air and a little ping pong.

We can be lovers of wisdom and save the world, one mind at a time.

Thinking, Being and Plucking

Now we look at three philosophies inspired by death and suffering. Two came from poets—carpe diem and To be or not to be—and one came from a beggar—Life is suffering—who started a religion.

After looking at all three, we’ll think about thinking and end by enjoying.

We begin with carpe diem.

Most people have heard of carpe diem. Robin Williams taught us all about it in Dead Poet’s Society (1989).

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines carpe diem as “the enjoyment of the pleasures of the moment without concern for the future.” Google concurs saying, “used to urge someone to make the most of the present time and give little thought to the future.”

We moderns translate carpe diem as “seize the day.” It is assertive and refers to taking control or possession of something.

Advertisers use the expression to sell products—t-shirts, posters, beauty products, fragrances, necklaces, wine. They like to remind us that one day each and every one of us will be dead so we better buy their product and book that trip now before it’s too late!

In Carpe Diem Regained (2017), philosopher Roman Krznaric said that “seizing” the day brings to mind people who take what they can get and get things done.

It’s the philosophical equivalent of actor Shia LaBeouf screaming at us to “DO IT! JUST DO IT! DON’T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS!“

People use the phrase as a warning or direct order to take charge of your own happiness and make the most of it, but then the question becomes: “How do you carpe diem?”

Carpe diem first appeared in 20 BC in book 1.11 of the Odes by Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC – 8 BC), aka Horace. 

Horace’s poem emphasizes the fleeting nature of time. He says we shouldn’t worry about how long we live or waste time talking (presumably about death). Most translations say Horace told us to “Seize the present; put very little trust in tomorrow (the future)” (Wikipedia). 

Years later Jesus (1-33) is quoted as saying something similar, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matt. 6:34).

No offence.

It’s no surprise that Horace and Jesus advised us not to worry about the future. Life was short in ancient days. If you include infant mortality (and crucifixion), life expectancy in the Roman Empire was about 22–33 years (source).

Trouble is, carpe diem doesn’t actually mean seize the day.

Horace has been lost in translation and distorted by modern culture. According to Latin scholars, carpe diem is really a horticultural metaphor designed to encourage people to enjoy the sensory experience of nature (source).

Funny how nature isn’t part of carpe diem today.

(Then again, maybe it isn’t.)

Carpe this!

Carpe comes from carpō meaning to “pick or pluck” fruit when it’s ready and diem comes from dies which means “day.”

“Pluck the day [as it is ripe]” or “enjoy the moment” is a more accurate translation than “seize,” as in, “take hold of suddenly and forcibly” or “take (an opportunity or initiative) eagerly and decisively.”

It’s a subtle difference but philosophically speaking, it’s huge. Instead of a fist pump to “Seize the day!” and assert one’s will, it’s an open palm receiving what is given by nature (of which we are).

Cue music: “Think About It” by SAULT.

But what if you can’t enjoy the sensory experience of nature? What if you’ve thought yourself into not wanting to live? What then?

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Hamlet asks himself if he should suffer the misery of life (a “sea of troubles”) or should he kill himself (“take arms against a sea of troubles”) to end “heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks.”

But then Hamlet wonders if there is an afterlife, and if there is, what if that afterlife is worse than life?

Source

Hamlet’s question of life and death is a question of existence and nothingness, but according to Harvard professor Jeffrey R. Wilson (2017), “To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be (source). Hamlet could be faking because he knows someone’s listening.

Wilson points out how philosophy and drama are different. Philosophy is about knowing whereas drama is about doing.

Years before Hamlet debated life vs. death and Horace had his horticultural insight as master of a country estate, another aristocrat, Siddhartha Gautama (the “Buddha”) (c. 5th-4th century BC), bummed everybody out with his Noble Truths including: “birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering, union with what is displeasing is suffering, separation from what is pleasing is suffering and not getting what one wants is suffering” (source).

That’s a lot of suffering. You can’t win, so why even try?

According to this philosophy you’re born to suffer, but if you accept that life is crap, you won’t be surprised when it is crappy or expect it to be any other way.

If the Buddha worked in IT.
“Philosophy Tech Support”, Existential Comics 51: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/51

This idea that we cause ourselves suffering by resisting what is, is something Stoics, Epicureans and Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, also discovered.

Gautama maintained that things which cause pleasure eventually fail because when we like something we think about it and we want it again (and again…) and it’s the craving that causes trouble.

The idea is that suffering is created by our craving for pleasure, but if Guatama had an Electroencephalography (EEG) to show brain activity in psychological states, he would see that liking and wanting are in “two different motivation systems in your brain” (source).

Unconscious thinking (System 1) is fast, intuitive, and emotional whereas conscious thinking (System 2) is slower, more deliberative and logical.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman (1934- ) explains how the two systems drive the way we think and make choices. Kahneman challenges the idea that “people are generally rational” because errors arise not just from emotions that can cloud judgement, but from our built-in brain machinery.

If you eat fried chicken, for example, you are conscious of the taste and smell in the present moment, but if you want fried chicken, that wanting could be unconscious because you smelled chicken as you walked by. It’s like a button was pushed in your brain (and you didn’t know).

The trick is to slow thinking down. Forget Hamlet’s mental perambulations and remember Horace’s advice to enjoy nature with your senses. Watch what you’re thinking to identify biases and become aware of what’s going on in your brain and all around.

It’s all interconnected.

Now we dance, eat an apple, and enjoy simply.

Much love.

The Point of Enjoyment 2

As John Steinbeck said in The Winter of Our Discontent, “You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.” Good one John.

So true.

We might not appreciate advice but we’re free to give it. It’s like everyone is saying, “I want what I want! Is that so wrong?” but the world says, “Sorry. You can’t have that—but… you-can-have-this.” 

And we make do (or we make don’t).

Contrary to what we might think, “If you want to avoid repeating history, it’s best not to try to learn from it” (Science Behind Repeating Mistakes).

When a mistake happens, say, “Forget about it” like Donnie Brasco. Sing “Walk On By” with Dionne Warwick and move on. Like the weeping philosopher Heraclitus said in 469 BC, “Everything flows.” Nothing lasts. We’re all a little disappointed.

We all dance a tango with the world. In moments of dissatisfaction and/or lamentation it’s not surprising that we ask, “What’s the point?” and find the point lacking and/or nonexistent.

The psychologist Tim Carey wrote, “It’s a funny thing about the point… we rarely think about the point except in those situations when we question if there is one. Most people… meander through their days… getting on with the business of living by making their lives be the way they want them to be” (What’s the Point?…).

Carey concludes: “We have no objective, irrefutable, immutable point that drives us all except, perhaps, the point of keeping our worlds in the states we are satisfied with” (…life is the point).

Cue music: Les Baxter “Blue Tango” (1952).

The propensity to keep one’s self satisfied reinforces the Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) which states, “Behaviour is the control of perception,” which means: “we do things to get what we want” (PCT).

Seems like a no-brainer.

As it says on the PCT website, “When things are working normally, the person gets to experience what they want to experience. It is just right—like the perfect cup of coffee or tea… the person compares a ‘standard’—what they want—with what they are experiencing right now—their perception” (PCT).

Our brains measure the difference between what we want—a beautiful day—with what we get—mud slides.

The bigger the discrepancy between what we want and what we get, the more effort we put into reducing that discrepancy.

Rather than change our behaviour we vary our behaviour to control sensory inputs. We do this to feel what we want to feel. We adjust our behaviour until everything is just right. We think we should be able to control our careers, relationships, health, finances and so on. It’s a surprise when we’re told we can’t.

Effort does not guarantee success. We need to understand the difference between thinking and being.

It’s like you’re driving a car. Your purpose is to get where you’re going so you avoid potholes. It’s a negative feedback loop. You turn your steering wheel to cancel the negative effects of potholes to your purpose.

You want things “just right.” If the music is too loud or in some way not just right, you change the music, turn it off, suffer or seek escape.

Carey asks, “What is the point of saying “Good morning”? What is the point of a butterfly bursting from its constricting cocoon and fluttering off to find a flower? What is the point of going to school, of turning up to work on time, of going on holidays, of being kind, of asking for skim instead of full cream milk...” What’s the point of anything, really?

The point is there is no point, but that is the point! Everything has a point but if you don’t see it, it is indeed pointless.

The point is what you make because you’re the one pointing!

We are meaning makers and pointers. We see patterns and make connections. It’s apophenia: the “universal human tendency to attribute meaning to perceived connections or patterns and to seek patterns in random information” (source).

The pointillism of a day in the park might be to relax and enjoy, but if you don’t see the point, you won’t.

We want things we don’t have. We don’t have things we want. When we have things we want, they don’t last. We have expectations and attachments that bind us to how we want things to be.

Like good old Siddhartha Gautama said, suffering is caused by our wish for things to be other than the way they are.

Nobody but you feels your you feeling (see Here’s the Thing). Scientific instruments can show brain activity, but they can’t point to your awareness of you-ness and say, “There it is.” Nor can you prove that you are conscious other than to say you are. Your brain may fire and wire together a sandcastle of self, but your mind controls the firing lines.

As Dr. J. Schwartz said, “The brain puts out the call. The mind decides whether to listen” (see slide presentation). The brain is the only organ that you can change (rewire) with conscious attention.

You decide what is and isn’t important. One person loves old cars, another doesn’t. What’s the point of old cars? Nothing. But to the one who enjoys them there is.

What’s the point of a flower? a tree? a you? 

The point of a flower is to flower. The point of a tree is to tree. The point of you is to you. There’s no point other than to be and do whatever it is and does.

Flowering is for reproduction but to sensory perceptions of a sensitive person there’s more to flowers than anatomy. There is beauty but not everybody gets it (if they did, they would). Points are individual.

If swimming has a point, swim. If laughing has a point, laugh. We have expectations and preferences that we continually compare to the current state of our world. When they match, we’re content. When they don’t, we do something to make it “just right.”

Thoughts are like seeds. A seed (thought) contains a plant (new thought) which gives birth to more seeds containing more plants (thoughts) in a cycle. It’s all very useful but it can remove a person from the real world.

What’s pulling your strings has been fashioned by memories, dreams and conditioning (see: “It’s Not Me…). You need an ego identity, but the trouble with our big brain is that we put ourselves into psychological prisons. Reality is not what we think it is. Reality with a capital R is something else entirely.

Prove it to yourself. When you’re done reading, go outside and experience the world with your senses. It’s like cleaning a window of thought grime. Thoughts come and go as you enjoy a timeless dimension that’s always there but obscured by preoccupations.

Just dance.

Don’t overthink it.

All insides have outsides inside something else. Where does it begin? Where does it end? It doesn’t. It’s all you.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Enjoyment, World Peace… and Something Else—Guaranteed!

Let’s mash it. Let’s smash it. Let’s get creative! The meaning of life is in what you make it. Let’s juxtapose a few things. See what happens. Incongruecies can be funny. To smile, to laugh, per chance to enjoy.

Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey in the movie American Beauty (1999), said, “Remember those posters that said, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life‘? Well, that’s true of every day but one—the day you die.” In his closing narration, Lester describes meaningful experiences in his life. Despite his death, Lester is happy because there’s “so much beauty” in the world.

Lester watching stars (final scene.)

The phrase ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life‘ comes from 1960’s wisdom. It now appears in The Walking Dead as, “To our newest undead recruits. Good moaning. Today is the first day of the rest of your afterlife.” 

Kinda funny (not really).

The blogger Craig McKee lists 57 zombie and doomsday movies that came out from 2000 to 2015 (source). To McKee these movies tell us that “living in peace, co-operation, and connectedness with others on this planet is an illusion, a luxury we can’t afford when survival is on the line. In the end, it’s eat or be eaten. The message is that we must be suspicious of each other, mistrustful of each other, isolated from each other, and when it comes down to it, we have to struggle against each other to survive.”

McKee refers to “predictive programming.” It’s a theory about the use of entertainment to “introduce planned societal changes.” Regardless of the theory’s validity, a steady diet of mistrust, fear and violence might not be good. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be” (Mother Night).

Science tells us is that violence is transmitted like a disease (source). Violence begets violence but you can create a world where violence is rare by not being violent. Picture a beautifully interconnected world of trees, birds and flowers, “Tweet, tweet.” Now make a wish and blow out the candle. Wish for world peace, then make it happen.

Don’t look for problems or make complications. Be a wish fulfilled by your actions. Life is a celebration (see also: Enjoy an Interlude). Life is a religious experience. Death isn’t. The only thing we know about death is that it stinks.

When you know that the feeling of consciousness within you is the same as in all you’s including non-human animals, you won’t be bullied or bamboozled into hurting another “you” (like you) and world peace is guaranteed!

People will argue that it’s a crazy idea. Of course, it’s overly simplistic. Enjoying not harming is ridiculous because the world is complicated and people are too self-interested and won’t do it, but therein is the key! Not doing and self-interest are integral! Not doing is easy! World peace is as easy as watching grass grow! Now curl your toes in fun and enjoy it!

Nature happens gloriously as we occupy ourselves in fantasy, mechanized, digital, virtual or otherwise.

“The problem with doing nothing is you never know when you’re finished” –Groucho.

Wide-eyed awareness of one’s mind expanded is the answer. If the past was about groups, mobs, gangs, religions and nations clashing for control, the future belongs to the individual.

It is as the Three Musketeers said, “All for one and one for all on this ecologically interconnected ball we men with big hats and flouncy pants call the world!”

Cue music.

Through enjoyment we make the world better for everyone by not hurting anyone. Life is rare. Our forays into space have said as much.

“I can’t help that. I’ve been chubby all my life” – Frank Cannon, Private Eye.

Like a giddy child, happy in a world of fun, let’s proceed with our Philosophy of Enjoyment investigation. Is there anyone who wouldn’t want to live a happy and enjoyable life—free and healthy, having fun, finding love, doing exciting things, having friends, eating, sleeping, procreating?

Let’s ask: Why are people baffled and baffling? Why is happiness elusive? Why is self-awareness lacking and ignorance in surplus?

“Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter… Life is too serious to do farce comedy” – Buster.

To explain why the world is as it is, the political philosopher Slavoj Žižek (1949- )—a fun Slovenian if ever there was one—takes the idea that individuals are always “split” between what we consciously know and can say about stuff, and the unconscious beliefs we hold of “the big Other” (authority figures and the regime we’re under).

Slavoy zigzags between knowledge and belief saying that we don’t know what “the essence” of “their people” is but our beliefs are decisive (source).

Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Slavoj pontificates in a tub: “The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other… If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.”

Knowledge is objective truth. Belief is subjective truth. Knowledge is thought true because it’s independent of circumstances. Belief is an idea held as true to the individual who holds it but not necessarily to everyone (see also: The Enjoyment Argument).

If you know something is true then you must believe it, but just because you believe it does not make it true! We think in terms of self and other (one or the other) but we’re one together—like one cell in the 37 trillion that make up a human, so you are to the world (source).

The existence of another (a not-self) allows us each to recognize our own self, as in: “Yoo-hoo, I see you! I don’t control your body or hear your thoughts. You are separate. You are not me. Therefore, I am me” (Schalk, 2011).

The self/other (one or the other) division is how a modern person understands who she, he, they is by recognizing what s/he/they is not! But what happens when you identify yourself with another or when you behave differently than you typically act causing you to appear as other to yourself?

Reality is not a matter of consensus. As the author Johann von Goethe (1749-1832) said, “Behaviour is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.”

Enjoy good humor and Jonathan’s wisdom.

Sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) said that there is no reality without the colour of our wishes and fear. “Reality is what one does not perceive when one perceives it” (source).

Your mission, should you choose to accept it (hear that music!), is to start a nuclear fusion of enjoyment worldwide (with or without ice cream). You can perceive reality differently by consciousness-raising right here.

Right now.

It’s a gentle click of understanding when you enjoy reality imagined.

The Art of Love And Enjoyment Incarnate

“Spirit of Love,” by Paul Horton (source).

Most people would probably say that love is something you “fall into.” It’s like a butterfly landing on your finger. You can’t make it happen. People say the same of enjoyment. It too is thought of as something that happens to you (if you’re lucky) like a butterfly landing, but such notions are perpetuated by a misunderstanding. Love and enjoyment are not things you fall into (if you’re lucky) like uncovered manholes. There’s an art to it.

Happy feelings that make life worth living don’t just hit unbidden. You cultivate them. Love and enjoyment are nurtured with attention, authenticity and self-understanding. You can learn how to love and enjoy. They are capacities. You are the soil prepared for good feelings to grow.

Enjoyment is like an origami swan you learn how to fold. It’s an art that takes honesty, humour and heart.

To capitalize on our craving, love and enjoyment are used in product branding. Advertisers use the words “love” and “enjoy” interchangeably. To say, “I’m loving it!” is another way of saying, “I enjoy!“

Ask yourself: Is it possible to love without enjoying or enjoy without loving?

Probably not.

To enjoy without love is to sully our yearning. Cue music: “Enjoy Yourself (It’s later than you think”).

People are starved for love and enjoyment. They knock themselves out to feel glorious. Entire religions and new consciousness movements revolve around dissolving one’s ego so as to feel a beautiful oneness like a fetus back inside mother before birth created the problem of identity.

Look at how people spend money each year: online dating in the U.S. — two billion dollars (source); illegal drugs worldwide — 360 billion dollars (source); entertainment industry in the U.S. — 720.38 billion dollars (source); global travel and tourism — 7.6 trillion dollars (source). People think they can buy their way into a feeling no product or service can provide.

People see the problem of love as being loved (as opposed to being loving) and the problem of enjoyment as about finding something fun to do (as opposed to being living organism enjoyment life in total  profound awareness).

Gherardo delle Notti o Gheritt van Hontorst – Adorazione del Bambino, January 1620 (source).

To be lovable, men try to appear successful primarily through money, status and sex appeal while women do likewise, both with a focus on appearances – bodies, clothes and accessories (unless that’s just a stereotype).

Popular stand-up comedians often say what people keep hidden and people laugh because they know it’s true. Comedian Chris Rock said (between expletives), “If you haven’t contemplated murder, you ain’t been in love.” Why? “Because,” Rock says, “Try your best to make her happy, but here’s what nobody tells you: You can’t make a woman happy. It’s impossible!”

Ugly Date, Linda Causey, 2005 (source)

People assume the problem of love and enjoyment is one of an object. They don’t see it as a problem of knowledge and ability. They think love and enjoyment is simple. The problem isn’t with one’s self but with finding the right object to love and enjoy. This attitude is rooted in our society’s idea of buying and mutually agreeable exchanges (Fromm, 1956).

Two people fall in love when they think they’ve found the best object available on the market given exchange limitations. They were strangers (as all of us are) until they let the wall between down and then they feel a miraculous oneness. Neither person feels alone, but those feelings of intimacy fade as antagonism, mutual boredom and disappointment kill the initial feelings of excitement.

Painted by blind artist John Bramblitt (2015).

The only way to overcome this failure is to understand the meaning of love and enjoyment. The first step is to be aware of how love and enjoyment are art forms.

When we’re born, we’re thrown from a situation that’s definite into one that’s uncertain.

We’re born with the gift of reason. We’re life aware of itself. We’re aware of our self, of our fellows, of our past and possible future.

Not insane. Just misunderstood.

Awareness of your self as a separate entity can feel like a prison. You know life is short. You know that you will die against your will before those you love or they before you. People who can’t escape their aloneness by uniting with others and the world tend to go insane. The panic of absolute isolation can be overcome only by a radical withdrawal from the outside world so the feeling of isolation disappears as the world disappears.

Then again, as Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) said, “A sane person to an insane society must appear insane” (Welcome to the Monkey House, 1968).

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is'” (15 Vonnegut quotes).

The feeling of being separate is the source of all anxiety. Love is the only answer. With love comes enjoyment. Feeling separate cuts us off from human powers. Feeling separate is to be helpless. Our separation is represented in the story of Adam and Eve.

After they ate of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” they became human. They were emancipated from an animal harmony with nature. They became strangers to each other as is shown by how Adam blames Eve instead of defending her.

Our deepest need is to overcome separateness. It’s why we conform. It’s why we cling to cults, clans and nations. It’s why we participate in the herd activities of sports, politics and drug-fuelled electronic dancing.

We enjoy connection over isolation. We love to belong to something bigger than our self. We used to be God’s children. We shared a divine substance that made us one and yet separate like a flowered cosmos, but equality has changed. Equality is becoming “sameness” between genders and people instead of “oneness.”

The greatest enjoyment is found in transcending one’s self in a moment of feeling at one with everything, but only a true non-conformist can overcome today’s spirit of a production oriented, materialistic society run by a managers, professional politicians and billionaires.

Garry Shandling (1949-2016) – another great comic with heart – said, “All my journey is, is to be authentically who I am – not trying to be somebody else…. The whole world is confused because they’re trying to be somebody else! To be your true self, it takes enormous work… Ego drives the problems so you have to work in an egoless way” (source).

Like the Kinks said, “I’m not like anybody else” but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy unity. Reach out. Love and enjoyment are what this philosophy is about! We’ll always be the child we were. It’s behind the eyes of another when you look at the world with love.

Enjoy. Practice the art of love and enjoyment.

References

Fromm, E. (1956). The Art of Loving. Harper & Row, Publishers.

Enjoy A Space For Happiness

The question to ask of a philosophy is not whether it is original but whether it is true (Cicero, 45 BC). A philosophy of enjoyment is based on the premise that you know what is true by way of experience. In the same way that you know fear by having been afraid, you know enjoyment by having have enjoyed.

Happiness and enjoyment are related but where enjoyment is temporary, happiness is durable. If enjoyment is the journey, happiness is the destination. If tears of happiness come from the heart, tears of enjoyment come from the belly from laughing. If enjoyment comes as a carefree feeling, happiness comes mainly from caring.

Enjoyment and happiness can be tested for validity. It’s a “proof of the pudding is in the eating” type thing – like in the movie Scrooge (1951) where nuances of happiness and enjoyment in relation to pudding are revealed.

Tiny Tim looks forward to pudding. His mother worries that it won’t be any good but his father, Bob Cratchit, assures her that it will be perfect because he knows the merit of the pudding is incidental in relation to the love they enjoy together.

It’s a John Donne (1572-1631), “No man is an island entire unto itself” type thing – or as Robin Williams put it, “No man is an island but some are peninsulas.“

“Man On Desert Island” by JGZON.

The Cratchit family in A Christmas Carol (1843) is poor and happy. Scrooge is rich and unhappy. A church moralist might say that if Scrooge had virtue, he wouldn’t have been miserable. The moral: with virtue comes happiness. But the philosopher Freddy Nietzsche said that it’s the other way ’round! A happy man is naturally virtuous. The moral: with happiness comes virtue.  

“Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment – a little makes the way of the best happiness” ~ Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Nietzsche said that church moralists say, “Do this and that, refrain from this and that – then you will be happy! Otherwise…” but if you watch a happy man, you will see how he carries happiness into relationships in ways that make him virtuous.

In Twilight of the Idols (1888) Nietzsche wrote, “Every mistake in every sense is the effect of the degeneration of instinct…All that is good is instinct – and hence easy, necessary, free.”

Observe animals. Feel natural. Ever notice how a reality of rocks, clouds, birds and trees becomes boring to people? Why does this happen?

Why doesn’t reality blow us away like it did when we were children?

A little cock-sparrow sat on a high tree … And he chirrupped, he chirrupped so merrily.

There was a time when the world perceived with our senses was not named. That’s when the world was your miracle and will be again.

Just listen. Don’t say a word about what you hear. Going into the space between one thought and another is like splitting the atom.

Nothing blows up but consciousness opens.

As long as you remain an airy nothing in reality, you are an angel in a space called heaven. Space is nothing but a continuous expanse of height, depth and width that is free and unoccupied within which all things (including you) exist and move. Space is within you. Space is infinite. It’s within and around everything you see and don’t see.

“Space: the final frontier.” To be “spaced out” is to be stupefied in quietude as if from a drug. It’s when words in your brain fall silent. It’s when you’re aware of yourself in a now state of mind that is free.

Contrary to what manufacturers of desire and discontent spin, it doesn’t take much to be happy. More than what would satisfy a sparrow is superfluous. A wish for happiness is a will for perfection (source) but a wish will only become reality through an effort of will. It’s a “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” type thing.

A quick trick to make a wish for happiness come true is to enjoy whatever comes to you.

Nietzsche admired Epicurus’s idea of a happy life, “A little garden, figs, a little cheese and in addition three or four good friends – these were the sensual pleasures of Epicurus” (source). To Epicurus and Nietzsche happiness comes  from a modest existence cultivated with “spiritual joyfulness” (Freudigkeit) and not over-indulgence.

In the end, it isn’t a matter of getting what you want. Can you make yourself want something? Can you will yourself to want something? Wants come unannounced. Ask yourself, “Why do I want this?” again and again and you might find the reason for wanting is a habit of mind.

Here we think about time and space – not time as in a rotation of the world or as in a chronological birthday countdown increasing in number. Here we think about enjoying for reasons of happiness and a better world because just as the band Crowded House sang it in 1992, “Everywhere you go you always take the weather with you.” You effect your surroundings by the person you are. Lighten up and love one another without fault-finding.

Enjoy a new you in old shoes (or an old you in new shoes). See the baby that was in the eyes of a grown up other. Here’s to the love in everyone!

References

Nietzsche’s Therapeutic Teaching: For Individuals and Culture (2013) edited by Horst Hutter, Eli Friedland.

Ansell-Pearson, K. (2013). Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing: Nietzsche and the Epicurean Tradition.

The Point of Enjoyment

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” ~ Lewis Carroll

A point, whether of an idea, joke or tapered object, is always arrived at in the immediate. You get the point when you get the point. Even if you don’t get the point right away, when you do get it, you get it at a precise moment.

In the game of darts you get points by getting the point of your dart to stick to a point aimed at, but over and above the mechanics of the game the real point is to enjoy it.

But why? Why do we enjoy what we do?

Lawn darts were enjoyed in the 1980s: 6,700 people were treated in hospital and three children died.

Science says that enjoyment is a matter of brain chemistry. A characteristic of people with depression and mental illness is anhedonia: an inability to gain pleasure from normally pleasurable experiences.

Art by Murfish.

Brain expert Dr. Stuber PhD might say (and did), “GABA neurons located in the VTA are just microns away from dopamine and are negative regulators of dopamine function… A dysfunction in these GABA neurons might potentially underlie different aspects of neuropsychiatric illness, such as depression” (UNC Healthcare).

Psychologists treat happiness as if it’s mysterious. They recommend working on a meaningful career, spending time with friends, savoring the day and so on, but happiness doesn’t come from outside.

Assuming your GABA neurons aren’t buzz-killing dopamine release, there are as many ways to enjoy as there are people but it boils down to one thing: We enjoy what we enjoy (because we enjoy it).

It’s circular – like Donna Summer singing, “Love to love you baby.”

X is true because of Y. Y is true because of X. We dance because it’s enjoyable. It’s enjoyable because we dance. We play to have fun and have fun when we play. If we’re forced to play, it isn’t play anymore. It’s emotion first, then realization and confabulation.

“Now we dance.“

If the point of enjoyment is to enjoy, the question is: What is the meaning of true enjoyment? This was asked in Quora (a question-and-answer site) and people responded. (Note: names have been changed to protect the anonymous).

Tommy said enjoyment is, “Celebrating life, not one’s life; just life!”  Dieter said enjoyment is, “Living the moment.”

Sally listed enjoyments: “Looking at the smile of a new born baby. Eating Mango by plucking and stealing it from an orchard. Getting wet in rain without bothering about getting wet.”

Simon says, “Enjoy!”

Simon said, “Everyone has different meaning of enjoyment! They have different source of enjoyment but for me … it’s something which I do for myself!”

And there it is.

Maybe there’s a little Simon in all of us. There’s just something about one’s self that makes it special to one’s self. To you, there’s no you quite like you.

Psychologists say it’s good to love one’s self. Why, if there was no you – no you as a living organism with thoughts and feelings in an environment – there would be…what?

But vain self-importance blocks the flow of enjoyment like crimping a garden hose. When things don’t go the way we want, we’re unhappy so the trick is to loosen up and enjoy what you get (see post: Is it serious?).

We have a limited idea of who we are. Yes, we are each a bag of skin crowned by a cranium, but do we end in skin? What about air in lungs and energy from the sun in our bellies? Going into atoms we see nothing there – just energy waves. We’re energy waves. Not that this matters when you stub your toe, but a “hard” world is softened with a realization of how interconnected and diaphanous (light and insubstantial) this all is.

Philosopher Alan Watts saw interconnections, saying, “where there are no flowers there are no bees, and where there are no bees there are no flowers. They’re really one organism” (Conversation With Myself).

A dandelion seed has fine hairs allowing it to ride on the wind. The wind is, in a manner of speaking, a part of itself. Why do advertisers associate their product with love and happiness? It isn’t the product in itself that we want: it’s the feeling the product is said to impart.

What you love is what you enjoy. Enjoyment is a one step process: Express love for something and you are happy.

Author of The Element (2009), Ken Robinson, said, “To be in your element you have to love it… Being good at something is not a good enough reason to do it…It’s about finding the thing that resonates within you most fully” (see Ken Robinson video).

There’s a little verse from an ancient Hindu text called the Rig Veda that tells of the tree of life and two birds. One bird eats the tree’s fruit (some good some bad) and the other watches. They represent two aspects of ourselves. We are the bird eating – we participate in the action of life (killing and eating), experiencing joy and sorrow – but in contemplation, we are the second bird who watches. The trick is to be aware of the second bird watching the first bird participating.

You walk into a forest and suddenly you are struck by the wonder of this place. You feel the mystery of being and life itself. A cedar waxwing flies by. That such a creature should be there! That the universe should be here! That’s something that excites you to wonder. Take a deep breath and simply enjoy (see also: The Point of Enjoyment 2).

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.

Enjoy Love

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. And then one fine morning—  So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, p. 180)

The “single green light” on Daisy’s dock that Gatsby gazed at from his house across the water represents an “unattainable dream.” It is the dream that seems close but can’t be grasped. It represents the hazy future, forever elusive. The green light is Gatsby’s dream of Daisy in the past, but then, if it is of her in the past, how does it represent the future too? Is the future tied to our dreams of the past?

We wander as we wonder, “What is that green glow?”

A philosophy of enjoyment is about enjoying life through a special kind of awareness but if enjoyment is the purpose of life, doesn’t this philosophy give a green light to selfish behaviour?

In a word: Not at all.

What interests people most? Themselves. Centuries of navel gazing prove it. A starting point for enjoyment is your self – not self as it is normally thought: a brain encased in skin like a car in a garage, but a self imagined (like air).

When asked, “What is the self illusion?” writer Sam Harris observed that the self is not what it seems. “The self illusion explains so many aspects of human behavior as well as our attitudes toward others. When we judge others, we consider them responsible for their actions. But was Mary Bale, the bank worker from Coventry who was caught on video dropping a cat into a garbage can, being true to her self? Or was Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic rant being himself or under the influence of someone else?” (Psychology Today, 2012).

Harris isn’t saying we should throw out our rule books, but to understand psychological factors that control behaviours.

We often think of ourselves as our car, our clothes, our job, our house, our country, our uniform, our gender, our age… our body. This has always been the case throughout history. We get caught up in material things.

But when you are lost in gazing at the moon, who are you? Who is the real you – the you who was a child – the secret you – the true you? Who are you when you’re asleep? As Suzanne Little sang in You, “There’s something about you’s not too bad.”

There’s just one thing to do. Look at your self and in mental stillness ask, “Who is my ‘I’?” When angry ask, “Who is angry?” When sad, ask, “Who is sad?”

Instead of ‘self-ish‘ in the dictionary sense of: “lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure” and instead of ‘self-ish’ in the sense of adding an “ish” suffix to say that something is somewhat x (largish, rockish, selfish), this philosophy encourages stepping into natural places to ask, “Who am I?” until the last “I” thought vanishes. And when it does, something beautiful happens.

The world changes. You free yourself from problems and woe can’t touch you.

Chatty professors Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari stretch the idea of animal-human boundary not to encourage a metamorphosis like in that scene in American Werewolf in London (1981) but to achieve a “non-identity” which to them is a condition of freedom.

Most people think rocks are inanimate, but writer David Abram (Becoming Animal An Earthly Cosmology, 2010) says that to a person alive to her animal senses, a rock is “first and foremost another body engaged in the world.” Abram writes:

“You are silent, puzzling. I see you gaze back at the rock face now, questioning it, feeling the looming sweep of its bulk within your torso, listening with your muscles and the quiet composition of your bones for what this old, sculpted presence might wish to add to the conversation… The stillness, the quietude of this rock is its very activity, the steady gesture by which it enters and alters your life.”

Imagine coming upon a rock on the road. You see it. You smell mud and exhaust. You hear two-leggeds and feel the patter of rain. You have a conscious experience from a first-person point of view that isn’t limited to your senses – thought, emotion and imagination are part of it too because you are “part of what it is for the experience to be experienced and part of what it is for the experience to be“ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Phenomenology).

Plato once said, “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” This is not a reasonable philosophy. It’s a love philosophy.

To most people, most of the time, love is selective. It’s personal. It’s based on contact with people and things that please us, but if you go mentally quiet, there’s an all encompassing and unconditional love that can hit you in unexpected moments.

It’s like seeing the world as a basket of baby bunnies. You go unreasonable and love everything. You see the baby in everyone’s eye. It’s a great love that comes from knowing that everyone is worthy. It’s like that opening scene in Love Actually (2003) where the narrator, Hugh Grant, says, “Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport…. Seems to me that love is everywhere” (opening scene Heathrow airport).

And it is.