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.

Moods, Will and the Meaning of Being

It was the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) who said in Being and Time (1927) that there are ways of understanding things other than intellectually (Crtichley, 2001).

Before a person has a theoretical reaction, a thought or a thunk (past tense of think), there is an emotional mood. Everyone is always in some sort of mood. Right now your mood could be excited or indifferent, interested or bored.

Your mood could be open to enjoyment like a 24 hour diner or closed like a bank after 5 PM. It’s a matter of will and 1-2-3:

1. will yourself (to enjoy)
2. take action (or inaction as a wise philosopher would)
3. happy possibility

The first step is a matter of will. The philosopher Schopenhauer used “will” in the same sense as words like “desire”, “striving” and “wanting”. He held that all nature (including man) is the expression of an insatiable will to life and he thought that it’s through will that mankind finds suffering.

You might think that if desire (or will) is what causes suffering (as a lot of Buddhists do), remove the desire or will and suffering ceases but the desire to remove desire is another desire. You can’t desire not to desire. That’s desire. So the trick is not to desire not to desire (that can’t be done). Use desire to your advantage.

Counter the view of will = suffering with these simple words of wisdom: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Will enjoyment. Will a good life. Pay attention to moods. Work with them and don’t deny them.

The way a person sees something is as much determined by one’s mood as it is by what one thinks about what one sees. Moods are first. An image can elicit a happy response or the opposite.

Let’s say you had an argument. You’re mood is angry and sad. You know life is short. You take action. You go into nature (wherever that happens to be) and you see a sunset.

In an angry mood sunsets are meaningless but if you relax into beauty a bad mood fades. If you think, “This too shall pass,” a sunset that was meaningless becomes sublime. You can become the sunset seeing itself. Stop. Do nothing. It’s a matter of time. Being takes time.

Moods aren’t just feelings to colour your mental life. Moods are the way each of us experiences life in this world. Moods are connected to our very being.

The biggest question for lots of philosophers, has been the question of the meaning of being a human being (try saying that fast!). The question of the meaning of your being a human being can’t be reduced to a scientific study. How do you explain the meaning of your being?

To Heidegger the basic idea of being is simple: being is time. And time, well, it comes to you with your birth and ends with your death. If you want to understand what it means to be a human being, try projecting your life onto the horizon of your death (Critchley, 2015).

Philosophy is the love of wisdom. As a philosopher of enjoyment, you are sensitive to the wisdom found in the enjoyment of living – good and bad. For most ancient philosophers including Socrates (or “Socks” as they called him in high school), the wisdom that philosophy taught was how to lead a good human life. For the ancients, a good human life was a happy one.

To be wise, your aim (and will) should be to enjoy being. Why not? Life is a waltz. The waltz of living. Don’t look at your feet. 1-2-3, 1-2-3. 1-2-3. Enjoyment is the thing.