"There's only one hard and fast rule in running: sometimes you have to run one hard and fast."








Thursday, October 27, 2011

Coping Is a Poor Substitute for Happiness

This blog will return to normal Monday, whether or not I do.

10 comments:

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

Ahhh! Shooting for happiness! There's your problem.

The Koch brothers, billionaires both, are actively funding all those anti-union and anti-worker governors out there in your neck of the woods, i.e., Teh (HYPHENATED) Mid-West; they are funding junk science "studies" that try to deny the reality of global warming ... there's no end to the list of fucktarded things these guys are willing to spend their money on.

Why?

Because they're profoundly unhappy. Yeah, they're rich and they get everything they want and they're above the law (they've actively done business with groups that are on the State Department's Terrorist list, which would get YOUR ass killed by an Obama-drone, if YOU even talked to any such group) ...

... yet despite the fact that they are, by any objective measure, two of the most privileged people in the world, they are obviously profoundly unhappy. I mean, you don't waste your time and money on trying to "Stop Teh Socialists Who Are Out To Get You" unless you really believe they are out to get you and are made profoundly unhappy by that "fact".

That there is the Koch brothers in a nutshell.

So ... if billionaires who are so outrageously privileged that they could probably get away Hunting The Most Dangerous Game - MAN! - (and for all we know, probably have done so already) ... aren't "happy" ...

What chance do you have?

In your defense, you don't have all the reasons to be happy that they do. (Neither do I. Fuckin' Hell ... who does?) So at least your unhappiness is earned.

But the point is ... happiness? All the time?

Forget about attaining that.

Just shoot for not being unhappy and take comfort in the fact that you're not Two Douchebags, like the Koch brothers. Hell, you're not even one.

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

Also take comfort in the fact that the latest attempt by the Koch brothers to buy a study that "disproved" global warming came back affirming it!

Hahahahaha! Better luck this weekend, guys, when you hunt down that homeless dude on your private island! Maybe THAT will make you "happy"!

Anonymous said...

Steve - Coping can be a bridge to happiness.

Michael Henze

Funny I have no idea who Galven is, but he seems a cynical unhappy man himself.

PiccolaPineCone said...

Ahh crap. I'm sorry. It'll get better. But I know that that doesn't help in the here and now.

Keith said...

Gee, GQH, that was a rant worthy of your own blog, and you WASTED it on comments in someone else's blog.

The problem with those billionaires, is they can't get over the few people that have even MORE money than them. So they spend money, treating it as an investment, trying to make things worse for everybody else, in hopes that by cutting pay to union people, for example, their businesses will make even more money. Or by funding the global warming studies, they are hoping to make it possible for their industries to continue spewing pollutants into the air.

As for happiness, it's purely an internal thing. People in dire circumstances can be happy, people on top of the world by any standard can be unhappy. It's all in how you look at it. I take the position that things could always be worse, and try to take enjoyment and happiness where I can.

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

About the only thing that could vitiate this World Series for me is if tonight's game - the deciding seventh game - were to be a blow out for either team. I want the Rangers to win, yeah, but even the Cardinals' winning it wouldn't be worse than a game seven laugher. This great series deserves a great ending. It seriously has me looking forward to the Phillies' 2012 season already.

Cynical, unhappy victim of others' dyslexic (or semi-literate?) letter transpositions that I obviously be, I would be disappointed even if it were the Rangers who were to win in a blow out. If the Phils were in this series, yeah, I'd want a blow out. (Is that cynical of me?) But only a blow out in favor of the Phillies. (Surely that smacks of cynicism!) I'd say a Phillies WS loss would make me more unhappy than a blow out, but wouldn't that be redundant of (already-unhappy) me? (Geez! Pointing out that redundancy is so cynical!)

In any case, baseball is one of the diversions life affords us to stave off the unhappiness, I guess. At the risk of sounding a-cynical, I'd say it even affords us moments of genuine happiness - the way hunting the homeless does for the truly odious Koch brothers.

O, there's that cynicism again!

By the way, not only do I pronounce J.J. Putz's name "Puhts" instead of "Poots", I naturally call those two brothers the "Cocks" not the "Cokes". The former is a more fitting pronunciation, don't you think?

Anonymous said...

I find that when I stop trying to be happy, I end up having moments of happiness. It's like van Gogh liked to point out - sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

The only reason I was right about the Cards winning is ... I didn't want them to. I wanted a good last game, too, and didn't even get that.

But you - you should be happy. You wanted the Cards, right?

Nolan Ryan looked so unhappy at the end. I cheered myself by imagining that was Dubya.

Has it snowed there yet? We got 3-5 inches or so and it snowed big wet flakes for over 12 hours. Even our Fat Teahdist Governor had to declare a state of emergency. The wet snow tore about 5 big limbs off our poor magnolia tree.

Did we beat MN with the snow this year?

sea legs girl said...

Totally unrelated, I thought of you when I woke up this morning because I had a dream that I got to the last technical section of Voyageur and found a long rope hanging from a tree that allowed me to swing over the river to the finish line and avoid the whole last part. It must have been the picture on your blog that some how made that dream happen. Odd.

I have to disagree with Glaven (that's actually quite rare). Happiness is underrated. Happiness should be everyone's goal.

Deb said...

Does it help at all knowing that you're making other people happy? Because you do - I look forward to your posts, and they almost always put a smile on my face.

Hang tough.