Saturday, April 3, 2010

Happiness

I think that most of us are more concerned with "How do I get to be happy?" than with "What is actually happiness?" and more importantly we get caught in this game of definitions and forget to enjoy every moment of our lives.

Dr. Rao tells us a bit about mental maps and the way we have constructed the concept of happiness.
http://www.ted.com/talks/srikumar_rao_plug_into_your_hard_wired_happiness.html

Then Dr. Kahneman tries to show us how we manage to mess up our happiness moments and explains some things about experience and memory.



These very smart gentlemen present valid issues in human lives, since the beginning of our species' quest for the best. We strive daily to get more of everything and in the end we are left with the hole of wanting even more or wanting something different.

How many times did/do we say "I need a change", or "I need to do that in order to...", or "Starting tomorrow, or Monday, or day X I will..."?

I think I say stuff like that to myself everyday, but the moments that are truly meaningful to me are most of the time not buried in my head, but outside my mind. Moments like the clouds under the plane while coming from a great trip, or admiring Lake Como with nice friends, or the laughter of a child near Lake Lugano, or playing War with two packs of cards and a funny friend in a McD's in Milan.

All these were things that I enjoyed and I cannot enjoy anymore because they passed.

We need to enjoy life more before all our existence becomes but a memory.