Computation of Time from Down Under
My aunt sent us from Melbounre among other wedding gifts a clock that has the shape of Australia. My daughter was very happy because she could tell me the time without having to refer to boring digits: “it’s long Darwin short Sydney” I must admit that it took me some time (and a walk to the mao) until I grasped the deeper meaning of this announcement. (Yes, it was 5 p.m.)
My aunt sent us from Melbourne a clock that has the shape of Australia. My daughter was very happy because she could tell me the time without having to refer to boring digits: “it’s long Darwin short Sydney”
I must admit that it took me some time (and a walk to the map) until I grasped the deeper meaning of this announcement. (Yes, it was 5 p.m.)
An Eye for Accidental Happiness
I have designed dozens of training courses and workshops and delivered hundreds of them, yet my all time favorite is “Crucial Conversations”, which I have delivered all over the world. One of the authors, Kerry Patterson, publishes his monthly musings under the title “Kerrying on” in VitalSmart’s newsletter and I have been downloading his podcasts regularly for a few years now. (Anyone can sign up for their newsletter on their site http://www.vitalsmarts.com/ ) I have got to like and appreciate his dry humor and warm, practical wisdom and can hardly wait to get a fresh dose of them.
In the last one, entitled “Tombstone Talk” Kerry Patterson talks about those unexpected moments of accidental happiness that I also mention in my book “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” called “serendipity.” Kerry realized that “the secret of happiness lies in recognizing joy when it comes.” His advice reminds me of the urgent recommendation Kurt Vonnegut left us behind:
“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.’”
Kerry admits a fact I also have been experiencing more and more often: “Now that I’m growing older, I’m getting better at spotting such unlikely and lovely experiences. I no longer look past the little snippets of life in quest of the big, trumpeted events. I look for what I want.”
What he and I imply is that your eyes and minds have to be trained by experience and motivation to pick out those snippets of happiness, recognize them for what they are and cherish them. The most successful training school for our eyes and minds I know of is Epicurus’s happiness-acknowledging mind-training school. It has been staying open day and night for 2300 years and it is easy to find if you know what you want.
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tags
Kerry Patterson, Crucial Conversations”, Kurt Vonnegut, serendipity, happiness, Epicurus
I have designed dozens of training courses and workshops and delivered hundreds of them, yet my all time favorite is “Crucial Conversations”, which I have delivered all over the world. One of the authors, Kerry Patterson, publishes his monthly musings under the title “Kerrying on” in VitalSmart’s newsletter and I have been downloading his podcasts regularly for a few years now. (Anyone can sign up for their newsletter on their site http://www.vitalsmarts.com/ ) I have got to like and appreciate his dry humor and warm, practical wisdom and can hardly wait to get a fresh dose of them.
In the last one, entitled “Tombstone Talk” Kerry Patterson talks about those unexpected moments of accidental happiness that I also mention in my book “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” called “serendipity.” Kerry realized that “the secret of happiness lies in recognizing joy when it comes.” His advice reminds me of the urgent recommendation Kurt Vonnegut left us behind:
“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.’”
Kerry Patterson admits a fact I also have been experiencing more and more often: “Now that I’m growing older, I’m getting better at spotting such unlikely and lovely experiences. I no longer look past the little snippets of life in quest of the big, trumpeted events. I look for what I want.”
What he and I imply is that your eyes and minds have to be trained by experience and motivation to pick out those snippets of happiness, recognize them for what they are and cherish them. The most successful training school for our eyes and minds I know of is Epicurus’s happiness-acknowledging mind-training school. It has been staying open day and night 2300 years and it is easy to find if you know what you want.
Scientists never tire of churning out ever “newer” findings about happiness, like e.g.
“5 Reliable Findings from Happiness Research”
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/04/10/5-reliable-findings-from-happiness-research/
This is the comment I made on their site:
The students who started attending Epicurus’s school-communities 2300 years ago and kept on building their lives on practicing his teachings uninterrupted for over 800 years would have smiled heartily at the “newness” of the never-ending row of “evidence” in support of opinions that used to be are self-evident for them. Although Epicureans have never referred to the achievability of happiness in percental terms, they knew and know that we can change some things (basically our attitude) and we cannot change other things. They knew that human relationships were the alpha and the omega of happiness and therefore they cultivated friendship in their communities and their couple relationships. And they knew what Scattycat stressed in his comment and what Democritus propagated before Epicurus:
“At one and the same time we must philosophize, laugh, and manage our household and other business.”
