buy nothing days as exercise for freedom
I have just read an interesting interview Jules Evans did way back in 2002 with Kalle Lasn, the founder of Adbusters, which is a Vancouver-based collective of ‘culture jammers’, and the inventors of Buy Nothing Day:
http://www.politicsofwellbeing.com/2011/06/kalle-lasn-founder-of-adbusters-on.html?spref=fb
Ancient Epicureans had up to 30 “buy nothing days” a month. Even wealthy Roman Epicureans reserved 3-7 days a month for austerity: they slept on the hard floor and ate only bread and drank only water. The sense of this exercise was to keep up their faith in the doctrine that what [is thought by most people as] hard is in fact easy to put up with. It showed them that they can be happy without their belongings, supplies and services – a state pretty often achieved in cases when the emperor wanted their property for his friends and exiled them.
I had periods in my life when I had to live on extremely meager resources and I can say that this fact never affected my mental well being. Even if I don’t need to convince myself of this fact I still keep a bread-and-water day every now and then, just as a reminder of one of the techniques of stress-FREEDOM.
thinky AND crafty
Tomorrow one of my Australian cousins will come to see us for a few days.
While munching our English muffins on the back porch my daughter told me about the present she is going to make for my cousin. I told her that I admired her rare capacity to think up the kind of present that would make a person happy and then manufacturing it.
“I am a thnky and crafty person” said she “and I like to see the happy faces people make when they get a present from me”.
Details with photo about the typically Wisconsinite present will follow as soon it will be confectioned. I will have to find a toilet paper roll, though, so she can get started on the crafty part.
My Daily Birthday Cake Today
Since I started celebrating my re-birthday every day I developed a kind of private birthday party. I usually get up between 5 and 6 and get hungry around 7 in the morning while most of my family is still asleep. I get out a deep frozen blueberry bagel, thaw it and toast it. Then I put little pieces of unsalted butter on the halves and watch them melt.
Today the ritual was specially rewarding due to the sunrays falling on the butter. It looked like it was the sunrays that melted the butter.
The warmth of the bagels, its color and texture, the sight and the smell of the melting butter formed a complex sensual symphony, a hymn to the new morning.
Satisfiers (PP27)
Here’s sequel 27 of my Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” (from Chapter 4: SATISFIERS)
Satisfiers
You may not need a review of the preceding two sections (Needs and Desires), but I do:
- We have fundamental needs, including nutrition, oxygen, affection, sex, and sleep.
- We have the no-less important needs for shelter and safety, love and belonging, and respect.
- We have desires that by themselves are neither good nor bad. Rather, their “goodness” or “badness” is judged by the consequences of the method we choose to fulfill them.
Satisfaction of needs and desires is necessary for our quality of life, including our need to achieve our potential as healthy and self-reliant human beings.
We will define satisfier as:
Any agent capable of fulfilling a need or desire; the agent can be a material object, a situation, a service, a fantasy, an action or an event
We won’t distinguish between needs and desires in our exploration of satisfiers. Whether they are one or the other isn’t relevant for this discussion.
Remember the Epi-test in the Desires section, the “Are-You-Really-Sure-You-Want-to-Do-This” test with its three questions?
- What shall I gain by gratifying this desire?
- What shall I lose by suppressing it?
- Will indulging this desire cause pain and discomfort or anxiety for me or others?
None of us wants to apply Epicurus’s criteria to every decision we want to make. It would grow mighty tiresome to pull over to the side of the road so we can consider the effect of saturated fats on our arteries or the possibility of staining a nice shirt with a drip of Chunky Monkey if we occasionally want to satisfy a desire for ice cream on a hot day.
Likewise, even if you know you always wake up with a bad headache after drinking red wine, you may decide to throw caution to the wind and have a glass or two on a special occasion if your need for belonging overtakes your conscience. (I think I hear Epicurus saying, “Suit yourself, pal. At least you have aspirin. We never did.”)
To read my complete Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” go to http://stressfreedomguide.com/
I am proud of my friends
I don’t believe pride is an emotion anybody should be proud of experiencing if
“pride is an inward directed emotion that exemplifies either a high sense of one’s personal status or ego (i.e., leading to judgments of personality and character) or the specific mostly positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection.” (Wikipedia)
Especially Epicureans should be ashamed of it and work hard at getting rid of it as soon as possible since its ugly head indicates an over-inflated ego or a dangerous vulnerability to praise. If independent self-reflection should lead to pride one ought to improve one’s self-reflective skills. Urgently.
I can’t help feeling proud of my friends, though.
It took me over forty years to understand that I don’t understand the correlation between my needs, my desires and the way I satisfy those desires, resulting in stressing myself, my friends and family, my coworkers and supervisors, clients and suppliers. It took me another five years to read all the relevant books on Epicurean life techniques and happiness studies to work my way out of the jungle and another five years to hone my tools by using them to set people free of their self-defeating beliefs and unhealthy habits and help them dismantle the walls they build between themselves and their pathway to happiness through congruence and stress-FREEDOM. It took me another year and the invaluable support of my wife to write a wise AND funny book for those who are interested in spending the rest of their lives walking toward their own happiness instead of working for their own or someone else’s greed.
My friends, however, must have been born wise and don’t seem to need the distilled fruits of hard-earned practical wisdom packed in nicely wrapped palatable pieces of advice. They must be champions in analyzing their desires, in satisfying their natural needs through synergistic satisfiers, in keeping their lifestyle and behavior patterns in line with their values and attitudes, serenely threading down their own proven pathways from pain to pleasure, producing their own happiness though congruence and stress-FREEDOM.
I must assume they do all this judging from the absence of their comments on the excerpts of my book that I have been publishing in sequels in my blog. The only topic they mildly reacted to was sequel 15: “How Is It Possible To Find Romantic Love? “
Complete strangers ask me when will my book be available in print and on kindl, when will I start training and coaching sessions on the Galenian Epicurean Conduct of Life, or at least publicly speak about it. (Which I don’t’ know yet. I still have to take care of my health and the happiness of my family.)
But it’s a relief that my friends are doing well, confidently threading their own pathways toward happiness.( Or what they believe is happiness?)
It’s a shame to feel proud but who could help not being proud of them? (Maybe Epicurus?)
Take-Aways From the Chapter ‘Desires’ (PP26)
Here’s sequel 26 of my Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” (from Chapter 3: DESIRES)
Take-Aways From Desires
- We need to debate with ourselves the pros and cons, short-term and long-term, when faced with a decision whether or not to fulfill a desire.
- Frequently, satisfying a desire has consequences for others and should be carefully considered.
- There is usually a difference between needs and desires. However, sometimes the distinction becomes a little blurry, which should not be a cause for concern.
To read my complete Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” go to http://stressfreedomguide.com/
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