Happiness and Other Small Things of Absolute Importance

by Haim Shapira

Comparison is the thief of joy. Anonymous

Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence.

Of course, I’d never put down people who get me through bad times, but to me one of the most important qualities a friend should have is the inclination to stick around when times are good. The fact is that when we’re doing really well, we start losing friends. I do not count fake friends that stick around for the sake of kudos, or the possibility that they’ll benefit in some way.

True friendship should meet at least two requirements:

The ability to rejoice in your friend’s happiness The willingness to do things that may not benefit you, but will benefit your friend. These are necessary conditions, but they are not sufficient in themselves. In any event, few friends meet even these two criteria.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings. Fr...

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek remarked that the raison d’être of desire is not to be satisfied, but to expand – desires don’t want to be closed, but always want to want more.

Some of you may be surprised to see that I included Boredom in the list of desires, but boredom is our desire to have a desire. I’d love to think that I came up with this idea, but I’m not so sure – I may have read something like it in Tolstoy’s works.

almost all human trouble, strife and suffering. When you entertain a passion for happiness, the Buddha said, you’re actually betraying your happiness, because you cannot be happy when you desire to be happy.

The way I read Hillel’s remarks is: ‘Never judge thy friend’, because you’ll never stand in exactly the same place as him. And if, by some miracle, I do find myself standing in his place, then I’m exactly like him, and there’s no justification for me to judge him. How can anyone judge another? Who can tell whose blood is redder? The beggar in the street corner may be dearer to God than the scholar or the VIP. The beggar could have done deeds that God holds dearer than anything a monarch has done. Certain people treat others as if they were invisible, particularly when they consider themselves to be important. Is the guard at the university gate less important than the professors he welcomes every day? To whom? Why?

For example, when we stand at a traffic light and someone behind us honks the minute the light turns green, our hearts are filled with anger and we judge that person severely. If we do that, we’re making a mistake, the Dalai Lama said. Who knows why that person honked? Perhaps he’s rushing to the hospital. It could be a soccer mom, late, speeding to pick up her stranded daughter. Perhaps it’s a man who was just told he was seriously ill and is now a nervous wreck. The truth is that we know nothing about the source of that honk, and so a wise person shouldn’t get angry or judge.

In fact, Tolstoy believed that a good man cannot be rich and a rich man cannot be good. Late in his life, he actually loathed property and riches.

We are all born originals – why is it so many of us die copies? Edward Young, Night Thoughts

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. William Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’

In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Sigmund Freud related that a friend of his experienced what he called an ‘oceanic feeling’. Freud was speaking about Romain Rolland, who in 1927 wrote to him and described that feeling after reading Freud’s The Future of an Illusion, which had been published in the same year and discusses the origins of religion, which Freud views as merely an illusion. ‘Oceanic feeling’ was the term Rolland used to describe that sense of awe at everything that fills our hearts and minds when we realize that there exists something eternal, or at least boundless like the ocean. A moment of grace when everything is as it should be. An oceanic feeling is a combination of wonderment and endless gratitude. Freud admitted he never felt that.

Romain Rolland (who, I am certain, would have loved that Goldberg poem if he had known it) remarked that an ‘oceanic feeling’ is a type of religious sensation that’s far removed from any customary religious dogma, ceremony or afterlife concerns. I honestly believe that our ability to experience oceanic feelings is a prerequisite of our ability to experience true moments of joy.

One of the criteria for identifying genius should perhaps be the ability to accept that the boundaries of our imagination are not the boundaries of the world. That ability is what motivates people to push known boundaries and expand their minds.

Most of us, hearing this Wittgensteinesque story for the first time, would immediately think: ‘How silly can you be?! No one in their sound mind would read 36 copies of the same newspaper to be convinced that a story is true.’ Wittgenstein believed that, in truth, almost all humans live exactly like that. We keep reading, hearing and watching the same things, over and over again. We may think they are different, but they aren’t. Geniuses such as Einstein, Darwin or Freud wrote their own ‘newspapers’, and though some of their insights may have been wrong, they were more interesting and influential than correct remarks made by mediocre people. Furthermore, they even invented their own languages for those papers. These geniuses spoke in original languages because they were expressing things that had occurred to no one before them.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow. Vladimir Nabokov

This world is but a canvas to our imaginations. Henry David Thoreau

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. Marcus Tullius Cicero

Society tells us the only thing that matters is matter – the only things that count are the things that can be counted. Laurence G Boldt, Zen and the Art of Making a Living

Many adults don’t have their own opinions. They believe in things because many others believe in them, want things because many others covet them, and praise a work of art because … well, because everybody does. Other grown-ups have opinions but are wary about expressing them because they want to stick with the consensus. Don’t forget that amidst a cheering crowd, only a child dared to yell: ‘The king is naked!’

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Fyodor Dostoevsky Note that hell is not when nobody loves you, but when you’re unable to love. A person who loves no one or nothing in this world is indeed in hell.

To love someone is to tame him or her, and let them tame you. It’s all about the daily rituals of having coffee in the morning, made just the way you like it, and reading together from the same book at night. It’s the trust that forms over the years. To love someone is to know the fragrance of their hair every hour of the day, to know how their pillow smells when they go to work before you do. To start whistling the same tune even though you are in different rooms. To want to see the world through their eyes. To know that she is the one and only one for you in the whole world. (You simply must see Cherry Blossoms, the most romantic film by Doris Dörrie!)

That’s why Schopenhauer said that from the youth’s point of view, life is an endless future, while from the elder’s point of view, life is but a brief past.

I mean, have you ever heard of anyone who saved time for later? Could the world’s most diligent man, who eventually becomes the world’s richest man, walk into a Swiss bank later in his life, open a secret safe and withdraw ten years he had saved?

My second insight is associated with an idea I share with Oscar Wilde. There’s one thing about ageing that’s worse than all the other problems: the fact that we do not really grow old. Wilde and I know that the body – that physical entity that hosts and houses my mind and soul – does age and decay, but the dweller therein, the mental me, does not grow old at the same pace, or rather, it stays forever young. If the mind aged with the body, old age might be a mellow, recreational time for us, but this is often not the case. Living inside this fragile body, our minds and souls cling to their desires and hopes. I know that my desires and dreams today are not much different – neither in the objects of their focus nor in their power – than the dreams and desires I had when I was half my current age.

Looking into death needn’t be frightening or morbid. Why not reflect on death when you are really inspired, relaxed, and comfortable – lying in bed, or on vacation, or listening to music that particularly delights you? Why not reflect on it when you are happy, in good health, confident, and full of well-being? Don’t you notice that there are particular moments when you are naturally inspired to introspection? Work with them gently, for these are the moments when you can go through a powerful experience, and your whole worldview can change quickly. These are the moments when former beliefs crumble on their own, and you can find yourself being transformed. Sogyal Rinpoche, Glimpse of the Day

Death gives things value and meaning. It’s only because death exists that we choose one thing over another. It’s only because we expect to die that our lives can assume an importance, a festive taste, be fruitful and even joyful. Knowing that our time is limited is the only motivator against wasting time – the worst kind of wastefulness. We must work diligently, Tolstoy said, because our work could be terminated at any given moment, and because – in the face of death – there’s no point in doing things that are unimportant to us. Knowing that we will die is what motivates us to deal with the things that matter.

Knowledge helps you get along in life; while wisdom helps you understand what are the things that matter, and what gives life its meaning.

Experience is not what happens to you. It’s what you do

with what happens to you. Al...

Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, sounds openly sad when he states that ‘As a professor I don’t like this, but the cerebral virtues – curiosity, love of learning – are less strongly tied to happiness than interpersonal virtues like kindness, gratitude and capacity for love.’

The wise king suggests that we try our hand at everything we can. This idea came at least two millennia before Nietzsche suggested that it’s better to regret things we did than to be sorry for things we didn’t do, given that sorrow for the latter is infinite.

So, enjoy yourself. Love a man, woman or child. Go see the Dolomites. Kiss in the rain. Write your memoirs. Read a few philosophy books or, better still, revisit some children’s books. Swim with abandon. Insist. Fight. Forgive. Sing in the shower. Pause to observe the cherry blossom. Study maths. Learn a foreign language. Get upset. Get angry. Get sad. Be happy. Admire. Wonder. Pray. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.