Sitaram
kickbox
My wife is addicted to the weekly series "Gilmore Girls". I did not care
for it at first, but she purchased an entire season on DVD. So, to be sociable, I sat with her and watched with her for four hours straight. Some things are acquired tastes, like ripe olives, sharp cheeses, strong whiskey. pipe tobacco, and marriage.
Anyway, one main character, Luke Danes, owns and runs a lunch
counter. He is always wearing a backwards baseball cap (except in a
few bedroom scenes).
I am leading up to my point.
In one episode, Luke has taken in a troubled young man age twenty. One day, the young man, frustrated about something, retaliates with some negative remark about the lunch counter business. Luke makes an interesting answer: "You should be grateful if you had such a business. I may work many hours at this, but I am my own boss, answer to no one, and make a decent living. No one can fire me or force me into early retirement."
I paraphrase what I can remember of his lines. What Luke describes is the plus side, in a nutshell, of being a small business entrepreneur.
We are, all of us, throughout all history, seeking "the better way", to avoid suffering and pursue happiness.
"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
"Seek pleasure. Avoid pain." This is a wisdom of all living creatures, down to protozoa.
Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed, Marx, Hitler and Dale Carnegie, to mention only a few, have all addressed the manner and methods of this pursuit of happiness with different techniques but a similar goal.
Camus, in his "Myth of Sisyphus", concludes that even Sisyphus may find some measure of existential happiness, during those moments that he walks back down the hill, to begin his eternal labor anew.
Viktor Frankel managed to find some measure of happiness even in a concentration camp. Frankel said "Our final freedom, which no one can rob, is our inner freedom to choose how we shall regard those circumstances in our life which we cannot change." (paraphrased)
In the final chapter of Camus' "The Stranger", we see the state of mind of
Merseult, as he awaits execution.
The word "equanimity" comes to my mind; an evenly balanced spirit, like the keel of a great ship, which steadies the ship’s course through even the roughest sea.
It is never hard to find extremely wealthy and successful people who are morbidly unhappy: Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemmingway, to name but a few. They cannot find happiness in their fame or wealth, in sexual pleasure or intoxicants.
We can also find people who live very simple lives, but find happiness in the smallest thing, in a leaf or a feather swirling in the wind, like a Forrest Gump.
Odysseus escaped certain death at the hands of Cyclops by calling himself "No-Man". Postmodern man is a no-man become Everyman.
If you ever have the opportunity to watch the movie version of Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge", you will see a young man who is restless and in pursuit of happiness.
He travels about the world, and rubs shoulders with dockworkers and transients. He plays cards with an unusual man who occasionally cheats. One day, he asks that man what he is running away from. The old man answers, that there is someone who relentlessly pursues him. "Well, why don't you face your pursuer. Perhaps prison or death would be better than constantly running away. The old man replies, "It is no person who pursues me. You see, I was a priest, but I left my vocation. It is God who pursues me with forgiveness. That is what I cannot endure and seek to escape." (paraphrased from memory).
The old priest tells him of a holy man in India. In real life, that man was Ramana Maharshi. Maugham visited the guru in India and based his novel on that visit.
At the end of the movie, the holy man sends our hero up on a lonely mountain, to dwell in a hut in solitude. After weeks, the guru climbs the mountain, with long beard, and staff in hand, a very Western stereotype of guru, as we might imagine Moses, to visit the American. Our hero has achieved his vision of enlightenment, a feeling at dawn, upon seeing the sun rising.
The guru explains that the American must return now, to daily life, and carry with him always the memory of this moment of enlightenment, sharing it with others.
Together they descend the mountain, just as Sisyphus always descends, to begin once again that futile task of daily life, but now, with a vision, a memory, a choice, a freedom in our exile on death row, awaiting our unavoidable execution.
for it at first, but she purchased an entire season on DVD. So, to be sociable, I sat with her and watched with her for four hours straight. Some things are acquired tastes, like ripe olives, sharp cheeses, strong whiskey. pipe tobacco, and marriage.
Anyway, one main character, Luke Danes, owns and runs a lunch
counter. He is always wearing a backwards baseball cap (except in a
few bedroom scenes).
I am leading up to my point.
In one episode, Luke has taken in a troubled young man age twenty. One day, the young man, frustrated about something, retaliates with some negative remark about the lunch counter business. Luke makes an interesting answer: "You should be grateful if you had such a business. I may work many hours at this, but I am my own boss, answer to no one, and make a decent living. No one can fire me or force me into early retirement."
I paraphrase what I can remember of his lines. What Luke describes is the plus side, in a nutshell, of being a small business entrepreneur.
We are, all of us, throughout all history, seeking "the better way", to avoid suffering and pursue happiness.
"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
"Seek pleasure. Avoid pain." This is a wisdom of all living creatures, down to protozoa.
Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed, Marx, Hitler and Dale Carnegie, to mention only a few, have all addressed the manner and methods of this pursuit of happiness with different techniques but a similar goal.
”” said:
Camus, in his "Myth of Sisyphus", concludes that even Sisyphus may find some measure of existential happiness, during those moments that he walks back down the hill, to begin his eternal labor anew.
Viktor Frankel managed to find some measure of happiness even in a concentration camp. Frankel said "Our final freedom, which no one can rob, is our inner freedom to choose how we shall regard those circumstances in our life which we cannot change." (paraphrased)
William Ernest Henley said:
In the final chapter of Camus' "The Stranger", we see the state of mind of
Merseult, as he awaits execution.
The word "equanimity" comes to my mind; an evenly balanced spirit, like the keel of a great ship, which steadies the ship’s course through even the roughest sea.
It is never hard to find extremely wealthy and successful people who are morbidly unhappy: Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemmingway, to name but a few. They cannot find happiness in their fame or wealth, in sexual pleasure or intoxicants.
We can also find people who live very simple lives, but find happiness in the smallest thing, in a leaf or a feather swirling in the wind, like a Forrest Gump.
Odysseus escaped certain death at the hands of Cyclops by calling himself "No-Man". Postmodern man is a no-man become Everyman.
If you ever have the opportunity to watch the movie version of Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge", you will see a young man who is restless and in pursuit of happiness.
He travels about the world, and rubs shoulders with dockworkers and transients. He plays cards with an unusual man who occasionally cheats. One day, he asks that man what he is running away from. The old man answers, that there is someone who relentlessly pursues him. "Well, why don't you face your pursuer. Perhaps prison or death would be better than constantly running away. The old man replies, "It is no person who pursues me. You see, I was a priest, but I left my vocation. It is God who pursues me with forgiveness. That is what I cannot endure and seek to escape." (paraphrased from memory).
The old priest tells him of a holy man in India. In real life, that man was Ramana Maharshi. Maugham visited the guru in India and based his novel on that visit.
At the end of the movie, the holy man sends our hero up on a lonely mountain, to dwell in a hut in solitude. After weeks, the guru climbs the mountain, with long beard, and staff in hand, a very Western stereotype of guru, as we might imagine Moses, to visit the American. Our hero has achieved his vision of enlightenment, a feeling at dawn, upon seeing the sun rising.
The guru explains that the American must return now, to daily life, and carry with him always the memory of this moment of enlightenment, sharing it with others.
Together they descend the mountain, just as Sisyphus always descends, to begin once again that futile task of daily life, but now, with a vision, a memory, a choice, a freedom in our exile on death row, awaiting our unavoidable execution.