It is a truly marvelous thing to re-discover what matters to me. In particular to realize happiness is a matter of simplicity at times. Sometimes this merely requires dumbing down. Other times I amuse myself with the very notion of the human endeavor of seeking happiness. Today was one of those days.

As my dearest friend recently noted, quoting Gustave Flaubert: “To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” If true, that would indeed be tragic. For my favorite people would be doomed to misery. Flaubert also famously stated: “Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.” And furthermore “caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.” Happiness. Punishment. Suffering. Artists. Monstrocity. Hmmmmmm, that’s an ear-full, Mr. Flaubert. I can’t help but admire eliciting the compulsion to ignore the tautology but…

Nevertheless, here are more thoughts by others on the pursuit of and/or acquisition of happiness:

“A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.” George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), act I

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.” Albert Camus

“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.” John Milton

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” Mark Twain

So what am I going on about? I know I am not insane, I know I am not stupid, I know what it is to feel the glowing joy of bringing happiness to others, and I am aware cynicism often goes hand-in-hand with awareness. Yet, I felt truly happy today. All I know is to enjoy those feelings to their fullest extent regardless of their origin! It is a lovely, lovely, lovely feeling.

Designers’ Cookbook: How to make a penguin ‘turkey‘ dinner in under 30 minutes

To view designer recipe visit his website at
www.repeatpenguin.com

“Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”

— Burns

DARKNESS

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went — and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires — and the thrones,
The palaces of crownded kings — the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire — but hour by hour
They fell and faded — and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash — and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gansh’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless — they were slain for food
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: — a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought — and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails — men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beast and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not a caress — he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each others aspects — saw, and shriek’d, and died —
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,
A lump of death — a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and oceans all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge —
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of air from them — She was the Universe.

– Lord Byron (1816)