Happiness

Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical activities whatever…. Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.

- Aristotle

Wit is educated insolence.

I no longer want to walk on worn soles (Friedrich Nietzsche) so as of today - because of the sensitivity of solitude appropriate to the rain; due to relinquishing television; due to existing unaccompanied as a spiritual being….I NEED NEW SHOES!

The rain can be a very gratifying experience. I remember times spent in Tofino, with the rain just persistently falling for three or four days, and being wrapped in the arms of an additional, it was a very quixotic experience. In Newfoundland, the rain comes down hard, it bellows down as if the sky was waiting to explode and all you see is the might of the fall, the flow, it’s so powerful like every other weather experience on that secluded little island. I miss walking outside and immediately being drenched with water, there is nothing like that in Victoria sad to say, the rain is slow like the people and the culture, it creeps up on you and before you know it, you slowly start taking in water.

I’m an idealist: I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.

-Carl Sandburg

"Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality."

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways."

-- Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness

I am no doubt analyzing the very nature of human cruelty, to be here whilst we are empty to the things we cannot see. We cannot grasp – only the here and now – due to a lack of time, a lack of spiritual growth, and a lack of opportunity. I do not question anymore, although I have much to question, many things to relish on, I have to let go or be consumed with the energies, struggles, and missed opportunities of others. I cannot for it will do nothing but hinder me.

“Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths."

Life is inevitably life….

I think I have found the path of least resistance. Total and utter submission, lacking daily questioning of life, lacking the vigor of wanting and striving to over achieve, it’s the inane ability (or disability) to just accept. I have found numerous ways of now being spiritual – another word for blanking out your mind of the world around you.

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."