X-Message-Number: 10185
From: Olaf Henny <>
Subject: Happiness
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 20:59:17 -0700

Hi Everyone.

I have been following this "happiness" discussion with some 
bemusement.  As long as we are discussing happiness as the 
result of ONE (or a few) items, such as long life, heroin, 
stimulation of the bliss center of the brain, we are missing 
the point of happiness altogether.

To illustrate:

My wife and I like to go in the middle of winter to Mexico to 
soak up some sun.  When we get there, lying on the beach or 
beside the pool is absolute pleasure.  However, after a few 
days another itch needs scratching, since life pool-side is 
starting to turn monotonous, no matter how pleasant initially.  
So we rent a car and explore the country side.  After a few days 
of sights and dusty highways, pool and beach turn seductive 
again, and believe it or not after 3 weeks of that, we suddenly 
get the urge to go back and "accomplish" again, happiness is now 
putting the shoulder to the wheel again and to try to crank it a 
bit further.  

After going through that about 1/2 dozen times, we decided this 
year, that happiness would lie in Peru, hiking the Inca Trail to 
Machu Picchu, spending more than a week in Parque Nacional Manu
and putt-putting about in a motorized canoe on the Rio Alto Madre 
de Dios and on Rio Manu.  This will be happiness. It will be 
exiting.  At the end, I am sure, happiness will be getting away 
from all these mosquitoes, having a nice shower and sleeping in a 
beautiful clean bed.

If and when I am revived from cryopreservation, happiness will be 
initially to admire the wonders of a civilization, which will be 
much advanced beyond ours.  Thereafter happiness will be finding 
my groove in that civilization, hopefully to study something 
entirely different from what I am doing now, to be ultimately 
creative, productive an contribute.  You see happiness is an ever 
changing process, not a one-state-affair, no matter how blissful 
that state initially is, for any condition which endures will 
ultimately bring boredom and when that sets in happiness is long 
gone.

Happiness is living a full and eventful life.  The mishaps and 
hardships simply provide you with a scale to measure your good 
luck by.  This life is much too short to accomplish all the 
activities I find exciting and by the time we are revived, there 
will be a myriad more of them.  Many sports have passed me by, 
because they did not exist yet, when I was young or because I 
could not afford to participate in them.  I will have young body 
and the means to do most anything I want, even if it takes me 
1000 years to acquire these means.  That is Happiness!

Best, 

Olaf
___________________________________

Tolerance is wisdom's finest fruit
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