G as in Good H as in Happy

Perfection as Wholeheartedness

Sisters, ice-skaters, who are the ripe fruit of something good.

Via The Anchoress

No Fear

February 20, 2006

By definition, ultimately, fear is the opposite of faith, or, worse, faith in the Invisible Adversary of all mankind.

David Warren reflects on a BBC interview...

when a thing at last is whole it feels more pleasure

Anthony Esolen, whose Dante translations I really ought to order today, ponders by the vehicle of the Lord of the Rings films, the yawning modern absence of a ready grasp of joy. 

Civilized happiness

Recipes for happiness:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace ...has much to recommend it:

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.

Work? and Ethics

Arnold Kling on the underpinnings of prosperous societies:

2006

January 1, 2006

Last year was full of surprises, new friends, shed ambitions, and enough constancy where it counts to sustain quiet happiness.

What will we say about this year, next year?

Good wishes to all.

Brownstones for Bread

November 27, 2005

We here at the cozy meatspace headquarters of Chez Dilys know a little something about real estate obsession. A box-like urban apartment has plunged us into unremitting depression. Staking the family pocketbook on Mexican patio vistas is our idea of earthly paradise.

So we're not "above" this poor woman who reportedly wanted a house in fashionable New York.

But the catalogue of vices here, a modern parable of plenty, barns, and ultimately indigestible stuff and status, at a cost to be determined.

A person's soul-healing consisteth not in the abundance of addresses she nags her husband into buying, nor celebrity via Architectural Digest.

Comments, including our own, abound at Shrinkwrapped, with a more appropriate target than nesting-crazed women, at whom we dare not point fingers. The therapy context is the rendering-speechless aspect. Though none of us have been.

Making Friends with Futility

The idea of "making the best" of things has, in our pragmatic English, a grudging, second-best connotation.

There is, however, a way of understanding the knife-edge between passivity and fruitless agitation that opens the eye of a needle threaded with complex and fruitful joy. It hypothetically requires a formation of reverence, virtue, and devotion to something besides circumstance, though.

Here is a man whose life seems, only seems, thwarted by others before he could really get on with it.

Name them One by One

A common factor that keeps arising from one after another "happiness strategies" research is

Count (3-5) blessings once a day.

They don't have to be the biggest, or the most profound or impressive. Do it now. We'll even get us all started:

1. Access to a computer (and most likely you can see it.)
2. Ability to read English (and perhaps another language.)
3. Somebody, somewhere, loves you. (This is not the long shot it seems -- why wouldn't our readers be lovable?)
4. ____________________________________
5. ____________________________________

Well?  Happier yet?

Society for a Good Time

Reflecting on the comments to the Schmemann post above reminds us...