Apr 4
Perspectives on happinessChuang-Tzu:
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Tim
Ferriss: The opposite of happiness is boredom.
Eliezer
Yudkowsky: When people complain about the empty meaningless void, it is
because they have at least one problem that they aren't thinking about
solving — perhaps because they never identified it.
Alex Krupp: Given
perfect freedom people have a tendency to do just enough to make themselves
minimally happy, even if greater happiness is ultimately attainable.
me: There is no 'minimally happy'. Different things either make you
happy or they don't. However, happiness from a source can last a long or
short duration, ebb faster or slower.
Paul Graham: Unproductive
pleasures pall eventually.
Credit: HN thread on existential
angst.
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Aug 8, 2009
Bringing yourself to think about deathQ: Most people find
it morbid for someone young and healthy to think about their death.
me:
I can never understand that. I am accomplishment-oriented rather than
experience-oriented. I derive daily motivation much more from having a sense
of accomplishment and impact on the world than from experiential pleasures,
or even from having learned something. If you feel the same, it behooves you
to think about the impact you will have on the world after you're gone, and
how to best channel it. It's only experience that ends when you die.
* *
Nov 12, 2008
“ True freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
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Sep 14, 2008
“ Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
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Sep 6, 2008
“ It is, alas, a truism that authors generally have less experience than other men. This owing to the incontestable fact that you simply can’t be in two places at once. Either you’re in front of the typewriter, writing, or you’re out in the world having experiences. Therefore, since you need to write and you need to have experiences to write about, you have to learn to do more with less. And doing more with less is, in a word, what writing is all about.
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Jun 5, 2008
“ The only way you can say ‘F*** you’ to fate is by saying it’s not going to affect how I live. So if somebody puts you to death, make sure you shave.
* *
May 6, 2008
“ A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting on orange juice and
Ryvita biscuits. An unemployed man doesn’t.
* *
Apr 3, 2008
“ Even though some may look like they have a frown on their face, they are very friendly people - many of them just work in offices, jobs they don’t enjoy, and so they do not smile as much as they should.
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Apr 3, 2008
“ Focussing on money is identical to putting off a full life. Lust to make meaning out of your work.
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Apr 1, 2008
“ I want very much to die. But dying is hard work. Death is in control of the process, I cannot influence its course. All I can do is wait.
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