How much trouble which you'd rather not to be?
It is a weird question, right? Because you wanna have something to contend with.
You wanna have something that, that,
Forces from you the best that you have and so, you'd have had a real problem.
Something like that!
Which you dispense with reality.
You just lay down on a bed and have pablum infused into your mouth
You know, if all your problems were solved
So maybe you want difficult problems
that you can solve, something like that
because there is some, I don't know what it is about it
There's the overcoming and the growth comes along with that
There's something about the nobility of the enterprise
You certainly see that when you go about having children for example
which is you know the psychological literature is quite clear-
you do moment to moment comparisons of
people who have kids and people who don't have kids,
the people who don't have kids are happier
And so psychologists
who tend to get things wrong even they make intelligent discoveries
Like that one, immediately
some of them jump into conclusion that
because happiness is the goal that
Well there is something about children and you know
making one happy and that's not good
it's like wait a second, maybe it's the wrong metric
of course you are less happy once you have children, because you have to worry about them
you know, my neighbor down to street is very smart woman said to me once
''You can only be as happy as your unhappiest child''
Which I thought it was really good
You know that's really smart
-But then it isn't- But if having children doesn't make you happy, the answer isn't
Don't have children, it's like don't be so stupid about being happy
That's the answer, because there is a nobility in the pursue
Right, of course now you are responsible, you know when you have a new baby
you think, especially if you are a new parent, you think
huh, what the hell is this? What am I gonna do with it?
You know, it's like and then
You are done to the rest of your life, you'll never sleep properly again
Because you gonna be worried about this creature
That you have to take care of and like what the hell good are you
if you are not doing that? Or something else equally difficult
Because you just haven't been called out yet
Unless you take on a responsibility like that
The idea that, life is you know, that happiness is the purpose of life
It's like, great for happiness man if it comes along
you should be for real that it's visiting you
But the notion, that's what you should pursue
That's the weakest possible notion
First of all, as soon as something terrible happens to you, you're done.
It's like, life is to be happy.
It's like now you have cancer, how is that? How is the happiness thing working out for you now?
(applause)
Or maybe it's not you, you know,
Maybe it's your father that has Alzheimer dissease, or some damn thing
you know, it's like, it's a rare person that doesn't have some catastrophy
One person away from them
It's like, life is to be happiest. That's not right
And we can at least derive that from the stories, that isn't what they say at all
God is perfectly happy in the storys
To grant the people whom he reform cavonent
Happiness and prosperity, but there is never award
That's the purpose, the rule is
Aim high and get your bloody act together, that's the rule
And established to this constructural cavonent with the ultimate ideal
And that will see you through the catastrophy
And that's a much more mature way of looking at life, as far as I'm concerned
Because all you have to do is have your eyes half open
And you see that
the fundamental reality of life is tragedy and suffering
That is inescapable, that doesn't mean
it makes life unbearable or that it makes
being something that shouldn't have existed
That isn't what it means, but it means
that you have to content with it and you have to get ready
and willingness to adobt responsibility
for yourself and for other is the pre-condition for that
and then maybe if you do that properly, now and then you'll get some happiness
You know you can sit at the end of the day and you have half an hour
Where your conscience is clear
and there is nothing that you need to be doing and you can relax and think
You know, that's allright, things are okay. Thank god for that
And that's maybe where you get your happiness.
So
That's something, that's growing up man, obviously
And to not know that, to not be taught that
like everyone should be taught that so obvious.