Hot Air links this discussion on lessons for post-pandemic life:
Life events play a role in happiness. The pandemic darkened spirits, but also gave people a chance to rethink what is truly important and makes them happy. It remains to be seen whether a renewed sense of gratitude for simple things, like having a cup of coffee with friends, outlasts the pandemic. Sustaining a sense of well-being can be harder than achieving it, psychologists say. People fall back into routines and get caught up with busy lives. While the pandemic has forever changed so many aspects of life—work, family and play—they say sustaining satisfaction with life, even amid its difficulties and negative emotions, requires practice and intention.
Mary Pipher, clinical psychologist and author of “Women Rowing North” and “Reviving Ophelia,” says the pandemic underscored what she long believed: that happiness is a choice and a skill. This past Christmas, she and her husband spent the day alone in their Lincoln, Neb., home, without family and friends, for the first time since their now adult children were born. “I thought, ‘What are we going to do?’ We went out for a walk on the prairie and saw buffalo. I ended up that day feeling really happy.”
Welcome to Aristotelian philosophy. I guess it would be a great gift if this most important lesson were rediscovered.
When I was a young college student, many years ago, a professor put it this way: "Aristotle explained that happiness is an activity" -- here he had my interest, as I knew I wanted to be happy -- "and the particular activity it is" -- here he had my attention -- "is the pursuit of excellence."
Now what is meant by "excellence" is arete, which is given by the Latins as virtus, but "virtue" doesn't really capture what Aristotle was after. Virtue has the connotation in English of moral uprightness; in Latin, of manhood. What Aristotle meant was to learn to grasp what was the very best thing to do in every case, and then to do it. The discerning of the good is a part of it; and the doing of the good is the other part.
Some days, the best thing you could do is to take a walk with your husband, and see some buffalo.
2 comments:
"When I was a young college student, many years ago, a professor put it this way: "Aristotle explained that happiness is an activity" -- here he had my interest, as I knew I wanted to be happy -- "and the particular activity it is" -- here he had my attention -- "is the pursuit of excellence."
I have watched my wife rip out her knitting a half dozen times on one project just to get it right. In the trades, that sort of attention to excellence pays well also. And one of the happy rewards is not getting
calls to come back and redo work- a prosaic example perhaps, but it does make a Sunday walk possible.
We cannot really pursue excellence without focusing on the task and the product rather than on ourselves. To be taken out of ourselves is a good thing, and we seldom notice that we are happy when it is happening. It may occur to us for a moment, how content we are with the discontentment of getting it right, or getting it done. And we certainly notice our pleasure on completion. Reflection on such is a mixed bag. It can be a legitimate pleasure as well, but we can get stuck there and it can get away from us.
I thought Frozen II was appalling in most of its lessons, but did like the teaching that one should "do the next right thing."
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