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The specific happiness that we're talking about here is contentment -- with your life, with who you are. I think it looks so odd to so many of us because we te
by Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
The specific happiness that we're talking about here is contentment -- with your life, with who you are.
I think it looks so odd to so many of us because we tend to be an ambitious bunch, and I find ambition to be pretty inversely related to contentment. The sort of acceptance that this man displays feels like giving up, in a sense. And in many ways, it is -- but that's something that Buddhists have been teaching for centuries.
- mekkkkkk 5y ago"Giving up" seems to imply unfulfilled ambition, though. It only feels like giving up because we project our own ambitions onto him. If his ambition always was to lead a simple, predictable life close to nature, he's achieved flawlessly. Maybe I'm just re-stating what you said, sorry.
- Gene_Parmesan 5y agoNo, yeah, I agree totally with what you're saying. It feels like giving up to us but that is a whole lot of projection.