"Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies — all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones — and the eternally disappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and of consumption."

Erich Fromm | The Art of Loving

Happiness

Again I try to explain how all talk is slippery. See, I might want to convey one thing, frustration, say – but all that gets conveyed is some other thing, rage – my hand coming fast, erratic, menacing. Who can say how a thing in words turns, flowers like that? It happens. Now say I want to say to you happiness. No motive. Nothing behind it. Just the awareness of a valve turned suddenly open and hallelujah! – happiness. It’s in the lungs, the bones. But somehow all you hear is I don’t need you. We’re in this room, and you’re not hearing how I’m still trying to say this thing. I’ll say it again. Here. Happiness.

Elisabeth Frost

Grammar

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she’s a conjugated verb.
She’s been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We’re all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we’ve all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

Tony Hoagland

You and I

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden’s beauty and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it means to be a thin crescent moon.

You and I unselfed, will be together, indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.

And what is even more amazing
is that while here together, you and I
are at this very moment in Iraq and Khorasan.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

Rumi

"Those of us who know not the secret of properly regulating our own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying to appear happy and contented. We stagger in the attempt to keep our moral equilibrium, and see forerunners of the tempest in every cloud that floats on the horizon. Yet there is joy and beauty in the roll of billows as they sweep outward toward eternity. Why not enter into their spirit?"

"One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted. To them, the world is wonderfully new and surprising. Not only that, but they aren’t yet sure how the world works: Perhaps the things they have today will mysteriously vanish tomorrow. It is hard for them to take something for granted when they can’t even count on its continued existence."

William B. Irvine | A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

"We normally characterize an optimist as someone who sees his glass as being half full rather than half empty. For a Stoic, though, this degree of optimism would only be a starting point. After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen. And if he is atop his Stoic game, he might go on to comment about what an astonishing thing glass vessels are: They are cheap and fairly durable, impart no taste to what we put in them, and - miracle of miracles! - allow us to see what they contain. This might sound a bit silly, but to someone who has not lost his capacity for joy, the world is a wonderful place. To such a person, glasses are amazing; to everyone else, a glass is just a glass, and it is half empty to boot."

William B. Irvine | A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

"The joy the Stoics were interested in can best be described as a kind of objectless enjoyment - an enjoyment not of any particular thing but of all this. It is a delight in simply being able to participate in life. It is a profound realization that even though all this didn’t have to be possible, it is possible - wonderfully, magnificently possible."

William B. Irvine | A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

[So little I need!]

So little I need!
A crust of bread,
a drop of milk.
And this sky,
and these clouds!

Velimir Khlebnikov

"If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success."

Henry David Thoreau | Walden

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."

Henry David Thoreau | Walden

A Woman

She had an understanding with the years;
For always in her eyes there was a light
As though she knew a secret none might guess.
So calmly did she bear the weight of pain,
With such serenity accept the joy,
It seemed she had a mother-love for Life,
And all the days were children at her breast.

Scudder Middleton

"You must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."

Amy Tan | The Joy Luck Club

"Night will fall on us all and the coach will pull up. I enjoy the breeze I’m given and the soul I was given to enjoy it with, and I no longer question or seek."

Fernando Pessoa | The Book of Disquiet

"We laughed and laughed, together and separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all."