Contentment is easier to find than happiness
Happiness is fleeting, like other emotions, it comes and goes. Focusing on it is like chasing a wave.
Understanding your own values and what you find meaningful is essential for moving through life, because we’re not in control. Stuff happens, and we get to deal with it.
Small things. Sounds. The temperature of the air. The fact that my side isn’t hurting right now. The kids costumes who were just trick or treating at my house.
still on the topic of small things that bring happiness: coffee in the morning, listening the air on the trees, the birds, nature in general, food (good food, not processed, made by you) good friends, good talks, walks.
Recognizing how my desires are never truly satisfied, and they cause me suffering. How they constantly shift and always want more. In other words I let go of my judgment and accept what I see. That doesn’t mean I don’t judge it at all or don’t change it. It just means I’m not attached to the desire to change things. It’s just a feeling, and I can act on it, but it’s a conscious decision rather than a habit.
Eating people. Eating family and friends, eating vagrants, eating the needy. Some people can even taste the camaraderie of the people they work with.
It comes down to eating people and if you have trouble just eat people. You know what they say hungry people eat people.
By finding not happiness, but contentment. As you get older, you learn that to be happy, you have to be content.
Purpose.
Hobbies, spending time wirh friends and families, eating, murdering vagrants, helping the needy, and some people even enjoy comraderie with people they work with.
It comes down to figuring out what makes you happy and if you have trouble you just need to try new things.
I try to embrace my hobbies. Motorcycle rides, baking, trying new beers, gaming with friends, reading, etc. It can be hard finding the time to do it all, but I try my best.
It helps that I’ve already made peace with the fact I’m never gonna be rich enough to do anything truly incredible, like travel the world for 6 months, or retire :/.
Game the system by having an unhappy childhood so being an adult is so much better? I enjoy being a grownup so much. What are you unhappy with? Were you happy as a kid and if so, what made you happy? I didn’t like school, felt alienated and in general kids have no control over their own lives. So adulthood suits me much better.
I buy my wife matching undies and bras.
It’s fun for me, she appreciates the new clothes and I pick out what I want to see her in / out of.
Win win.
I‘m completely switching up my life right now to live to 87 to be able to watch the total eclipse on my birthday
by not trying to compare themselves to anyone else
By dying
