Epicureans Versus Stoics

In my thoughts, I sometimes go over speeches and conversations passed on to me, looking for patterns that haven't been analysed because people don't have the experiences I have recorded of myself and/or others.

We are all the same.

Thus, a sermon at the local AME church and a lecture by a former sports professional provide the same type of information I need to live.

Needs.

A planet full of subcultures with competing and cooperative needs.

A list of names meeting needs: Doris, Rodney, Sherry, Debra, Jessica, Minnie, Lisa, Dr. Walker, Beth Wood, Dr. Pendley, Sherina, Marie, Joseph.  Unnamed others in supportive occupations: admitting, accounting, administration, pharmacy, elevator maintenance, "vampire," valet, trash pickup, sweeping, waxing, vending, cashier, shop owner.

An incomplete list.

Bonheur Sans Frontières.

I am on the path of happiness with myself as myself with all my flaws intact and joyously shared.  I am here because I am alive and I am alive because I share this world with the most wonderful woman in the world who happens to hold the title of my "wife" on a legal certificate.

The secret of happiness is a well fed by a spring that is my wife's family.  The secret of happiness is pumped out of the well by the bucket that is my family.

The spring and the well are available to all.  Many use them sparingly and many use them with no regard for limits or opinions of others about responsible resource management.

One of my lifelong goals I plan for us is to find a way to show you that the wellspring is, as others before me have shown, universal.

You do not need religion or politics or hobbies or insight to tap the flow but you might need or want them.  I am not going to distinguish why or how one or the other is or is not important to you.  You approach infinite happiness through your subculture(s) and your experiences and thus know better than I how or why one form of access is better than another.

I cannot grasp happiness or hold it in my hand.  It has no value and it is priceless.

I can be tired and I can be happy.  I can be momentarily unsure of what I'm feeling because of all the subcultural mismatches washing over me and still be happy.

Animism or monotheism.  Polytheism or nontheism (as opposed to atheism).  They are there if you want to define happiness that way.

Serious and sad or serious and jovial.  Your mood is irrelevant when you're happy.

Reason or no, purposeful or random, the path you took is the path you took to get to this moment.

I am happy to be here no matter what happens or what others may say or see happening in my life from their perspective.

I have scrubbed toilets and stood in sewers installing computerised flow analysis equipment.  I have worked on the redesigned code for the space shuttle.  I have stacked clothes for sell on shelves and bought clothes from store shelving.  I have made pizzas for others and eaten pizzas others made for me.  I have seen what I have wanted to see by way of the cost I was willing to pay to get to geographical features of our world.

And I have followed my happiness (or followed my bliss, to quote a recent version of this self-directed path directing).

Nothing is perfect and the diverting circuitous route is sometimes frustrating but the path itself is where the moment and the happiness in the moment takes place.

I am thankful for my happiness that I get from being here with you in this moment.  I, the result of the happiness, exist because you exist.  What we believe, that may contradict or complement each other and which happens to get us to our happiness, is unimportant to me.

All that matters is that we were here to be here together - the key that unlocks the door to unlimited wealth, which is the happiness we share, available to all.

You knew that happiness is the ultimate end of the Book of the Future, of course.

We miss seeing that, don't we?  Disasters aren't waiting to happen - some people are waiting to call what happens a disaster.  I'm not one of those people but I celebrate being here on this planet with them in this moment.  Happiness is about the variety of ways we find to make our lives meaningful to us.

We don't accept the inevitable because everything is acceptable and nothing is inevitable.  That's in the Book of the Future, too.  You'll see what I mean soon enough.