Harboring Happiness: 101 Ways To Be Happy by Brook Dan

Author:Brook, Dan [Brook, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Beacon Publishing Group
Published: 2021-05-06T16:00:00+00:00

43.

Reconsider your bucket

It can be fun to make and have a bucket list, but it can also weigh us down and disappoint us. Although there is much we might like to read, try, taste, see, and do, there is nothing that we must do.

Ignore the imperative “must-do,” “must-have,” “must-go,” “must-see,” “must-try,” and so on, unless you desire it. Whatever it is, it is not required or mandatory.

Your list is complete and accomplished simply by being alive and being your best you.

44.

Be Stoic

Accept whatever comes and make peace with what does not, regardless of how you feel about them. Nearly two thousand years ago, Stoic philosopher Epictetus encouraged us to recognize the fact that everything is temporary and that all things have their season, literally and figuratively. Everything—whether we want it, love it, or not—is fragile and fleeting. We need to realize that and react accordingly.

Feeling grief over the loss of someone or something is, to Epictetus , like “wishing for a fig in winter” or rain in the dry season. Doing so will only bring unhappiness, as we cannot have what we cannot have, no matter how much we might want it. We cannot control what we cannot control. Enjoy figs in fig season, rain in the rainy season, and enjoy other things and people in their seasons.

“The only thing you can really control,” Bassam Tarazi says, “is how you react to things out of your control.” Realizing that we need not and indeed cannot control what and how others think, say, or do, our only job is to control and conquer ourselves.

We can see versions of the philosophy of Stoicism in Buddhism, Taoism, Ecclesiastes, pragmatism, the Japanese concept of ukeireru (acceptance), Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, and elsewhere, all of which can help us with happiness by making peace with reality.

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