Quixoting™ - A Quest for New Ideas

Happiness. Where Art Thou?

So if you've read this blog a bit you know that by acting on my ideas, I now feel a sense of accomplishment.  A sense of having honored my ideas and myself. My ideas now have credibility with me and have the chance to be included in public discourse and, inevitably, be available for critical analysis.  

Meaning that people may not like them very much.

All that is pretty good.  And what I was planning for when I set out on this journey with Quixoting.

So why do I not feel a powerful sense of happiness about my efforts to date?  Because I still have a long way to go? Is it that I will never be happy with what I've done? Kind of a perfectionist?

What does happiness mean anyway?  Is it the same as joy?  Is one temporary and one long-term?

Well, to give this a little bit of sense, I've been keeping track of popular references to happiness and now thought I'd summarize it here.  

Am I covering the scope of the world's philosophy?  Of course not.  But I will, I hope, begin to crack the code.  For myself.  And perhaps you'd like to chime in . . .

So how does dictionary.com define happiness?  

hap⋅pi⋅ness

–noun

1.	the quality or state of being happy.

2.	good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.

Origin: 
1520–30; happy + -ness 

Synonyms:
1, 2. pleasure, joy, exhilaration, bliss, contentedness, delight, enjoyment, satisfaction. Happiness, bliss, contentment, felicity imply an active or passive state of pleasure or pleasurable satisfaction.Happiness results from the possession or attainment of what one considers good: the happiness of visiting one's family. Bliss is unalloyed happiness or supreme delight: the bliss of perfect companionship. Contentment is a peaceful kind of happiness in which one rests without desires, even though every wish may not have been gratified: contentment in one's surroundings. Felicity is a formal word for happiness of an especially fortunate or intense kind: to wish a young couple felicity in life. 

Antonyms:
1. misery.

There are many other ways to define happiness:

Happiness = The Anticipation Of Pleasure.  

This one worked for me for a while.  Basically, fill your life with interesting things and you feel good knowing that fun things are on the way.  But what if you only enjoy the anticipation and the actual happiness of the event is fleeting?  I wrote something quick on this a few weeks back . . .

Happiness = the anticipation of pleasure

I get pleasure from productive creative time

Productive creative time delivers a tangible idea

That tangible idea is made up of my mental DNA

Mental DNA includes me plus all that I experience

Experience gives thoughts relevance

Being relevant makes me happy

Happiness = The Absence Of Pain

The tough thing here is that pain is multi-dimensional and includes sadness, physical pain, stress, discomfort and the like.  How can we ever be absent of all that at one time?  I have had moments of complete mental freedom and those do feel good.  I remember one particular time in Yakima, Washington.  It was winter, cold and snowing.  I was sitting my garage with the big door open, watching big snowflakes fall on the driveway.  Me in a beach chair drinking a cold beer.  And I had one - a moment of nothingness.  Bliss.  

Happiness - Absence Of Knowledge Or a State Of Ignorance

Think of newborns (except when hungry/soiled, of course).  Think of Thumper in Bambi.  Sid from Ice Age or Donkey from Shrek.  Is that a fair characterization of their reason to be happy?  How does one become ignorant and does it really work?  Are shut-ins happy?  Hermits?

Happiness = A Life Full Of Distraction

I guess you could argue this is similar to or related to "anticipation", but this one came from a recent interview on NPR.  They were interviewing Woody Allen and asked him about happiness.  His view was that there will always be pain and discomfort.  Life will always be hard in some way.  But through filling your life with events and people who keep you busy, you pay less attention to the tough stuff.

Why this focus and why today?  In the middle of feeling the freedom from acting on my ideas, why focus on this?

Well, I find it interesting.  Always have.  While I did not major in philosophy, I always loved the idea that someday I would.  And I think that we as thinking creatures should always ponder life in this way.

I'm not the ignorant type.  Although I'm attracted to their characters in movies.

And, don't get me wrong.  I love what I am doing here at Quixoting and with Spin Strategy.  But taking action on your ideas does not drop you into a nirvana swimming pool.  There will be frustrations and obstacles.

And having thought of them I feel better prepared to battle them.

In conclusion, I'll share a great poem by Carl Sandburg.  I wrote out this poem and had it on my wall . . . in High School.

HAPPINESS

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them

And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river

And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an
accordion.

The language of your life

I was on the phone with a friend last night. We were talking about the timing of things in life. My example was this blog and if you've read my posts you'll know that I spent many a year wondering when the time would be right to begin acting on my ideas. I was frustrated with myself and angry with a perceived laziness toward concepts that I, at one time, thought were pretty cool.

Near the end of our conversation I said something that came out of nowhere. As I heard myself saying the words, I found some clarity in something that has eluded me for some time. Here's what I said:

"Over time, your mind learns the language of your life"

Now, is that quote destined for the leader board on a top quote website? Probably not. But it sounds about right to me.

Here's what I meant when I said it: Certain aspects of your life that you thought should have happened didn't happen. Perhaps they didn't because you weren't ready for it. You weren't able to recognize that it was time to do that particular thing.

So what's the lesson here? Don't beat yourself up. Most people don't really know what they want to do in life or at different points in their life - a precious few know their life's purpose early on and are consistently able to translate it.

More of Finding the Meaning in Life

In a recent post, I wrote about the philosophy of Viktor Frankl. There's another wrinkle to that post which is worthy of sharing.

While a heady and often misunderstood concept, Frankl defines some very interesting aspects of existentialism.

The aspect of Frankl's philosophy that remains highly relevant for us entrepreneurially minded folks is a concept called the EXISTENTIAL VACUUM.

According to Frankl, the EXISTENTIAL VACUUM experienced by 20th century man suggests that:

"No instinct tells him what to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism). The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom."

"What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it."

This blog is here to both share ideas as well as inspire the implementation of ideas everywhere. If you ever feel like this existential vacuum is stuck to your rear end, what could you possibly do to reduce or shut off the suction?

You need to take action.

Since your life's work is not usually obvious, the ONLY way you will know is try a few things and then check your reaction to them. If it feels good, keep going. Taking action on one of your ideas puts you "in the moment" and and gives your life meaning.

What idea do you have that is waiting for you to take action?

Finding the meaning of life in your ideas

Viktor Frankl wrote a book in 1946 in which he described his experiences in a nazi concentration camp. Man's Search for Meaning is a pretty powerful book. Not just in the painful stories of suffering and loss but in the lessons taken from the experiences. His logotherapy, which came out of these experiences, suggests that: "this striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man".

So how do we find meaning in life? According to Frankl, the three main avenues to find meaning in life are:

1. Creating a work or doing a deed.
2. Experiencing something or encountering someone
3. Turn a personal tragedy into a triumph

If you are one of those who is always wondering whether you are experiencing life as you should be - always looking for that deeper meaning - this site is here to inspire you to act. By launching your idea or writing that book you are fulfilling #1 above. You are also rewarding yourself psychologically for having the idea in the first place.

If you are looking inward for your meaning, you may not find it. Again, according to Frankl "I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or in his own psyche, as though it were a closed system".

To me, this means that you find your meaning by taking action toward an idea or ideal. And that's a key reason for my writing this blog. To nurture my ideas by kicking open a few doors.