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[bec_87rb]

NPR quotes John Stuart Mill thusly:

Happiness should be approached sideways, like a crab.

Hm. Wonder if they paraphrased a little.

Comments

[suegypt]

I can't find it directly attributed to Mill, except by this guy, to sell his book: http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-02-11/living/17119541_1_happiness-eric-weiner-new-book. Grammar seems sideways to me...

good catch :)

[bec_87rb]

I bet this NPR bit was about this guy - some of the concepts sound like that interview.

Re: good catch :)

[suegypt]

Perhaps not harder to achieve, just harder to trust? As in, the more you analyze it, the less it meets any definition of happiness?

I think of that old anglican prayer to comfort the suffering, etc., and "protect the joyful." I always wondered, protect them from what? Now I think i know it's protection from realizing how happy they are, as if, when you look at it, it disappears.

BTW, I'm happy that you're happy. I suspect it isn't because of lack of gifts. =)

[chhinnamasta]

...or from behind, like a priapic bull.

[mothwentbad]

Or... you have to walk to it backwards like an ant lion.

Or better yet, dig a conical pit in a field of fine sand. Wait for happiness to unwittingly stumble into your vicinity, and then flick bits of sand at it until tumbless antennae over abdomen into your ravenous maw. Om nom nom nom!

[bec_87rb]

I, I... okay, conical pit it is.

[chhinnamasta]

A bit of Googling suggests that Stuart Mill said something more like:

happiness is like a crab: it approaches us sideways, not head on.

...and then there's John Barrymore's take on happiness:

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.

I'm totally seeing a children's book, with amusing illustrations, featuring the adventures of happiness.

[bec_87rb]

Bet that's it - happiness is like a crab: it approaches us sideways, not head on. That Eric Weiner character sounds not all that precise of a person, so quoting Mill incorrectly might be in his own particular idiom.

[suegypt]

Yay! Thanks for trcking that down. Sounds much better that way.

Children's book or stop motion film? Hmmm...

Children's book or stop motion film?

[chhinnamasta]

Either. I'm imagining happiness as a lumbering Rube Goldberg-like contraption, loaded with ornate, whimsical flourishes, orbited by bluebirds, butterflies, and sparkles, and dotted with a heart. I think it may also have whiskers. Given its unwieldy nature, it's a surprise more of us don't see, or at least hear, it coming.

[uplinktruck]

Happiness should be approached in any ethical manner possible. There is too much unhappiness and life is too short to leave anything to chance.

[bec_87rb]

Hear, hear! *slides a beer down the bar to you*

[uplinktruck]

*Drinks!*

Thanks. After the last few days, I really needed that.