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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

[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.

Re: Children's book or stop motion film?

[bec_87rb]

Dude. I see it! Can you draw it?

Re: Children's book or stop motion film?

[chhinnamasta]

Sure, and I'd enjoy rendering it in claymation, but it would take a while! We need the Aardman team on this project, I fear.

Constant only in inconstancy

[suegypt]

I see happiness as almost seasonal, like a maple seed that reaches a point of growth and realizes itself, takes a breath and just goes spinning out into space, into the world. Whatever it meets along the way is changed and it's changed by whatever comes along.