A friend's post...

[ca_katarina]

He gave me permission to post it in my journal.
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Interesting thought.

I was watching a documentary about the head chef at Tasajara Community Center..he wrote the Tassajara Bread Book. He is a Buddhist monk and one of the lessons he repeated was..

You cannot make anyone happy.
If

Comments

[coen]

Yes, my comment was very simplistic and blunt. That is true. And I pretty much did the same thing I accused the other guy of. Also very true.

The way you put it here sounds very good to me.
"We can contribute to other people's happiness (or some animals' happiness) but we cannot make other people happy. We can only make ourself happy."

This sounds like something I can agree with.

Sometimes focussing on another person's problems can be a welcome distraction from your own problems. We humans tend to not get very happy if we focus too much on ourselves. Just as we tend to not get very happy if we focus too much on others.
So sometimes focussing on another person's problems is a very good things that serves two purposes; it may help that other person, and it helps ourselves.
Sometimes it is not so good. Not everybody appreciates it if we nose into their problems. And some people would be better off if they learned to solve their own problems, instead of depending on others.

So again it's not simple. Using other people's problems as a ditraction from our own problems can be good or bad.

[ca_katarina]

That all sounds about right to me.

K.