Heaven

Mar 15, 2009 13:38

My worldview is that of an optimistic nihilist. That's my mean, median, and modal worldview --though there are others ( Read more... )

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jharish March 16 2009, 18:38:06 UTC
I know. I can say 'happiness is a choice' a lot easier than I can live it.

I don't know what your spiritual/religious leanings are, but recently I started understanding the whole 'life' thing better.

Essentially, the reason we're not happy ALL the time is that we are here to experience the joys of contrast. We live in a universe of duality. If we shine like a candle, what better place to appreciate our light than in total darkness? Because shining like a candle on the surface of the sun would make us seem dull.

We need sadness to punctuate our happiness so that we can appreciate it all the more, just as we need rain to appreciate sunshine.

Another way to look at it is to take the best day of your life and turn that into a baseline. If you had every day after the best day of your life be just as good, it becomes just another day. If all the days after that get better and better, the best day of your life starts to look like the worst.

Essentially, embrace contrast as part of what makes heaven so wonderful. Where else but in these physical forms can we experience such heights of pleasure and such wonderful melancholy to cleanse the palette between the courses of pleasure?

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flamingnerd March 16 2009, 18:47:00 UTC
I'm a buddhist (western zen flavored) atheist.

And yeah, I've been wondering about the need for emotional cyclicity and... still not sure how that "ought to" work out.

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