From Eat, Pray, Love
Two Passages: The first about Venice, since I was just there and this seemed like a good way to explain it. The second, an new belief that may replace my mantra "Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response".
Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place... The whole town is peeling and fading like those suites of rooms that once-rich families will barricade away in the backs of their mansions when it gets too expensive to keep the maintenance up and it's easier to just nail the doors shut and forget about the dying treasures on the other side - this is Venice. Greasy streams of Adriatic backwash nudge up against the long-suffering foundations of these buildings, testing the endurance of this fourteenth-century science fair experiment - Hey, what if we built a city that sits in water all the time?
I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. SHe says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend uponyou like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is hte consequence of personal effort. You fogith for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travela round the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping oyur soul hold tight to it's good attainments.
Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place... The whole town is peeling and fading like those suites of rooms that once-rich families will barricade away in the backs of their mansions when it gets too expensive to keep the maintenance up and it's easier to just nail the doors shut and forget about the dying treasures on the other side - this is Venice. Greasy streams of Adriatic backwash nudge up against the long-suffering foundations of these buildings, testing the endurance of this fourteenth-century science fair experiment - Hey, what if we built a city that sits in water all the time?
I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. SHe says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend uponyou like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is hte consequence of personal effort. You fogith for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travela round the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping oyur soul hold tight to it's good attainments.