Remember that 1990s movie with Jack Nicholson, "As Good as it Gets?" That phrase struck me, at the time. Perhaps other people in the audience felt the same way.
Sometimes it seems like 'romanticism' is an evil doctrine, if it means yearning for the freakish and novel, the perfect, the ideal, the unachievable. The flip side of romanticism/escapism is under-appreciating that which is attainable. An undisciplined and greedy human-imagination can be a dangerous thing.
Dogs don't have that problem.
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| Q.t.Ï€ and one of her beloved meadows. Ain't she looking trim and fit? |
Comments
This is why Buddhism and Stoicism never appealed too much to me. Trying to reduce your needs to zero makes no sense. They fail to distinguish the goodies that CAN be gotten from those that CAN'T.
Putting it differently, if happiness is the ratio of ATTAINED to DESIRED, it makes no sense to focus monomaniacally on raising the numerator alone, or minimizing the denominator alone.
You seem to live in a way that many others would say "He doesn't have the things I need. That Stoic life isn't for me."
Happiness is also solving problems, to some. If you're that way don't pray for happiness. No ratios involved just feelings.