"always fall in with what you're asked to accept. take what is given, and make it over your way. my aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. not against: with." -robert frost
so much to say about all this. honestly it was a very fast-paced talk, but i feel i needed to hear it - and everything happens at the right time for a reason! i've been wrapped up in so many things lately ... that i kept asking myself whether i am truly happy or whether i just THINK i'm happy. no, its not a question with an easy answer. and yes, i still don't know what that answer is. but hearing this speech made it a little easier to understand. life is always about choices. and having too many choices makes it difficult to choose - you question yourself on what you are really happy with. are you choosing (insert item here) because you feel like you need it, it will be useful, it is better than whatever you have now, etc? or are you choosing it because it makes you happy? over time, i really have come to imbibe robert frost's point of view. see, i realized (through very difficult experiences) that going against acceptance just ending up hurting me - and no one else. i was never good with change. i was also never good with accepting things that weren't my cup of tea. for example, underage drinking. never was, nor will be, a fan. i was so innocent and naive the first two years of college that i lost many a good friendship over this issue - simply because i didn't agree with it. now don't get me wrong. back then i also believed it had a profound impact on the way you lead your life and health. so i would like to believe i did it out of caring for these old friends. but maybe not. anyway, the past is past. but this TED talk made me realize - do i synthesize happiness? do i do it just to make myself feel better about my own life? i'm one of those that always has high expectations for myself. unfortunately. and also, i'm one of those that is never, ever, satisfied with anything i do - it may also be a major lack of self esteem on top of everything else. in any case, i'm just wondering if what i feel is real ... or if i'm playing a trick upon myself. going to ssy and just having a lot of time to do thinking after college ended allowed me to start thinking a lot more positively than i used to. i always used to feel i was living a lie, living according to society's standards...very lost and confused. the experiences, the thinking, ssy, all of that helped me accept that i could accept or accept that i can't accept things in my past. it took me quite a while to accept, but once i did, ive noticed it's like a weight off of my shoulders. there's no looking back once you've accepted it, because it's much easier to move on when you're not resisting. there's progress, there's a step forward. progress also occurs when i accept that i cannot accept something - it sounds complicated but its really not! if i know somethings i just cannot accept, and i accept and take responsibility for my lack of acceptance - that in itself is accepting the situation! too much, i know. in any case, acceptance is the key to everything. accepting things stops you from blowing things out of proportion. and it will continue to be a challenge only as long as you think it is a challenge. if you accept that life is full of obstacles and challenges, the path to happiness becomes that much easier. :)
day 4: dan gilbert asks - "why are we happy?"
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
when brains triple in size, they don't just get three times bigger, they gain new structures. and one of the main reasons our brain got so big is because it got a new part, called the frontal lobe. and particularly, a part called the pre-frontal cortex. it turns out the pre-frontal cortex does lots of things, but one of the most important things it does is that it is an experience simulator. human beings have this marvelous adaptation that they can actually have experiences in their heads before they try them out in real life.
let's see how your experience simulators are working. let's just run a quick diagnostic before i proceed with the rest of the talk. here's two different futures that i invite you to contemplate, and you can try to simulate them and tell me which one you think you might prefer. one of them is winning the lottery. this is about 314 million dollars. and the other is becoming paraplegic. so, just give it a moment of thought. you probably don't feel like you need a moment of thought.
interestingly, there are data on these two groups of people, data on how happy they are. and this is exactly what you expected, isn't it? but these aren't the data. i made these up!
these are the data. you failed the pop quiz, and you're hardly five minutes into the lecture because the fact is that a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.
economists and psychologists around the country have been doing, have revealed something really quite startling to us. something we call the impact bias, which is the tendency for the simulator to work badly. for the simulator to make you believe that different outcomes are more different than in fact they really are.
a recent study showing how major life traumas affect people suggests that if it happened over three months ago, with only a few exceptions, it has no impact whatsoever on your happiness.
why? because happiness can be synthesized. sir thomas brown wrote in 1642, "i am the happiest man alive. i have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity. i am more invulnerable than achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me." what kind of remarkable machinery does this guy have in his head?
human beings have something that we might think of as a psychological immune system. a system of cognitive processes, largely non-conscious cognitive processes, that help them change their views of the world, so that they can feel better about the worlds in which they find themselves. like sir thomas, you have this machine. unlike sir thomas, you seem not to know it.
we synthesize happiness, but we think happiness is a thing to be found.
because when people synthesize happiness, we all smile at them, but we kind of roll our eyes and say, "yeah right, you never really wanted the job." "oh yeah, right. you really didn't have that much in common with her, and you figured that out just about the time she threw the engagement ring in your face."
we smirk because we believe that synthetic happiness is not of the same quality as what we might call natural happiness. what are these terms? natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don't get what we wanted. and in our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind. why do we have that belief? well, it's very simple. what kind of economic engine would keep churning if we believed that not getting what we want could make us just as happy as getting it?
all of us have this psychological immune system, this capacity to synthesize happiness, but some of us do this trick better than others. and some situations allow anybody to do it more effectively than other situations do. it turns out that freedom -- the ability to make up your mind and change your mind -- is the friend of natural happiness, because it allows you to choose among all those delicious futures and find the one you most enjoy. but freedom to choose -- to change and make up your mind -- is the enemy of synthetic happiness. and i'm going to show you why.
dilbert already knows, of course. you're reading the cartoon as i'm talking. "dogbert's tech support. how may i abuse you?" "my printer prints a blank page after every document." "why would you complain about getting free paper?" "free? aren't you just giving me my own paper?" "egad, man! look at the quality of the free paper compared to your lousy regular paper! only a fool or a liar would say that they look the same!" "ah! now that you mention it, it does seem a little silkier!" "what are you doing?" "i'm helping people accept the things they cannot change." indeed.
the psychological immune system works best when we are totally stuck, when we are trapped. this is the difference between dating and marriage, right? i mean, you go out on a date with a guy, and he picks his nose; you don't go out on another date. you're married to a guy and he picks his nose? yeah, he has a heart of gold; don't touch the fruitcake. right? you find a way to be happy with what's happened. now what i want to show you is that people don't know this about themselves, and not knowing this can work to our supreme disadvantage.
the bard said everything best, of course, and he's making my point here but he's making it hyperbolically: "'tis nothing good or bad / but thinking makes it so." it's nice poetry, but that can't exactly be right. is there really nothing good or bad? is it really the case that gall bladder surgery and a trip to paris are just the same thing? that seems like a one-question iq test. they can't be exactly the same.
in more turgid prose, but closer to the truth, was the father of modern capitalism, adam smith, and he said this. this is worth contemplating: "the great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from overrating the difference between one permanent situation and another ... some of these situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others, but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardor which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse for the horror of our own injustice." in other words: yes, some things are better than others.
we should have preferences that lead us into one future over another. but when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk. when our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully. when our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. when our fears are bounded, we're prudent, we're cautious, we're thoughtful. when our fears are unbounded and overblown, we're reckless, and we're cowardly.
the lesson i want to leave you with from these data is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience.
day 4: Wikipedia article - (acrocanthosaurus)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrocanthosaurus
acrocanthosaurus is a genus of theropod dinosaur that existed in what is now north america during the aptian and early albian stages of the early cretaceous. like most dinosaur genera, acrocanthosaurus contains only a single species, a. atokensis. its fossil remains are found mainly in the u.s. states of oklahoma and texas, although teeth attributed to acrocanthosaurus have been found as far east as maryland.
acrocanthosaurus was a bipedal predator. as the name suggests, it is best known for the high neural spines on many of its vertebrae, which most likely supported a ridge of muscle over the animal's neck, back and hips. acrocanthosaurus was one of the largest theropods, approaching 12 meters (40 ft) in length, and weighing up to 6–7 metric tons (6.5–7.5 short tons). large theropod footprints discovered in texas may have been made by acrocanthosaurus, although there is no direct association with skeletal remains.
recent discoveries have elucidated many details of its anatomy, allowing for specialized studies focusing on its brain structure and forelimb function. acrocanthosaurus was the largest theropod in its ecosystem and likely an apex predator which possibly preyed on large sauropods and ornithopods.
guess the dinosaurs weren't happy as dan gilbert, huh? :) lesson to learn!
<3
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