{"id":15852,"date":"2021-07-18T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/?p=15852"},"modified":"2021-06-26T12:32:16","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T07:02:16","slug":"if-it-makes-you-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2021\/07\/18\/if-it-makes-you-happy\/","title":{"rendered":"If it makes me happy&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">In a workshop I attended recently, the trainer made an interesting point that being a little selfish and taking care of our own needs first will actually enable us to help others better. Around the same time, I also read this very interesting post on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jimcarrollsblog.com\/blog\/2021\/5\/26\/bphkp2qxioj0u5a2hgb11omzfhhgda\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the conversational gambit<\/a>. Extremely helpful for those of us who aren&#8217;t good at going from zero to conversations quickly. Put simply, ask a question. The one that stuck with me was &#8220;<em>When were you happiest<\/em>?&#8221; I directed the question inwards and got some answers. Then I upped it to &#8220;<em>What will make me happy<\/em>?&#8221; That was complex, but something I heard recently gave me some direction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>People say that what we&#8217;re all seeking is a&nbsp;meaning&nbsp;for&nbsp;life. &#8230; I think that what we&#8217;re seeking is an experience of being&nbsp;alive, so that our&nbsp;life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being&nbsp;alive.<\/p><cite>Joseph Campbell<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Since I can reasonably equate being happy with the feeling of &#8220;being alive&#8221;, what does it take? The easy answer is enjoying what I do. And there are at least a couple of things &#8211; books, travel &#8211; that fall in that territory. But I don&#8217;t think self image is out of bounds for even these. Status-seeking is built in quite deep. The self image demands acknowledgement. The corollary of this is where I found the friction. The difference between merit and value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Market outcomes have nothing to do with rewarding merit. Merit involves a moral judgement about what people deserve, whereas value is simply a measure of what consumers are willing to pay for the goods and services sellers have to offer ~ Friedrich Hayek via The Tyranny of Merit<\/p>&mdash; manu prasad (@manuscrypts) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/manuscrypts\/status\/1367423149009039363?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 4, 2021<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>While in an earlier era, prestige would broadly follow &#8220;good work&#8221;, social media has made it an arms race. I can focus on merit all I want, but I cannot insist that the market (social media) value it. That means I have to package the &#8220;merit&#8221; into something relevant for the market if I want validation. And if I didn&#8217;t seek validation of some sort, why should I post anything on social media?  But is there an end to this validation-seeking? <a href=\"https:\/\/sitn.hms.harvard.edu\/flash\/2018\/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">It&#8217;s dopamine<\/a>, after all! Slipper slope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I am now thinking what would make me happier &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2020\/08\/02\/incognito-ergo-sum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">embracing irrelevance<\/a>, finding more things where I wouldn&#8217;t care about validation, or reconciling these conflicting forces. I have to admit, the latter made me think of this &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201cIt is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.\u201d<\/p><cite>J Krishnamurti<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I tried a deep dive into understanding what would make me happy, and it took me to interesting (and uncomfortable) places. The good news is that I have identified the problem, though I am not yet sure about the solution.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6052,1479,412,6053,6268,6056],"tags":[687,684,6418,5035,229,1299,1451],"class_list":["post-15852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-choices","category-thoughtstream","category-life","category-purpose","category-self","category-society-culture","tag-happiness","tag-meaning","tag-merit","tag-self-image","tag-social-media","tag-validation","tag-value"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15852"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15906,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15852\/revisions\/15906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}