Do you want to be right or be happy?
Because, from your point of view, it is likely that much of your anger is quite justified: If the world ran according to my rules it would be a much better place - so who can blame me for feeling annoyed with the stupidity or thoughtlessness of others - with their refusal to recognize that my way is the best way
That's your viewpoint. You sincerely believe that your way, your ideas, your values, etc. are the best ones. And most other people feel the same about their views. And we cannot all be right. Nor can we all engage in a daily battle to get the world to come around to our way. If we did there wouldn't be much time for more pleasant things like having fun or enjoying life.
But they are all stupid, inconsiderate, etc!
The world does not and will not run by any one person's rules. (Mussolini tried it, and apparently got the trains in Italy to run on time, for a while, but he didn't last too long.) The world will always be quite chaotic. That's reality. There is no point in getting worked up about it. It is also a reality that the world is peopled by lots of people with (by our standards) rather crazy rules, values, and behaviors.
They will continue to drive their cars differently to us - and to have different views about what is or is not respectful behavior, punctuality, tidiness, honesty, etc. Becoming angry is pointless because it changes nothing. Nor do we even have the right to change other people.
The 'right or happy' question
You may feel that you are in the right when you get angry. But the key question is: does it make you happy? Does it contribute towards your happiness and that of the people in your life?
Just think of the cost of your ongoing battle with disrespect, lack of consideration, carelessness, clumsiness, and so on!
Perhaps, like a lot of anger-habit people you have already done this yet your buttons are still being pressed. You are still being provoked by situations. You still lose your cool and sound off. And you still, afterwards, feel regret, remorse and self hatred.
5.18.2011
May 21 - The Rapture Returns (said in deep movie voice)
In January 1961, a few days before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president, he invited Billy Graham to spend a day with him in Key Biscayne, Florida. After a round of golf, Kennedy and Graham were returning to their hotel when Kennedy stopped the white Lincoln convertible he was driving by the side of the road.
“Billy, do you believe that Jesus Christ is coming back to Earth one day?” Kennedy asked.
“Yes, Mr. President, I certainly do,” the evangelist responded.
“Then why do I hear so little about it?” Kennedy wondered.
Were Kennedy alive today, he probably wouldn't be asking the same question.
During Kennedy’s lifetime, few mainline Protestant churches discussed the second coming of Jesus Christ.
A 2004 Newsweek poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans believe in the Rapture, the snatching away of all Christians prior to the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ. Bible prophecy inherently attracts fanatics. As a seminary professor of mine used to say to our class, “Remember, wherever there is light, there are bugs!”
One of those fanatics is Harold Camping, the founder of the Christian broadcasting ministry Family Radio in Oakland, California. Camping has predicted that the Rapture will occur at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, followed by the end of the world five months later on October 21, 2011.
Family Radio has plastered billboards across the nation with the warning “Judgment Day, May 21, The Bible Guarantees It!”
Readers should note that Camping first predicted the world’s end in 1994. He says he was wrong due to a mathematical miscalculation. Now I am going to make my own prediction which I’m (almost) willing to stake my life on: May 21 will come and go without any Rapture.
When May 21 passes and Camping’s prophecy is added to the ash heap of discredited prophecies, some will be tempted to join the chorus of cynics whom the Bible predicts will mockingly say, “Where is the promise of Christ’s coming?” (2 Peter 3:3-4).
Blah to it all - this is why I am not guided our led by religion and its numerous interpretations!
“Billy, do you believe that Jesus Christ is coming back to Earth one day?” Kennedy asked.
“Yes, Mr. President, I certainly do,” the evangelist responded.
“Then why do I hear so little about it?” Kennedy wondered.
Were Kennedy alive today, he probably wouldn't be asking the same question.
During Kennedy’s lifetime, few mainline Protestant churches discussed the second coming of Jesus Christ.
A 2004 Newsweek poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans believe in the Rapture, the snatching away of all Christians prior to the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ. Bible prophecy inherently attracts fanatics. As a seminary professor of mine used to say to our class, “Remember, wherever there is light, there are bugs!”
One of those fanatics is Harold Camping, the founder of the Christian broadcasting ministry Family Radio in Oakland, California. Camping has predicted that the Rapture will occur at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, followed by the end of the world five months later on October 21, 2011.
Family Radio has plastered billboards across the nation with the warning “Judgment Day, May 21, The Bible Guarantees It!”
Readers should note that Camping first predicted the world’s end in 1994. He says he was wrong due to a mathematical miscalculation. Now I am going to make my own prediction which I’m (almost) willing to stake my life on: May 21 will come and go without any Rapture.
When May 21 passes and Camping’s prophecy is added to the ash heap of discredited prophecies, some will be tempted to join the chorus of cynics whom the Bible predicts will mockingly say, “Where is the promise of Christ’s coming?” (2 Peter 3:3-4).
Blah to it all - this is why I am not guided our led by religion and its numerous interpretations!
5.16.2011
The Station
Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision.
We are traveling by train, out the windows,
we drink in the passing scenes of children
waving at a crossing,
cattle grazing on a distant hillside,
row upon row of corn and wheat,
flatlands and valleys,
mountains and rolling hillsides
and city skylines.
But uppermost in our minds is the final destination.
On a certain day, we will pull into the station.
Bands will be playing and flags waving.
Once we get there, our dreams will come true
and the pieces of our lives
will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle.
Restlessly we pace the aisles,
damning the minutes - waiting,
waiting, waiting for the station.
"When we reach the station, that will be it!"
We cry. "When I'm 18." "When I buy a new 450sl Mercedes Benz!"
"When I put the last kid through college."
"When I have paid off the mortgage!"
"When I get a promotion." "When I reach retirement,
I shall live happily ever after!"
Sooner or later, we realize there is no station,
no one place to arrive.
The true joy of life is the trip.
The station is only a dream.
It constantly outdistances us.
"Relish the moment" is a good motto.
It isn't the burdens of today that drive men mad.
It is the regrets over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow.
Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.
Regret is reality, after the facts.
So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles.
Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream,
go barefoot more often,
swim more rivers, watch more sunsets,laugh more, cry less.
Life must be lived as we go along.
The STATION will come soon enough.
We are traveling by train, out the windows,
we drink in the passing scenes of children
waving at a crossing,
cattle grazing on a distant hillside,
row upon row of corn and wheat,
flatlands and valleys,
mountains and rolling hillsides
and city skylines.
But uppermost in our minds is the final destination.
On a certain day, we will pull into the station.
Bands will be playing and flags waving.
Once we get there, our dreams will come true
and the pieces of our lives
will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle.
Restlessly we pace the aisles,
damning the minutes - waiting,
waiting, waiting for the station.
"When we reach the station, that will be it!"
We cry. "When I'm 18." "When I buy a new 450sl Mercedes Benz!"
"When I put the last kid through college."
"When I have paid off the mortgage!"
"When I get a promotion." "When I reach retirement,
I shall live happily ever after!"
Sooner or later, we realize there is no station,
no one place to arrive.
The true joy of life is the trip.
The station is only a dream.
It constantly outdistances us.
"Relish the moment" is a good motto.
It isn't the burdens of today that drive men mad.
It is the regrets over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow.
Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.
Regret is reality, after the facts.
So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles.
Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream,
go barefoot more often,
swim more rivers, watch more sunsets,laugh more, cry less.
Life must be lived as we go along.
The STATION will come soon enough.
5.13.2011
5.12.2011
In one of my favorite scenes from the movie The Matrix, Morpheus (played by Lawrence Fishburne) poses Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) with a choice between two pills-a red pill and a blue pill. "Take the blue pill," says Morpheus, "and the story ends here. You awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe." "You take the red pill," he continues, "you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: All I'm offering is the truth, nothing more."
Morpheus thus offers Neo a choice between "life as usual," and "knowing the Truth."
If offered a similar choice, most of us would, I imagine, choose as Neo did: take the red (Truth) pill.
Let me now act like Morpheus and pose a slightly different—and more difficult—question to you: supposing I offer you the choice between "knowing the Truth" and "being Happy." If you choose the former, you will know the answers to all of life's big questions, such as, "Is there a God?" "What is the purpose of life?" etc., but you may not be happy. If you choose the latter, you will lead a happy and fulfilling life from this moment forward, but you may never know the answers to life's big questions.
Which would you choose?
In the past in social banter, I have posed this question to my "captive" listeners and, generally speaking, they slightly favor Happiness to Truth.
At first blush, this result might appear to contradict what the happiness researchers say, namely, that happiness is everyone's most important goal. It would seem, from my results, that quite a few people are more interested in knowing the Truth than in being Happy.
However, such a conclusion is not necessarily valid. In recent study I read, they first put participants in a happy or sad mood. Then, they asked participants to read an essay about the effects of caffeine consumption. The essay highlighted both positive effects of caffeine consumption ("caffeine promotes mental alertness," "caffeine can help avert Alzheimer's," etc.) as well as negative effects ("caffeine makes you nervous and jittery," "caffeine can cause cancer," etc.).
What they wanted to test was this: Would peoples' mood-state make a difference to their receptivity to the negative information about caffeine? Specifically, would happy or sad participants be more willing to process negative information about caffeine?
The findings revealed that participants' mood did make a difference to their receptivity to negative information: Participants in a positive mood were more likely to process negative effects of caffeine consumption. Participants in a negative mood, on the other hand, were much more likely to process positive information about caffeine. These results suggest that participants in a negative mood were much more interested in "repairing" their mood (i.e., becoming more "happy"), whereas those in a positive mood were more receptive to the "truth" (in this case, about the effects of caffeine consumption).
These results have important implications for the circumstances under which people are like to choose Truth over Happiness. Specifically, it suggests that people may be more willing to seek Truth only if they are feeling sufficiently happy and not otherwise. This, in fact, turned out to be the case with my captive listerns as well: those who chose Truth were, at the time of making the choice, less stressed out and more happy than those who chose Happiness.
What this suggests is that there is a hierarchy to the order in which people seek Happiness vs. Truth: Happiness is sought first, and only after a "critical level" of happiness has been achieved does one have an appetite for Truth. In other words, Happiness does seem to be a more important goal than is the Truth for most people, but, once Happiness is achieved, Truth-seeking becomes more important.
All this leaves one important questioned unanswered, however: What is the correlation between knowing the Truth and being happy? In an earlier blog posts, I've mentioned how many smart people are not necessarily happy. In other posts, I discussed how beauty and brains, or tastiness and healthiness, and effectiveness and ethicality, may be a duality. Is there a similar inverse correlation between knowing the Truth and being Happy? Specifically, are those who know the Truth likely to be less happy?
Not according to most of the world's religious and spiritual traditions. Hinduism, and the Advaita philosophy in particular, explicitly suggests that one's true nature is bliss, as does Buddhism. Christianity too, in stating that the "Kingdom of God is within you," appears to suggest that knowing the Truth is tantamount to experiencing eternal bliss.
This then suggests that the task of choosing between Truth and Happiness may be one of those trick questions: Regardless of which you choose, you would arrive at the other! So, the choice between Truth and Happiness may not be such a difficult one after all; if the religious traditions are to be believed, you can't go wrong with either.
Which would YOU choose?
Morpheus thus offers Neo a choice between "life as usual," and "knowing the Truth."
If offered a similar choice, most of us would, I imagine, choose as Neo did: take the red (Truth) pill.
Let me now act like Morpheus and pose a slightly different—and more difficult—question to you: supposing I offer you the choice between "knowing the Truth" and "being Happy." If you choose the former, you will know the answers to all of life's big questions, such as, "Is there a God?" "What is the purpose of life?" etc., but you may not be happy. If you choose the latter, you will lead a happy and fulfilling life from this moment forward, but you may never know the answers to life's big questions.
Which would you choose?
In the past in social banter, I have posed this question to my "captive" listeners and, generally speaking, they slightly favor Happiness to Truth.
At first blush, this result might appear to contradict what the happiness researchers say, namely, that happiness is everyone's most important goal. It would seem, from my results, that quite a few people are more interested in knowing the Truth than in being Happy.
However, such a conclusion is not necessarily valid. In recent study I read, they first put participants in a happy or sad mood. Then, they asked participants to read an essay about the effects of caffeine consumption. The essay highlighted both positive effects of caffeine consumption ("caffeine promotes mental alertness," "caffeine can help avert Alzheimer's," etc.) as well as negative effects ("caffeine makes you nervous and jittery," "caffeine can cause cancer," etc.).
What they wanted to test was this: Would peoples' mood-state make a difference to their receptivity to the negative information about caffeine? Specifically, would happy or sad participants be more willing to process negative information about caffeine?
The findings revealed that participants' mood did make a difference to their receptivity to negative information: Participants in a positive mood were more likely to process negative effects of caffeine consumption. Participants in a negative mood, on the other hand, were much more likely to process positive information about caffeine. These results suggest that participants in a negative mood were much more interested in "repairing" their mood (i.e., becoming more "happy"), whereas those in a positive mood were more receptive to the "truth" (in this case, about the effects of caffeine consumption).
These results have important implications for the circumstances under which people are like to choose Truth over Happiness. Specifically, it suggests that people may be more willing to seek Truth only if they are feeling sufficiently happy and not otherwise. This, in fact, turned out to be the case with my captive listerns as well: those who chose Truth were, at the time of making the choice, less stressed out and more happy than those who chose Happiness.
What this suggests is that there is a hierarchy to the order in which people seek Happiness vs. Truth: Happiness is sought first, and only after a "critical level" of happiness has been achieved does one have an appetite for Truth. In other words, Happiness does seem to be a more important goal than is the Truth for most people, but, once Happiness is achieved, Truth-seeking becomes more important.
All this leaves one important questioned unanswered, however: What is the correlation between knowing the Truth and being happy? In an earlier blog posts, I've mentioned how many smart people are not necessarily happy. In other posts, I discussed how beauty and brains, or tastiness and healthiness, and effectiveness and ethicality, may be a duality. Is there a similar inverse correlation between knowing the Truth and being Happy? Specifically, are those who know the Truth likely to be less happy?
Not according to most of the world's religious and spiritual traditions. Hinduism, and the Advaita philosophy in particular, explicitly suggests that one's true nature is bliss, as does Buddhism. Christianity too, in stating that the "Kingdom of God is within you," appears to suggest that knowing the Truth is tantamount to experiencing eternal bliss.
This then suggests that the task of choosing between Truth and Happiness may be one of those trick questions: Regardless of which you choose, you would arrive at the other! So, the choice between Truth and Happiness may not be such a difficult one after all; if the religious traditions are to be believed, you can't go wrong with either.
Which would YOU choose?
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