I don’t really know how to do it.

Now before we start, I want to make it clear that I am not talking about that airy fairy “happily ever after” romantic crap. Thjere’s no such thing, it doesn’t exist. There isn’t a place called Happy where, once you get there, you can stop striving for happiness because it’s yours forever now.

No, life is work, and happiness will always require effort to achieve.

So what Iam talking about is a more direct and functional kind of happiness. I don’t have a precise definition for happiness – it’s too large and vague a concept for that – btu I have identified some elements of what I would consider happiness., such as :

Being comfortable in your own skin.  For me, one vital criterion for happiness is self-acceptance and self-love. And I am working on it. No transient pleasure is going to truly help me when I can’t stand to even look at myself in the mirror because I hate myself so much. So I strive towards forgiving myself for being human and try to strike a balance between accepted and valuing my considerable strengths while also tempering that with rational humility about what I can and cannot do.

After all, I’m amazing…. not omnipotent. No matter how smart or talented or otherwise gifted I might be, I am still just a twitching bucket of carbon compounds whose totality amount to one tiny drop in the ocean of humanity.

I remind myself of these things not to punish myself,. but to assuage the feeling I get sometimnes that I am inches from flipping the switch from self-loathing all the way to delusions of grandeur., and I really don’t want to go crazy, thank you kindly.

That’s one of the biggest blocks to my truly accepting my gifts : the feeling of rapidly inflating ego threatening to break my precarious connection to reality.

In essence, it makes me feel like I am going crazy.. Like my ego is going to inflate like a hot air balloon and float up into the stratosphere.

And it is oh, so cold up there.

More physical pleasure in my life.  I am very good at pursuing the mental pleasures that my cerebral nature craves. After all, I have the entire Internet stretching out before my like a nigh-infinite intellectal buffet. I cna always get lots of mental stimulation. I can even get good intellectual conversatiobn sometimes.

But it’s not enough. I can see that clearly now. Even to most exquite of intellectual pleasures – like the kind I get from top quality intellectual conversation – is a product of the cold circuit of the mind., and in order to be a happy uppity monkey, a human being needs hot circuit pleasures too, like the kinds we get from physical pleasures like eating, getting a good massage, really good fucking, and all the other physically active and attuned activities ibn life. Us icy intellectuals tend to fear and mistrust any activity that pulls us away from our crystalline hideouts in the world of the mind, and thus eschew most forms of dynamically engaged activity.

But you canb’t skipo that shit entirely. You need to get in touch with the side of you that doesn’t feel the need to always think things through before they act and learn to trust your instincts and act on your desires.

That is what makes a person feel truly alive.

It’s that last bit that I find hard to do. I have spent decades ignoring my physical desires because I lacked the finds to do anything about them so what, I thought, was the point of torturing myself over what I could never have?

And now I know. My solution was too drastic. It’s like dealing with chronic pain by cutting the offending body part off. Sure, it works, but at what cost?

2If I had endured the suffering, it might have actually inspired me to act (the other way of solving the problem) and I might have learned more about what I do and do not like and eventually learned how to make myself happy that way.

At rhe very least, it would have taught me how to stay in the game and deal with shit, instead of tapping out at the slightest of provocations.

I would have learned to grow the fuck up.

Material security.  This is not as crassly materialistic as it sounds. I am not seeking wealth, just security. A feeling that I have the resources I need to enjoy life without having to worry about money all the time.

What they used to call being “comfortable”

So no need for yachts or fancy cars or gold plated toilets. I would be happy with a pleasant three bedroom home in a nice neighborhood, enough money for groceries and rent and so on, and like a thousand a month for whatever.

Oh, and ebnough cash for traveling in comfort, either via cab or uber, or in my own privatre car with my own driver.

That would be enough for me to lead a full and decent life. Room for a lover and some friends. Pleasant and agreeable surroundings. A nice, relaxed, harmonious background vibe from the good neighbrhood. Freedom to go hither and yon, as the whim takes me, without having to deal with public transit. The ability to customize my lifestyle as I figure out what works for me and what does not. Simple pleasures in abundance.

That’s the life I long to lead. Very low on stress and very high on empowered freedom. A little world unto myself where I could relax and truly be myslef because I no longer felt insecure, anxious, and woriied all the damned time.

IOh, and this nice home in the nice neighborhood would be near moving water of some kind. The ocean, a lake, a stream, a waterfall… something like that.

There’s something about moving water that calms and soothes me. It’s like the water is washing me clean and taking all my sick impurities away.

Flow on, sweet river. Make me whole. Make me well. Make me clean.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.