He said little, but one phrase he did repeat more than any other was simple: "Any day you're breathing is a good day." To him, every day, every year, every one of the six decades past 1944 was a cherry on top gift.
Growing up in the 1970s in the United States, conducting nuclear attack drills with regularity, many of us felt that it was fairly likely that we would be incinerated before our 21st birthdays.
"Every day you're breathing is a good day."
There are certainly limits to these 8 simple words, but radical gratitude is at their core.
It's quite likely that everybody reading this post is having a FAR better life than 99.9% of every other human being who exists and has ever existed.
I'm a generally happy person because, from a young age, I have chosen to focus on that simple truth.
This perspective need not lead to complacence. Those who know me will say that I've always been a driven person, personally and professionally.
Every day you're breathing is a good day. Thanks, grandpa, for the wise words. He would have celebrated his 100th birthday last month.
My father, B-17 navigator, said he accepted that he was going to die in combat. The odds at the time of surviving were terrible (about 80% casualties).
He did survive (hence my existence), and told me that whenever he felt down about something he'd remember his buddies who died in the war and how he'd been given a chance to live through it, and he'd re-appreciate his life.
Upon his return to the states, the crews were led to tables to eat. There was nothing to order, the staff assured them "we know what you want." Sure enough, they did - steak, eggs, tomatoes, etc.
Upon return to civilian life, he said he was astounded by the triviality of peoples' everyday life concerns. They were going to live another day, what did they have to be concerned about?
I'm not trying to discount your point that you should have some gratitude or put things in perspective but happiness requires much more than just not dying. If nothing else your father had a wife and you as other hopefully joys in his life. Some people have no one.
Perhaps the key to a well-adjusted view of life is trauma? To show you how good the rest of life can be.
Essentially, being shot at changes you.
My father was a healthy, fit, active guy who suffered from a bit of acid reflux which turned into esophageal cancer which claimed his life at 46. I was in my early twenties and just starting my career when that happened. I'm 44 now, and that experience has shaped my approach to life and it's been both a good and bad thing. On one hand, it's made me live more in the now and not for a distant future. On the other hand, I experience guilt when I don't take advantage of every day I have.
If his biology allows him to trudge on, to always see the silver lining, how can you call this wisdom? Some people have a lower tolerance for suffering. Some people do not find life worth living, maybe for biological reasons.
The reason I don't call this wisdom is because for many or most people, this is not an idea that can be realized through words or knowledge alone.
I don't need someone to tell me to be happy. I need the ability to be happy.
How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood
And then just be in a good mood?
That's all I have to say because it's a straight up fact
You control your emotions it's as simple as that
The path to happiness can be complex one, but there are myriads of possible, non-guaranteed routes - exercise, meditation, yoga, drugs legal or not, backpacking in 3rd world, fulfilling jobs, good relationships, kids, etc. Even trying will take you on a path to be a better, more balanced human being.
Nobody will ever 'give you ability to be happy'. Either you will reach it yourself, in your own unique way, or you won't.
But damn...things were fucking terrible in a lot of other parts of the world during that time. And more importantly, such terrible times existed, all over the world, going back forever.
Don't forget the Stallinist terror (innocent people dying in concentration camps).
EDIT: why the downvote? Wikipedia estimate for the victims of The Purge is at 600k-1.2m level (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), certainly enough to make a dent in the stats.
my grand father was a resistance veteran back from WWII in Europe. He didn't talk much about it except to express the famine and misery they went through those years. He had it rough, lost his first wife young and just about everything.
He never told me how to be or who to be, or what to think, he just was content to have me around, grateful for everything.
Later in life, he became blind for many years, and just kept trucking along, not the complainer type. Always keeping it light-hearted basically, humouring and never judging, just caring deeply for others but himself, never wanting to be in the way of anyone, even the people paid to help him.
He is to this day my biggest inspiration.
My parents survived a genocide in their home countries. One parent commonly says things like "God has a plan". It is the same thing: a soundbite, and not a one-size-fits-all way to live your life.
It's been my experience that people who are unhappy or discontent try to "persevere" with trite mantra like "Every day you're breathing is a good day.".
My father used to say that a lot like your grandfather. And I suspect, like my father, your grandfather was dissatisfied and unhappy. He, like my father who fought in vietnam, probably also suffered through PTSD for his entire life from the horrible things he saw and did in war.
Honestly, if the only thing you can be grateful for is "breathing", then you might as well be a plant.
During the happiest times in my life, I've never even thought to say "Every day you're breathing is a good day.". It was only during the unhappy times in my life, that you have to resort to such quotes and mantra.
> Honestly, if the only thing you can be grateful for is "breathing", then you might as well be a plant.
What a weird time to be alive - apparently there is a minimum inescapable standard of what I (or anyone else) can be grateful for.
I suspect there are some (fairly reasonable) assumptions behind your assessment here.
First, my grandfather didn't say much at all. He was quiet and reserved, with only a few friends. He said "...breathing is a good day.", perhaps eight or ten times in the 18 years I lived with him, and the following 15 years I'd visit. And it was always in response to me or someone else complaining about trivial stuff.
To be clear: he wasn't repeating that statement like a mantra.
> Honestly, if the only thing you can be grateful for is "breathing" ...
Far from it; it's a baseline of gratitude, not in any way exclusive.
> During the happiest times in my life, I've never even thought to say "Every day you're breathing is a good day.".
For me as well! And likely my grandfather's perspective as well.
> ...grandfather was dissatisfied and unhappy ... PTSD ...
My grandfather definitely dealt with PTSD for many years, but he was 49 years old when I was born, and there were few signs of it left while I was growing up.
To be clear: my grandfather was far from dissatisfied and unhappy. In simple, straightforward ways, he enjoyed his life, through and through.
Finally, I'll note that I am I just sharing this personal anecdote with the deep understanding that every experience and circumstance is different. It is my hope that your father found or is finding peace.
I think as we focus on mastery or craftsmanship, happiness finds us.
Not everyone, but I'd say modern society is hedonistic—we seek happiness instead of achievement and get neither.
Probably because we've been conditioned (through billions of dollars, spent yearly, on marketing) to believe that happiness comes with the acquisition of certain items, status or experiences.
We've conflated happiness with dopamine rushes and short-lived pleasure, and believe the feeling can be elongated by merely emulating the actions which either provided both or could provide more of both.
Many of us have also altered our lives to support the above mentality - living in densely packed cities with air and sound pollution, or poor commutes, working around the clock, or in chaotic and stressful companies, doing ultimately purposeless or even outright destructive work, with the hopes of gaining more money or more status to fund the above, etc.
Coupled with the increasing social isolation and division, the never-ending outrage we're told to feel over today's new issue, which we as a civilization are going through, it's not hard to see why people are finding it hard to say they're happy.
I agree on the hedonism but I'm not sure the happiness-achievement struggle is as simple. There are plenty of people who have achieved stuff my some metric (fame, wealth, etc.) and are still deeply unhappy
Most of us will not become acclaimed directors like Miyazaki, or renowned sushi chefs like Jiro Ono (Jiro Dreams of Sushi is another documentary in this vein), but in my view, any skilled craftsperson, from a tatami weaver to a software developer, can follow this path. You don't have to be famous, or even best in class, to enjoy a life of mastering the craft that inspires you.
If at anytime we become truly happy this hurts these goals. For example, if an old man could be building a wall or an arsenal of bows an arrows, or inventing a better way to go fishing, his tribe would be more likely to survive. But if he just sat there, content to being alive, this is bad for his offsprings' future.
You could say, well why can't he do these things and be happy at the same time? I can't really explain why not being happy leads to a better outcome for the safety and procreation of society in general, but I would assume that it must serve some purpose in that goal, or the whole concept of it would have been removed by evolution long ago.
So, I think it's better just to resign yourself to the fact, barring using mind altering drugs, that you'll never be much happier than you were on average before, or much sadder, either.
And as far as this 70 yo lady is concerned, I'd bet when this was written she was simply riding the high of accomplishing something, and probably soon crashed back down below her baseline, only to recover back to it sometime later.
I have no idea what “human consciousness” is. I'm not deriding you, but I have never heard a satisfactory explanation. I kind of suspect it isn't actually real.
> What does this suggest about people that don't have kids?
There are a lot of species of wild animals that will not procreate in captivity. Take a group of these creature that is adapted to a certain environment and then place them in a completely different environment and they will for some reason lose their will to procreate even though they are physically able to do so.
I think it's the same with human beings. Technology has pushed so far and fast away from how we used to live, some of us, for whatever reason, don't procreate anymore.
How to be a billionaire: Work hard!
How to start a business: Start working, believe in yourself!
Now that I've read OP article, I realize what I've been doing wrong all my life. I had disabled my "fun" switch. Glad someone finally pointed it out. Everything is so much better now, wow! Thank you!
It is hand waving simplicity against the complex reality of biological limitations. Some people simply have more endurance for the suffering of life, better motivation or better opportunity and environment.
I want everyone to live to seek their potential, but there is no answer to finding peace (or happiness) in life.
At least not an answer that can be communicated through words.
I expected the general population of HN to be well trained enough to instantly realize this. I guess it was my fault for tricking myself in believing I could find such a place.
"Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around."
Success will not make you happy, this my experience agrees with, but I'm equally sure that happiness will not make one successful.
While happiness doesn't guarantee success, it sure has hell makes it easier to work hard!
The darkest year of my life was sophomore year in college. I wasn't doing well in my classes, so I dropped some hobbies to make more time to study. I got out of shape, gained weight, lost touch w/ my friends, put more pressure on myself to make all of these sacrifices "worth it," and welp – my grades never improved.
The next year, I fell in love w/ this boy.
After what most people call a downward spiral, I essentially fell straight into an upward spiral! Falling in love was (and still is)... inspiring. I got back into shape, rejoined all of the teams and activities I had quit, and also got straight A's in not four, not five, but all six of my classes (at MIT).
Being happy doesn't magically transport you to the finish line, but it certainly makes running the race more enjoyable. As the quote says, happiness is indeed fuel.
And lastly, I don't know if you're proud of yourself for losing so much weight, but you ought to be! When I get out of shape, my goal usually starts out as "I want to feel good in my body." But every time I start the process (and it happens frequently because I'm a bit of a yo-yo-er), I start to get really geeked by the progress. Progress is one of the only things that reliably and consistently makes me happy. (It's the best!!!)
Given that the entire journey is single steps, if you take one step and then beat yourself up because one step is nothing, and tell yourself how much of a loser you are for only moving one step, and how other would people disapprove .. that makes the entire journey thousands of steps where you beat yourself up because each step isn't enough. How are you going to face, and endure, such a miserable journey?
By contrast, if each step is a rewarding piece of progress, which you cheer yourself on for, then (in a recursive sense), the entire journey ahead of you unfolds into thousands of rewarding, cheerful pieces of progress encouraging you forwards.
I myself didn't lose half my bodyweight because I was happy, quite the contrary, I hated --and still hate-- my body.
You've worked hard to go from self-hate to self-hate, through thousands of steps each full of self-hate. What kind of progress is that, really? What kind of life is that? In a fraction of the time and effort you could have gone from self-hate to self-approval, without changing anything except thoughts and without doing anything except thinking.
I'm equally sure that happiness will not make one successful.
If you were happy being fat, what use would you have for "success"? What if you die half way through the journey and never reach the end - is success a goal that only exists at one point in time, and if you don't live long enough, you can't have it? Why not feel happy and successful at every moment of calorie counting, grateful at having the opportunity to buy chicken and salad instead of fried chicken and gravy, happy at the scenery around you when you go out to exercise, instead of filling each moment with self-hate and bitterness and what have you?
If every moment you play a tune, you hate how badly you play, and it drives you to play more precisely, but you hate playing and feel bad afterwards, are you better off or worse off than someone who plays imprecisely, but loves every moment they play and can't wait to play more and feels better afterwards?
Well, if you allow me, what does being successful actually mean ? What is the point of your definition of successful if it doesn't make you happy ?
And for the record - we both are social, but it isn't our natural state =)
My husband is super introverted and will always choose being alone over being in a big group of people. I'm the complete opposite. But we're both still social animals. We both get energized by camaraderie, interesting discussions/debates, and human connection – we just have different preferences for how we engage w/ and achieve those things.
I often wonder about that. I'm sure if someone is gregarious and outgoing then they would suffer if they were deprived of social contact. Is this the same for introverts? I wonder if any of the studies on this control for introversion/extroversion.
Happiness is about being able to live in the present moment and share your life with the people that you love. Of course a minimum of wealth, health, etc. is needed and that minimum could be quite an effort to reach depending on where you start with.
I´ve never met a happy unloved person no matter how rich or powerful.
To others to yourself. To everyone.
Can't intentionally smiling release the same chemicals in your brain that are released when you are happy about something in a sort of backwards effect?
What do you really gain by being all knowledgeable (and miserable)? Life is not a videogame that you win at the end by learning more than other people, instead it's a game that we all LOSE when we die, so to my eyes the only thing we should optimize for is to be happy while we live. If knowing more things make you happy, go for it but keep an eye on the potential negative effects on one's mood/happiness that I find inherent in knowledge.
He raised me up and I am proud of him. All the difficulties and chaos that happened in this country doesn't affect his perseverance doing researches and making my family better off. He is still optimistic and healthy today. With your stories, I found that as human being, we are really seeking for and sharing similar happiness, which can go beyond ideology.
Thanks for all your sharing again.
Just think about yourself and your own natural happiness level. For my siblings and I, it seems very similar to our parents. Of course not everyone is this way but I definitely believe some people are born a lot happier than others.
[1]actually the jury is still out on that one
I wish her and Courtland would do a regular podcast together.
[0] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/086-lynne-tye-of-key-va...
The author has her MBTI on her profile, and it's nearly the opposite of mine. That suggests to me that her preferences are likely quite different from mine.
Contentment comes when "the way you want it" and "the way it is" overlap enough -- but sometimes in life, you can really only change one of those.
This is enticing blanket statement. However, there are many things you'll need to do that will not or should not be fun. And if you fully believe this sentiment, during those times you are not having fun, you may feel like you're "doing it wrong" when this is just how it is and that's ok.
Happiness is more related to contentment than fun.
There's too much depressing shit in the world, too many injustices happening to other people and lifeforms, to truly be happy with that knowledge even if your own life is perfect.
Living in ignorance and seeking to learn nothing is just fueling the dystopian world we're walking into.
The most content people in the world are people who know everything there is to know about physics, philosophy, chemistry etc. That deep knowledge opens their eyes to the big picture.
Ignore the news, but learn everything there is to know about humanity.
I don't know if this is the best way to be, but it works remarkably well!
I'm not trying to start a pointless debate, your comment really made me curious.
Let's imagine the Christian god doesnt't exist. How does that logically lead to nothing mattering?
As a lifelong atheist there are plenty of things that matter to me: the well-being of people (particularly those around me), peace, justice, climate change, etc. Are these goals not valuable in themselves?
I would argue the opposite: if god does exist, then nothing really matters anymore, except the whims of a powerful entity.
Not having a supernatural power meddling in our affairs liberates us to do great things.
The entire book of Ecclesiastes is about this. I wouldn't presume to summarize it all in a comment box, but it does cover a lot of grounds in different approaches to the meaning of life. It claims none of them really work all that well.
And no, it doesn't say, "But you die and go to heaven or hell anyway" over and over. It's not very supernatural at all, actually.
Things are. Their value is determined by a mind. Only God's mind can determine the value of a thing. Whether God exists or not, the statement stands.
Because, we do not know all the consequences an action but God knows. By your own set of values, by some twist of fate, what you are doing could be counter-productive.
Well, they can be valuable subjectively. Then again, useless things can also be valuable subjectively (e.g. a person obsessing about hoarding BS at their home).
But objectively, and in the long scheme of things, everybody will just be dead forever, so what's the point?
At best it's better enjoying a small intermission bookended by an eternity of nothing.
The universe, for one, doesn't care. It could just throw some asteroid at earth, and kill everybody removing all traces of history, culture, civilization, etc too.
So I find satisfaction in that nothing matters anyways, and the best we can do is try to live a good life while we're here, and not take any of it too seriously. Because it's all random and largely out of my control, there's no rational basis for worry.
It's nice to see a Christian that reached the same conclusion with a totally different process :)
Can you, really? Say your kid disappeared a week ago after soccer practice, and the police has no leads about their whereabouts. Could you really distance yourself and "not worry because everything is just a random walk"? Or would you spend all night restless, like a normal human being?
"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder." - Homer Simpson
You've not considered this possibility, that there is an entity out there who would punish you for being Christian.
I'm not against religion but I wouldn't say there is some rational reason to believe one thing or another.
Yes, in the end nothing matters, but in the present and near future many things matter.