More than almost anything else, the experience of parenthood exposes the gulf between our experiencing and remembering selves. Our experiencing selves tell researchers that we prefer doing the dishes -- or napping, or shopping, or answering emails --...
Without close and reciprocal relationships with other animal beings, we're alienated from the rich, diverse, and magnificent world in which we live.
Old age is not meant to be survived alone," Man Rapadou said, her voice trailing with her own hidden thoughts. "Death should come gently, slowly, like a man's hand approaching your body. There can be joy in impatience if there is time to find the joy...
People who have babies tell me I will know a love that is beyond anything I can imagine, and a joy that is indescribable. Love and joy? That sounds horrifying. I have no way of knowing whether I can handle either of those. I'm much better with need a...
We enshrine things to memory very differently than we experience them in real time. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has coined a couple of terms to make the distinction. He talks about the "experiencing self" versus the "remembering self.
That women bring home the bacon, fry it up, serve it for breakfast, and use its greasy remains to make candles for their children's science projects is hardly news. Yet how parenting responsibilities get sorted out under these conditions remains unre...
Am I ever angry or frustrated? I only feel angry sometimes when I see waste, when things that we waste are what people need, things that would save them from dying. Frustrated? No, never.
Boredom was at the root of Lazare's unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than with others. Meanwhile he blamed...
People ask me what I am politically and I've previously offered this equation: I became a conservative by being around liberals. And I became a libertarian after being around conservatives.
Joy, like love, is an impenetrable, God-given state of being. The distinctions between joy and happiness and love and affection are important ones under the notion that happiness is an 'iffy' emotion, a highly dependent feeling both aroused and destr...
Such are contrasts we see every day in the world. Joy and Sorrow! But Joy is an exile from Heaven who does not remain in any one place. Sorrow is a son of Hell who does not release his prey until he has torn it to pieces.
In grief, part of the pain comes from our feeling that we should not suffer so - that it is fundamentally alien to our being, this even though we all suffer, and frequently. Yet we reject suffering as a basic human truth, while greeting joy as integr...
You will remember how, as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made 'realizations' the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of mind by 'maistry'.
You must maintain a state of happiness, state of joy to let the positive thoughts emanate from your mind.. If you are in a state of joy, your thoughts emanate positive energy, and you can influence others without much efforts.
Peace and supreme joy may seem like end-states to practitioners on more difficult spiritual paths, but the path of devotion should be filled with peace and joy from the very beginning. Their absence is an indication that something is amiss. (125)
You must not suppose that this was a romantic passion. The passion of my life, as the next chapter will show, belonged to a wholly different region. What I felt for the dancing mistress was sheer appetite; the prose, not the poetry, of the Flesh.
Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.
Our culture encourages us to plan every moment and fill our schedules with one activity and obligation after the next, with no time to just be. But the human body and mind require downtime to rejuvenate. I have found my greatest moments of joy and pe...
While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.
The moment I finish 'any' book, my feels are pretty much the same. Goes a little something like this: It's done? Whimper. Tears of joy. Oh, my back. Relief! Shower! Food! Sleep! Oh, my back. You mean I get to catch up on my favorite TV shows? Tears o...
The best formula for a prayer that gives J.O.Y: J- 1st, Pray to JESUS O- 2nd, Pray for OTHERS Y- 3rd, Pray for YOURSELF Most people distort the formula by praying selfish prayers for their own personal gains. JYO is not the spelling for joy. In JOY, ...
