Live and love your life
Seventy years of suffering is way too much. Seventy years of fun is barely enough, especially if the fun only started at forty.
Life is a gift. Joy is life. But you can’t be happy all the time. So where does joy come from?
In 1978 psychologists tracked down twenty-two Illinois lottery winners, with prizes from fifty thousand to a million dollars, and compared them with people from the same neighborhoods. The winners were no happier. And breakfast, a joke or a chat with a friend gave them less pleasure than it gave their neighbors.
Joy that falls into your lap doesn’t stay. You can’t store it, stockpile it or leave it to your kids. You mine it fresh every single day, like Bitcoin. Happiness is the block reward.
There are three lines to live by. Refuse to suffer. Calmness is the absence of fear. Joy is proof of work.
Which means joy is work. And that’s what life is for. Mining joy.
Whatever you do should come from love, not fear.
Everything you’ve done in your life, every mistake, was a lesson. When you see it, when you bring out what’s real in you, when you realize there’s nowhere left to hide and you look back, you’ll see you were lucky all along. You’ll be free. You’ll know none of it was in vain.
Life is for mining joy
Life is for mining joy. Or you’re holding it wrong. Life, that is.
Poultices work on the living. On the dead, not so much. So mine your joy now, while you still can.
Attention: resting on cemetery grounds is strictly prohibited. Fine: 10,000 rubles.