CHAPTER 2 reading notes

Happiness - Marc Chagall

1. Essences adapted from groups

【1】

    There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. Shakyamuni figured out that life is suffering after many years' thinking. Socrates just left one sentence that is the unexamined life is not worth living before his death. Mark Manson summarized in this book that happiness life is essentially an endless series of problems told by the Disappoint Panda's mouth.

    All of those are not chicken soups, which when we talk about, we may be actually believe one of the followings: 1) Such a thing or person may motivate me; 2) It is words that I just want to hear but not to do; 3)The story has a simple causality; 4) Success is not an algorism or formula but full of factors and luck.

【2】

    Here are some synonyms:

luxury, opulence, riches, possession, treasure, estate, wealth, fortune

frivolous, uninteresting, humdrum, boring, tiresome, lame

2. Q&A

【1】 

    Why “happiness is a problem? 

    Because we have a false premise that happiness is algorithmic and that happiness can be worked for and earned and achieved as if it were done in an instant.

 【2】

    Why the author invented “Disappointment Panda”? What is it for?

    Because he wanted to use it as a superhero to lead the following discussions and stories. His purpose is to make it as an example to illustrate the concept of pain that is our body’s most effective means of spurring action, in all of its forms.

 【3】

    What is the role that emotions play in our life? why they are overrated?

     Emotions are evolved to help us live and reproduce a little bit better, as feedback mechanisms telling usthat something is either likely right or likely wrong for us.   

Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change, merely signposts, suggestions, that our neurobiology gives us, not commandments. But too many people trust their own emotions.  

 【4】

    Why you don’t have chiseled abs? (If you do have, how did you make it?)

    Because I never put it on my top priority. 

3. Some thoughts while reading

I took about half an hour to finish this chapter and found maybe I had read one similar article before. After I searched some same words I could remember in my notebook, it turns out that they are exactly the same one, or precisely, what I had read was adapted from this chapter. Because what the author wrote is fantastic, and I can therefore understand why I am so anxious and actually, I always felt in low spirit these years when not achieving what I want and the passage told me it is ok to feel bad about that. It is just a feedback mechanism to give me a sense of my own physical proportions —— where I can and cannot move and what I can and cannot touch. Later, more surprising I read another article from which I find the totally same thought about the unachieved goals or sad news: 

Control what you can. Ignore the rest.

Why the writer could have such an awesome idea in his book, and why did he write so good that almost everyone likes it after finishing reading it?

I suppose he said the truth, combining his story, that we all are in love with the result —— the image of ourselves on stage, audience cheering, but we are not in love with the process, the hard process, which is the daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, (here in the writer/s story of guitar), the pain of finding gigs and actually the shitty process. We dream the mountain but only fancy the imagine of the summit not the miles and miles of climbing it.

Events don't upset you. Beliefs do.

So when we find that we cannot bear the lame process, we give up the mountain. And we still want happiness. We thought happiness could solve everything. Then someone tells you that: Happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Joy doesn’t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows. He even claims that life itself is a form of suffering. 

We do not believe at first glance. Then we pause to try to figure it out and we also have looked through what the examples the author mentioned in his book. 

 Most elements of romantic love that  we pursue—the dramatic and dizzyingly
emotional displays of affection, the topsy-turvy ups and downs—aren’t
healthy, genuine displays of love. In fact, they’re often just another form of entitlement playing out through people’s relationships.

It seems kind of true, we think at this moment.

Negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, it’s because you’re supposed to do something. 

Yeah, the sentences diminish our worries about our worries, our anger, our anxious, and all of our negative emotions.

Pain is what teaches us what to pay attention to when we’re young or careless. It helps show us what’s good for us versus what’s bad for us. It helps us understand and adhere to our own limitations. It teaches us to not fuck around near hot stoves or stick metal objects into electrical sockets. Therefore, it’s not always beneficial to avoid pain and seek pleasure, since pain can, at times, be life-or-death important to our well-being

Such beautiful phrases are worthy of reciting. What Mark wrote reassures us, and let us know and think, and we figure it out that there are three functions of pain: 1) Pain lets us know something wrong in our body or mind; 2) Pain enables us to have sympathy; 3) Pain is the opposite of happiness.

Without the struggle, the extent of the happiness could not be measured.

4. Words supposed to remember

Cake: Here it cannot be eaten. It is not a noun, a verb instead. 

Dog shit caked to the bottom. Blood caked after being exposed in the air for a while. Water cannot cake.

So caking here has the same meaning as gathering into a clot.

Be wired to: 

We are wired to the present situation. We tend to be content to the current situation. We are conditioned to be that way. We are indoctrinated not to struggle in the comfort zone.

Digress: to speak or write about something that is different from the main subject being discussed

"But I digress. " In this chapter the writer wrote in this way. It is similar to "But I disagree. "