This is the same conclusions that I came up. There is no way out of this shitty play called life.

If you sit for too long, it will nag you to move. It you move for too long, it will nag you to sit.

A little bit of sarcasm without opening up the PC Pandora's box. I understand why in Hinduism the life energy called Shakti, that throbs inside us, is represented by the femininity: you can never make it happy.

Interesting take. I think you have to make happiness. it takes a lot of effort for some. It's all in the compromise of being ok with some between the nothing and the magic.

It is entirely unsurprising that wealth and similar "success" does not lead to happiness. People have been writing about this for millennia. It has been a huge part of philosophical and religious thought. Is this really a surprise to anyone?

What is missing here is any consideration of what makes people happy. Maybe not chasing shallow materialistic ambitions? Not playing lie as a zero sum games?

The author's point is very different -- it is that happiness can really only be pursued, as opposed to it being possible to obtain and retain happiness in an ever-lasting way -- but that it should be pursued nevertheless.

"huge part of philosophical and religious thought" is sweeping in the extreme.

Take for instance what a Christian would tell you about happiness -- they would hardly be saying the same thing as I mentioned above. Take a Buddhist or a Hindu -- they would probably agree with the first half of the proposition above (happiness cannot be procured permanently) but the entire thrust of those traditions has been (basically) to recognize this fact and give it all up and retire to the caves.

Even if happiness can only be pursued you can define being happy as happiness feeling close and inevitable. Like if you feel all you have to do is to get home to be happy then you achieve happiness every day, I'd call that being happy.

It is when you feel happiness requires a ton of work or big things to change that happiness is fall away and we start to despair.

For me happiness is an incredibly flawed metric. It's so obtuse that it's context is the only thing of value to discuss. I.e. that article for me is discussing financial well-being.

For nearly two years I've split happiness into 3 pillars: .Mental well-being .Physical well-being .Social well-being

A truly happy day is a stars aligning event where each category has to be fulfilled.

But you get a lot more nuance in knowing your emotional happiness is not occurring with equally strong physical or social happiness.

>.Mental well-being .Physical well-being .Social well-being

This is a realistic way of looking at things, I would break it down personally a bit more granular level, but it is quite true. Most days I barely achieve the targets (this mostly applies mostly to my personal goals) I set out for the day but I am making peace with myself due to a really painful breakup I have gone through recently, while also dealing with some other personal troubles and I am trying to make peace with it cause I think I have come to accept the troubles I have been in the past few months and planning to do things about it.

The article is decrying self-help books yet it falls into their exact trap: the author picked one central thesis and is using it to make sweeping claims about life. Bonus for claiming that everything you read before is wrong, that’s also a staple of those books.

The AI generated image of a bookshelf saying “happiness” is a type of strawman I hadn’t seen before, though.