The Good Life

I subscribe to several daily email lists. One sends me insightful excerpts from history, news, science, and miscellaneous journals (delanceyplace). Another sends me inspirational quotes, and my favorite (wordsmith) sends me a word a day, and a thought for the day. I like Wordsmith the most because the words are usually fun and hardly vernacular but so enriching to my vocabulary and knowledge. Through their daily words I have developed an appreciation for the depths of language, because so often the words' etymologies are rooted in ancient traditions or cultures. Words are ghosts, and language is out best effort at keeping the evolving world around us alive.

I also love Wordsmith's thoughts of the day. They are insightful, articulate, poignant, thought provoking, philosophical, beautiful. They place importance where it need be, and accuse norms accordingly. They are a daily philosophy lesson, administered in a Buddhist way. The idea is presented to the student, and then the student works it out. I decide if the concepts and perspective agree with my soul, if they present a path that has heart, as Borges might say. When they do, I adopt them.

As synchronicity would have it both Wordsmith and Inspiration Peak sent out quotes from Bertrand Russell on this lovely Columbus Day.
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To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
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The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life.
I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy.
I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
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Both quotes speak to me.

Would anyone truly know happiness if they never endured a day without that which makes them happy?

And haven't we all met those wonderful people who radiate happiness, and agreed they are wholeheartedly good?

The amount of gratitude I have been feeling recently that has bred contented happiness is insurmountable. I feel good.

I invite all of you to listen to more of The Arcade Fire.