I watched this TED talk,
Dan Gilbert asks, why are we happy?!
What amazed me really is how we are kept very heartbroken about our hopeless desires while at the same time we are happy and we cant realize it .A tiny sorrowful thought can ruin our life not because we haven't achieve some of what we wanted, but because we overestimated the difference between the emotional states in the two situations, I got what I want or I couldn't. In fact, the emotional state is more likely to be the same in the two cases, mostly!
Here are Adam Smith words describing the idea perfectly and I found them very inspiring,
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Dan Gilbert asks, why are we happy?!
What amazed me really is how we are kept very heartbroken about our hopeless desires while at the same time we are happy and we cant realize it .A tiny sorrowful thought can ruin our life not because we haven't achieve some of what we wanted, but because we overestimated the difference between the emotional states in the two situations, I got what I want or I couldn't. In fact, the emotional state is more likely to be the same in the two cases, mostly!
Here are Adam Smith words describing the idea perfectly and I found them very inspiring,
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
