Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.
This is what sailing does for me.
I have ample evidence that this does not work for everyone.
Another thought that has been playing around in the back of my mind is the question of whether or not Love (note the capital letter) requires an object. I found myself falling in love the other day without an object to hang it on. I was reflecting on the fact that my recent attempts at “falling in love” had not accomplished much and, in fact, the idea of love “sans objet” seems to have a lot to recommend it.
Many of you were building counter arguments in your mind as you read the above. But let me be a little rough and point out that the images of the world that you carry around in your brain are not worth much. There is a lot of current scientific research (and informed philosophical musing) that supports the view that the brain simply makes up stuff to embellish the decisions that it has already made (often without a hint of causal connection). History, Poetry, Literature and Folklore abound with stories of love so one sided as to make the putative object irrelevant.
My contention is that this is not an occasional aberration, but rather the universal norm. And that love “avec un objet” is kind of a cover up that simply serves as a mnemonic to make communication on the subject more organized. I’d argue that that while there is no problem with espousing the conventional wisdom in this area, there is also no real point in it.
It does clear the air to put a lot of these archaic ideas behind us.
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