From The Happiness Myth by Jennifer Michael Hecht. What a fun book. I am sad that I have to return it to the library today before I am really done with it but I am excited for the next person on the library list who gets to read it. There is alot of good stuff in this book- history of why we (in this Western culture) do what we do and why we worry about what we do.
These are great quotes from the book-
"It is worth paying attention." [Isn't it though!]
"Present-day convictions about what normal people do are much too certain...it is all tremendously dependent on time and place, and it is not all the same."
Did you know that if lab rats are forced to try new things, they experience stress. But if new cages and gadgets are just sort of put around they will go VOLUNTARILY and choose novelty! I love how this relates to kids, to unschooling, to learning, to allowing people to be who they are...
Hecht also suggests we think about what makes us happy, make a list of the things we love to do and things we would like to do. Make three lists- Good-day Happiness, Euphoria, A Happy Life and fill them up. Then do the things that are on your list. Try them and reflect and wonder if you want to do those things again or do you want to try something else...or a little of both.
"We seem obsessed with motivation, rallying ourselves to something beyond the life available to us right now, and we treat this motivation as if it were a major part of the history of wisdom, which it is not."
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