A very long post
Someone said “with great freedom comes great responsibility”. When one is a child one has no responsibility whatsoever, parents and nannies do everything for us. If you are a president of some kind you have a lot of freedom (you’re the boss) but you do have a responsibility. When you are independent from your parents you have great freedom but than again you have the responsibility of working, paying taxes, managing your money, etc.
The fundamental dilemma of human existence is that there is no happiness without freedom but too much responsibility takes the joy out of living.
How do we find a balance? I’m still looking for the answer, but I have some clues: avoid power, enjoy the freedom of self-determination but avoid the freedom to interfere with other people’s life, cause that brings responsibility. This is what we, low-middle-class poor but with enough money to eat and drink beer, do.
I cried of happiness often in my life. I was perfectly and absolutely happy as a child, when I was unaware that I wasn’t free. I was exploring the world and since I was blessed with living in a civilized country and with a family that loved me and provided me with all basic needs, the world seemed an infinitely beautiful place. Beauty would make me cry of joy. Small things like the autumn sun going through a window, trees and birds, the ocean…
With adolescence you realise that
1) You are not free
2) The world is in fact full of ugliness (children starving, homeless people, wars…)
3) You have desires and those desires are not always met (just think about people you fell in love with and did not correspond you)
4) You start making questions, profound, personal, philosophical, impossible to be answered questions
Adolescence is the expulsion of Eden, it is the Paradise Lost.
I suffered like hell as a teenager, like we all did, I’m sure.
Later, in University, I had a stable life. I was living on my own and I had the freedom of my parents giving me money (not much, luckily, but enough) and only the little responsibility of getting good marks. As I loved what I was studying it wasn’t a heavy responsibility. I had a girlfriend, good friends, and above all… health. I discovered that 99% of happiness is about being healthy. If you have cancer or a severe illness, it is almost impossible to be happy. I cried of happiness once just by looking at a tree in my campus and realising how beautiful it was! Pure, immaculate, harmonious happiness.
When I started working, the responsibility of it destroyed part of my freedom. My health got worst. It was my second lost of paradise. I was making too many questions and believing it is good to make questions. I still think it is essential to make questions… but just don’t put much hope in obtaining answers. Doubt is a good thing, certainties are for fanatics.
But one thing I do know. If I was happy before, I can be happy again. And, contradicting myself, that is a certainty.
I found out the second part of the secret of happiness, besides being healthy: helping other people being happy. If you concentrate on other people’s problems you just forget your own. There is pure happiness in altruism, in doing good. Psychiatrists recommend it for depressions, doing good things releases endorphins, its official.
For someone interested in the subject read a small but eloquent philosophical analysis written by one of the most brilliant philosophers ever, Sir Bertrand Russell, entitled “The Conquest of Happiness” (A Conquista da Felicidade, Guimarães Editoras – há na FNAC e custa 6€).
Finally, I recommend listening to the song “I don’t want to grow up” by Tom Waits (the guy who said “I’m not drunk but the piano has been drinking”).
When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up
How do you move in a world of fog
That's always changing things
Makes me wish that I could be a dog
When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever wanna be that way
I don't wanna grow up
Seems like folks turn into things
That they'd never want
The only thing to live for
Is today
I'm gonna put a hole in my TV set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
And I don't wanna grow up
I don't wnna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't wanna grow up
Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinking all night
And I don't wanna grow up
I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old Tomb on Grand Street
When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up
Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get me a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float a broom
Fall in and get married then boom
How the hell did I get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up
posted by Grouchy Smurf @ 4:26 p.m.
6 comments
6 Comments:
Pá... Eu juro que não consigo chorar a olhar pa uma árvore mas admiro-te por isso! And you sure did sound like Miss Rio Tinto when you started to enumerate the things we might realize with adolescence. But even tough, a cena das endorfinas causou-me uma certa admiração cause i never thought there was a physical explanation for our confort just by being altruists! Embora goste de ter as minhas explicações científicas das coisas...
But besides tudo isto, i like aperceber-me de que há quem pense um pouco like me and the way i do.
Although i know i'll keep with my doubts and questões permamentes a rondarem-me, também sei que isso faz parte de mim e não o quero perder!
E olha que when your drunk friend says "How the hell did I get here so soon" we got to give him his credit porque isto anda mesmo rápido...
Já agora que tamos na parte musical, here goes one excerpt that when we think of it we realize que tem de ser mesmo assim:
"Sometimes, I feel the fear of
uncertainty stinging clear.
And I can't help but ask
myself how much I'll let the fear
take the wheel and steer.
It's driven me before, and it seems to a vague,
haunting mass appeal.
But lately I'm beginning to find that I
should be the one behind the wheel."
Uoohhh... gostei da misturada.
As tuas duvidas e questões são mesmo tuas e é bom que as mantenhas. Mas o que eu descobri é que havia uma data de perguntas que eu fazia e que me atormentavam e que pelos vistos já os gregos as faziam e houve um batalhão de filosofos e artistas que tentaram cada um à sua maneira responder. E para não reinventar a roda é sempre bom ver o q esses paspalhos propuseram e partir de onde eles ficaram no sentido de obter respostas... digo eu q sou pastor!
Tens de ouvir Tom Waits... ias curtir! É a voz de whiskey mais rouca que jamais existiu.
Abração
É que só faltava mesmo esta, vocemece desterrado a comparar-se a filosofos e artistas, deve-te achar o maximo...
Carying on, percebo a "vossa dor", é por isso que has vezes a ignorância é uma virtude... Think about that!
Toma para ti
Caro Simple minded:
Hum, não, n me considero nenhum artista ou filósofo. Acho que não é preciso ser nenhum dos dois para sentir felicidade, infelicidade ou duvidas existenciais.
Seja como for, acho que qlq um de nós pode sempre comparar-se a quem quer q seja. Não vejo pq é q um artista ou filósofo há-de ser mais importante do que o gajo que me dá um fino no bar, portanto onde estaria o mal em comparar-me com esse(a)s senhore(a)s?
A ignorância é uma benção, mas nega a liberdade, e sem liberdade ninguém pode ser feliz... talvez as crianças.
Além disso é dificil ignorar um sentimento, não é?
Abraços
Nao podia concordar mais contigo, alias uma vez ate me virei para o Saramago e disse-lhe: "olha lá Sázinho (é assim que os amigos o tratam:)), tu não és mais que eu, aliás, tu nem sabes por pontos finais e virgulas no que escreves, eu ao menos ponho poucos mas ponho, portanto para o ano já sabem, em vez de te darem a ti o nobel, dao-me a mim"
Evidentemente, estou a brincar...ou não.
Abraço para ti, espero que este post te encontre bem e de cabeça levantada para o que há de vir... Força amigo
Deixa-me adivinhar, Simpleminded... p falares em receber o Nobel es o Antonio Lobo Antunes =) Acertei?
Obrigado pela forca (desculpa, mas n tenho "c" de cedilha neste maldito teclado britanico)
Grande abraco
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