Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”

A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research found that the bottom half of the world population owns approximately 1 % of all global wealth.

    But how do hobbies and imagination help foster professional breakthroughs? "One possibility is that people are geniuses because they are polymaths and have a huge range of talents," says Robert Root-Bernstein. "There’s not much the rest of us can learn from that. But another possibility is that an avocation helps you learn skills."

Why Sisterly Chats Make People Happier

 

“Having a Sister Makes You Happier”: that was the headline on a recent article about a study finding that adolescents who have a sister are less likely to report such feelings as “I am unhappy, sad or depressed” and “I feel like no one loves me.”

 

Christopher Silas Neal

studies have come to similar conclusions. But why would having a sister make you happier?

The usual answer — that girls and women are more likely than boys and men to talk about emotions — is somehow unsatisfying, especially to a researcher like me. Much of my work over the years has developed the premise that women’s styles of friendship and conversation aren’t inherently better than men’s, simply different.

A man once told me that he had spent a day with a friend who was going through a divorce. When he returned home, his wife asked how his friend was coping. He replied: “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it.”

His wife chastised him. Obviously, she said, the friend needed to talk about what he was going through.

This made the man feel bad. So he was relieved to read in my book “You Just Don’t Understand” (Ballantine, 1990) that doing things together can be a comfort in itself, another way to show caring. Asking about the divorce might have made his friend feel worse by reminding him of it, and expressing concern could have come across as condescending.

The man who told me this was himself comforted to be reassured that his instincts hadn’t been wrong and he hadn’t let his friend down.

But if talking about problems isn’t necessary for comfort, then having sisters shouldn’t make men happier than having brothers. Yet the recent study — by Laura Padilla-Walker and her colleagues at Brigham Young University — is supported by others.

Last year, for example, the British psychologists Liz Wright and Tony Cassidy found that young people who had grown up with at least one sister tended to be happier and more optimistic, especially if their parents had divorced. Another British researcher, Judy Dunn, found a similar pattern among older adults.

So what is going on?

My own recent research about sisters suggests a more subtle dynamic. I interviewed more than 100 women about their sisters, but if they also had brothers, I asked them to compare. Most said they talked to their sisters more often, at greater length and, yes, about more personal topics. This often meant that they felt closer to their sisters, but not always.

One woman, for example, says she talks for hours by phone to her two brothers as well as her two sisters. But the topics differ. She talks to her sisters about their personal lives; with her brothers she discusses history, geography and books. And, she added, one brother calls her at 5 a.m. as a prank.

A prank? Is this communication? Well, yes — it reminds her that he’s thinking of her. And talking for hours creates and reinforces connections with both brothers and sisters, regardless of what they talk about.

A student in my class recounted a situation that shows how this can work. When their family dog died, the siblings (a brother and three sisters) all called one another. The sisters told one another how much they missed the dog and how terrible they felt. The brother expressed concern for everyone in the family but said nothing about what he himself was feeling.

My student didn’t doubt that her brother felt the same as his sisters; he just didn’t say it directly. And I’ll bet that having the phone conversations served exactly the same purpose for him as the sisters’ calls did for them: providing comfort in the face of their shared loss.

So the key to why having sisters makes people happier — men as well as women — may lie not in the kind of talk they exchange but in the fact of talk. If men, like women, talk more often to their sisters than to their brothers, that could explain why sisters make them happier. The interviews I conducted with women reinforced this insight. Many told me that they don’t talk to their sisters about personal problems, either.

An example is Colleen, a widow in her 80s who told me that she’d been very close to her unmarried sister throughout their lives, though they never discussed their personal problems. An image of these sisters has remained indelible in my mind.

Late in life, the sister came to live with Colleen and her husband. Colleen recalled that each morning after her husband got up to make coffee, her sister would stop by Colleen’s bedroom to say good morning. Colleen would urge her sister to join her in bed. As they sat up in bed side by side, holding hands, Colleen and her sister would “just talk.”

That’s another kind of conversation that many women engage in which baffles many men: talk about details of their daily lives, like the sweater they found on sale — details, you might say, as insignificant as those about last night’s ballgame which can baffle women when they overhear men talking. These seemingly pointless conversations are as comforting to some women as “troubles talk” conversations are to others.

So maybe it’s true that talk is the reason having a sister makes you happier, but it needn’t be talk about emotions. When women told me they talk to their sisters more often, at greater length and about more personal topics, I suspect it’s that first element — more often — that is crucial rather than the last.

This makes sense to me as a linguist who truly believes that women’s ways of talking are not inherently better than men’s. It also feels right to me as a woman with two sisters — one who likes to have long conversations about feelings and one who doesn’t, but who both make me happier.

Deborah Tannen is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and the author, most recently, of “You Were Always Mom’s Favorite! Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives.”

THE SHOP OF IDEAS

In an old quarter of the city, I discovered a strange little boutique where no shop window and no signboard attracted attention, and in which no one haggled, nor watched those strolling by.

I entered. A man, of whom I could see nothing but a silhouette, so impenetrable was the shadow around us, appeared without a sound.

"What, in fact, do you sell here?", I demanded of him in the thoughtlessness of my surprise.

"Ideas", he replied to me, in a very simple tone.

He grasped a small box and, began to rummage around in the dust:

"Would you be an utopian, by chance? Pardon the indiscretion. Do you want ideas of peace and of universal happiness? They are not dear and I have many for sale at the moment. Take them, and you may have the whole lot for 2 fr.50."

And, before my gesture of refusal:

"Ah! you have sense: I do not guarantee their solidity. Now, here is a financial idea, but it is extremely rare and costly. I could not surrender it to you for less than three thousand francs."

"Devil! did I, three thousand francs, that’s…"

He calmly interrupted me.

"An idea less new than this one has made the fortune of a founder of American trusts. I have not profited personally, because being too rich would bore me. I would lose my friends and the respect of the quarter."

Something like a reflection of gold shone between his fingers.

"Now if, like me, you despise opulence, or if, which is more probable, this idea seems too high priced for you, here is, at a very good value, the dream of a poet. Three sous, this is reasonable, don’t you find?"

And he showed me a glimmer of rainbow imprisoned in a box of colours.

"Finally, as you appear to me to belong to the serious clientele, I propose to you (your countenance is creased with a grimace which should have been a smile) the magnificent idea of a libertine, all but made new, you know, and of an exceptional refinement. I would let you have it for a thousand francs. It is worth more, but this is so that you will return often to buy others from me. I truly have a collection without equal."

"Yes", I said, "but some of your merchandise seems to me to be well used."

"Ah!", he replied with pride, "these, like antique furniture, are justly the most appreciated by my clientele. But do you see nothing that can satisfy you?"

"I desire an idea that you can never sell me: an idea of my own."

      Dialogue means trying to understand the other with an open mind. Dialogue is a rare phenomenon and it is beautiful, because both are enriched through a dialogue. In fact, while you talk, either it can be a discussion – both opposite to each other, a verbal fight, trying to prove that I am right and you are wrong — or a dialogue, which is different.

      Dialogue is not posing against each other, but taking each other’s hand,moving together towards the truth, helping each other to find the way. It is togetherness, it is a cooperation, it is a harmonious effort to find the truth. It is not in any way a fight, not at all. It is a friendship, moving together to find the truth, helping each other to find the truth.

      Nobody has the truth already, but when two persons start finding out, enquiring about the truth together, that is dialogue — and both are enriched. And when truth is found, it is neither of me, nor of you. When truth is found, it is greater than both who participated in the enquiry, it is higher than both, it surrounds both — and both are enriched.

Osho

The Grass Grows By Itself. Ch. 8

Hi, I’m Ythan. Don’t let my mild mannered appearance fool you, because I have incredible abilities. I can create complex web sites from nothing, using only my mind and a computer. I can beat Super Mario Bros. in 10 minutes, without dying. My lungs emerge victorious from every encounter with combusted plant matter. I have immersive 3D vision, and stereo listening capabilities. The greatest thing about me is how I can sleep for 12 hours without getting up to pee. I am also able to defy gravity for short periods of time, by utilizing my muscles. You probably wish you could be me, but these great powers come at a terrible price. I have no sense of direction. Nutrients go straight to my brain and eyeballs, leaving me skinny and lank. And in the deepest pit of my soul lurks a dark and bottomless void, threatening my very being with a fiery inner apocalypse of sorrow, agony and dementia. I’ve named him Herbert and together we will rule the world.

            "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"

W. H. Murray

Without desire everything is sufficient.
With seeking myriad things are impoverished
Plain vegetable can soothe hunger.
A patched robe is enough to cover this bent old body.
Alone I hike with a deer.
Cheerfully I sing with village children.
The stream under the cliff cleanses my ears.
The pine on the mountain top fits my heart.

Ryokan

         I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

 

Brendan Behan (1923-1964)