For every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first, and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant according as its cause was skillful or unskillful.- source

I believe in karma.

I like the idea of karma. The idea that the consequences of your actions affect future events sounds very appealing to me. If we all acted as if our actions would come back to haunt us, it might encourage us to ponder longer before we act.

Karma might even encourage people to commit random acts of kindness. Smiling to a stranger on your way to work. Holding the door to someone carrying bags of groceries. Calling with happy birthday wishes. Calling just to say hi.

If you believed in karma, you’d also believe that the more good vibrations you send ‘out there’, the more chances you have of receiving luck and happiness. So you’d try to be as kind as you can, for no specific reason. Wouldn’t it be neat if everyone did that?

On Friday, Jake and I saw Vanilla Sky. A movie with Tom Cruise and Jason Lee was already too good to be true. Even if it had absolutely no point, I would have easily paid the twenty bucks for two hours of watching my two favorite male actors. But, as an added bonus, the movie turned out to be a trip.

I don’t want to give away the twisty ending, so I won’t tell you a major premise of the movie. But in the end, it was about consequences. About showing that each move you make can alter your potential future. That each action, even if seemingly small, has consequences, and if you don’t consider them, you might have to pay for them. You will have to pay for them.

Yet how many of us really think of our actions? I mean, really think about them. Each time we don’t reply to a kind email or return a phone call. When we cut in front of someone in traffic or don’t wait to hold the elevator for someone walking down the hall. When we tell small, white lies that are supposedly for the good of the other person. When we act like we care even though we know we don’t. When we fake listening while we think of other things. How many of us ponder the consequences of our selfishness? ,

Too few, if you ask me.

There’s no such thing as a meaningless act. Everything has consequences.

Previously? Point of No Return.

Aren’t you sick of my happiness class just yet?

Well, the good news is that next week is my last class. The bad news is that here comes another happiness entry:

In yesterday’s class, we talked about taking the wrong path, making bad choices. My teacher mentioned conversing with women in their forties who tell him that had it not been for their marriage and children, they could have been successful and had a better life.

If only…

What a crock of crap, if you ask me. First of all, there’s absolutely no guarantee that their life would have turned out well had they not married and had offspring. What seems to be a successful career can disappear overnight (as too many people are finding out recently). We never really know where an unchosen path would have lead us. We only know the outcome of the chosen path, and not even much of that.

The other part of the point that bothers me is the assumption that the initial decision of marriage and children over career was not actually a choice but a pre-made decision. It implies that either the woman wasn’t allowed to make the choice, or worse, that she decided on that option without even having thought about it too much.

I could swear that I wrote an entry on making choices and how everything is about a priority chosen over another one, but I can’t find it. The fact is, every decision we make matters. Each decision deserves thought and careful consideration. There’s something to be said for the value of spontaneity but major decisions that are guaranteed to alter the course of your life deserve some premeditation. It’s highly possible that a tiny, seemingly minor decision turns your life upside down, but such is life.

It seems to me that if you go through life without thinking about your choices, if they go wrong, you’ll end up full of regret, like the women my teacher mentioned. This is your life. Make your own decisions. Because, in the end, you’re responsible for them.

Whether you like it or not.

Previously? Not Exactly a Stranger.

Ready for another happiness entry? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Bertrand Russell says something to the effect of how we should keep our expectations low. If you want happiness and reach for an achievable goal, you’re likely to reach your goal and thus feel happy. Which sounds pretty reasonable at first look.

Then again, who wants to be reasonable?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this happiness thing. Having almost reached the end of the class, I must say that there are two major facts I’ve learned:

1. There are no quick formulas to happiness.
2. Most of the philosophers believed happiness was unreachable, could only be reached through religion or required a stringent regime of everyday self-brainwashing.

None of the above options are all that appealing to me.

The practical advice of “keep your expectations low” clashes with the ambition and optimism of “reach for the skies.” I agree that if you keep your expectations really high, you’re likely to never reach them and thus not feel fulfilled. But is that worse than never expecting much from yourself to begin with?

Russell does place a tremendous value on striving. He believes you should always be learning new things and working to achieve something. Considering how amazing he was, his idea of “aiming low” might be a lot higher than I am imagining. I hope it is because the idea of people having to aim low to stay happy is quite depressing to me.

If we all aimed low and didn’t reach for things that appeared beyond the horizon, how would anything get done? I am willing to admit that different people have different ranges and we’re not all equal in our abilities, but we all have ranges and I’ve always advocated working towards being on the high end of one’s range. I feel like a person can’t really know his range until he tries to push against its boundaries.

Aiming low feels like playing with the cards we’re dealt. Which, at one point, might have sounded like good advice to me, but now it doesn’t. I know that the cards we’re dealt don’t mean everything. Like in a game of poker, we can turn some of them in for new ones. There might be a few we’re stuck with but not as many as most people make it out to be. And what’s the fun in playing the same hand over and over again?

Keeping track is another subject matter that I somehow cannot correlate with happiness. Contentment, maybe but not happiness. But that’s for another day.

For me happiness is feeling more than content. Happiness is achieved when you reach something you didn’t think you would. When you tried really hard, when you put yourself out there on the ledge. When you reached higher than you thought you could. That’s when success is extraordinary. That’s when one gets overwhelmed with happiness.

Or maybe I’m wrong and stuck with eternal unhappiness.

Previously? I Have No Idea.