‘that you can’t bear an hour in your own company, or employ your leisure usefully, that you evade yourself like a fugitive, a vagabond, trying to cheat care with sleep or wine: vainly: that dark companion dogs your flight.’
Horace
What has changed ? Nothing about the human condition… only the tools used to make our lives worse or better.
I look for the mechanism and then the machine of change. Just as it is irrational for me to feel that this is the best of all possible, it is equally irrational for you to feel things are so bad.
To paraphrase an absurdist comedian, that I love, Steven wright (read some quotes here): “Do you feel OK” “No, I made some mistakes”.
I look for the mechanism and then the machine of change. Just as it is irrational for me to feel that this is the best of all possible, it is equally irrational for you to feel things are so bad.
To paraphrase an absurdist comedian, that I love, Steven wright (read some quotes here): “Do you feel OK” “No, I made some mistakes”.
Happiness is not a passive state created by external factors. It is an active state created by the mind and possible in any circumstances.
The machine is the mind, the first and best mechanism available is of course our will. Through its successful exercise, it gets stronger and hands us increased control over our future.
The second mechanism arising from modern technology is of course chemical. I have experienced many mind altering chemicals during my life – probably the most enticing was pethidine which I experience after an operation.
I have never forgotten the sublime sense of epiphany I experienced for that hour or so - followed by an intense sense of loss, and a desire to get back "there".
I imagine the addict experiences a similar desire - no doubt made more powerful if the unmedicated world is physically or psychically painful.
I am not prescribing pethidine, but rather urging the depressed to consider to what extent you have willed yourself to be happy – and if this is not currently within the strength of your will, to seek chemical assistance – preferably from a doctor.....
The second mechanism arising from modern technology is of course chemical. I have experienced many mind altering chemicals during my life – probably the most enticing was pethidine which I experience after an operation.
I have never forgotten the sublime sense of epiphany I experienced for that hour or so - followed by an intense sense of loss, and a desire to get back "there".
I imagine the addict experiences a similar desire - no doubt made more powerful if the unmedicated world is physically or psychically painful.
I am not prescribing pethidine, but rather urging the depressed to consider to what extent you have willed yourself to be happy – and if this is not currently within the strength of your will, to seek chemical assistance – preferably from a doctor.....
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