The Pursuit of Happiness
Published by marco on
“The great source of both misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Some of those situations may no doubt deserve to be prefered to others but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardor which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”
—Adam Smith
Overheard during the excellent talk, Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy? by Dan Gilbert (TED Talks).
“Psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our ‘psychological immune system’ lets us feel real, enduring happiness, he says, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness ‘synthetic happiness,’ and he says it’s ‘every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.’”