LovelyLadyLux wrote:I'm happy when I'm wrestling on the living room floor with the grandkids making them scream with glee. I'm happy when I'm watching the hummingbirds buzzing the feeders in the garden. Happiness is reading the last page of a good book.
Happiness to me is being in a state of mental contentment and I'd hazard each and every one of us reaches a state of mental contentment, a time free of work or mental angst when we engage in an activity that allows us to reach this state.
If Jewel's state of mental contentment is to hold the beliefs she does and has articulated here re: life/pain/angst/death then isn't that her own state of mental contentment meaning she actually IS happy? To each their own.
As I used to do with my kids, but its all based on the other persons level of tolerance. As is well know, the Egyptian parent is quite happy to let their children make as much noise as they wish to, whether in or out of doors.
Last week my friend was telling me that the youngest of her two nieces that live with her family as apparently the education standards on this side are better than those on the West for girls their age, twelve and fourteen, suffered a traumatic event. The girl, the twelve years old one, has very long black hair with natural curls. She asked if she could go to the lady across the street to have her long locks trimmed. This woman has been doing the hair of the local ladies and girls for years. When she got home my friend asked her to take of her head scarf to view the finished product. She smelt the burn aroma straight away. The woman had used red hot curling tongues on her hair, destroying it. They had no option but to completely shave her head.
The child was distraught, refusing to eat, go to school and cried constantly. I suggested that she bring the two girls and her brother down to spend the day in the pool before I emptied it for winter as it was still warm enough to use but she would have to watch them as I was going to be busy working. This she did. I made a fuss of the girl when she arrived saying that she was now in the fashion as all the Hollywood actors had their head shaved for the latest fashions. She cheered up a little and when they got into the pool they where all soon shouting and screaming in glee.
That was until my grouchy old English neighbour from across the road phoned me up, effing and blinding for me to tell them to keep the noise down. She didn't give me chance to explain why they were so excited, just cut me off when I said that is what children do, make noise. It wouldn't have been so bad if we lived in a total noiseless vacuum here, but noise has a continual presence here. She cares not when her music or TV is blasting out, a noise that I put up with as I presume that she is going deaf due to here age, but has selective deafness by the looks of things.
The girl is now much better in herself, she consumed food as fast as I could make it, she's returned to school and my friend says that she wares her new hairstyle with pride. All children should be allowed to laugh and scream with delight, not be harnessed in what is a most natural occurrence at that age.
Life is your's to do with as you wish- do not let other's try to control it for you. Count Dusak- 1345.
and many other things in my life, but I realise that all the pleasures in life do not outweigh the ultimate suffering and pain experienced by every living thing, which has to go through the ( often) painful and protracted reality of death. 
what you describe are transient States and not our existence as a whole. 
Solely for losers 
