Happiness for A**Holes

Chapter Six: If a Tree Falls in the Forest

If a Tree Falls in the Forest

You've heard the question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" I think the original intent of this idea was to exemplify something else, but this is my book so we are doing things my way.

So, does it? My answer is no.

Now, it most certainly hits the ground and makes vibrations, but "sound" is a human idea. Ears pick up those vibrations and perceive them as sound. In this case, the sound of a tree hitting the ground.

Every single thing in your life is something you are perceiving through one of your senses. The smell of cake. The look of red blood. The feeling of getting spanked.

If every human suddenly vanished from planet earth (say in a 100 years or so,) then some day far in the future aliens were rummaging through our ruins, it would probably be quite difficult for them to understand the color red. "Red" was just reflected light. "Color" was a concept uniquely perceived through human eyeballs and brains.

Your whole life is one giant perception. Your perception to be exact.

When you wake up in the morning, you feel a certain way. You go through your day feeling. Do you feel generally good or bad? Or somewhere in the middle?

If you are trudging through life feeling like a pile of emotional shit, then your life is a pile of shit. Simply because that's how you feel. That's what you are perceiving.

Let's cut the crap. There's only one thing that matters in your life. Let's not sort through cliches about material possessions or design some complex web about the meaning of life. It's really simple. What matters more than anything is how you feel.

It doesn't matter how successful you are, how big is your house, or how cool everyone thinks you are---if you spend most of your timefeeling bad: you are losing.

So the first, and maybe most important practical thing we can do for happiness, is simply do what it takes to feel better.

Which leads me to my next point: