Dart Board Related Quotes

But what is happiness? The definition most in vogue, fueled by the positive psychology movement, is one of happiness as a state, characterized by pleasure; a banishing of pain, suffering, and boredom; a sense of engagement and meaning through the experience of positive emotions and resilience. This is the dominant version of the new incomes sought and paid in the most widely celebrated “great places to work.” Think of flexible work hours, pool tables and dart boards, dining areas run by chefs serving fabulous and nutritious food at all hours, frequent talks by visiting thought leaders, spaces for naps, unlimited vacation time. However, the research literature on happiness suggests another definition, one that is overlapping but significantly different. The second definition sees happiness as a process of human flourishing. This definition, whose roots go back to Aristotle and the Greeks’ concept of eudaemonia, includes an experience of meaning and engagement but in relation to the satisfactions of experiencing one’s own growth and unfolding, becoming more of the person one was meant to be, bringing more of oneself into the world.

Viewed from a suitable height, the aggregating clusters of medical scientists in the bright sunlight of the boardwalk at Atlantic City, swarmed there from everywhere for the annual meetings, have the look of assemblages of social insects. There is the same vibrating, ionic movement, interrupted by the darting back and forth of jerky individuals to touch antennae and exchange small bits of information; periodically, the mass casts out, like a trout-line, a long single file unerringly toward Childs’s. If the boards were not fastened down, it would not be a surprise to see them put together a nest of sorts. It is permissible to say this sort of thing about humans. They do resemble, in their most compulsively social behavior, ants at a distance. It is, however, quite bad form in biological circles to put it the other way round, to imply that the operation of insect societies has any relation at all to human affairs.