Happy Concerts Quotes

Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience

[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both. These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight... She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind.

Buy Experiences Not Goods. Want to buy happiness? Then spend your hard-earned cash on experiences. Go out for a meal. Go to a concert, cinema or theatre. Go on holiday. Go and learn how to pole dance. Go paintballing. Go bungee jumping. In fact, get involved in anything that provides an opportunity to do things with others, and then tell even more people about it afterwards. When it comes to happiness, remember that it is experiences that represent really good value for money.

We, however, have all kinds of different ideas about what happiness is. Some must go bungee jumping to experience a rush of joy, while others find bliss staying home. Some are happy in a concert hall, listening to classical music, while children on a playground could be music to the ears of others. Some people experience elation when they solve a complicated equation, while for others a cancelled math class is a happy childhood memory.

No, really, Herr Nietzche, I have great admiration for you. Sympathy. You want to make us able to live with the void. Not lie ourselves into good-naturedness, trust, ordinary middling human considerations, but to question as has never been questioned before, relentlessly, with iron determination, into evil, through evil, past evil, accepting no abject comfort. The most absolute, the most piercing questions. Rejecting mankind as it is, that ordinary, practical, thieving, stinking, unilluminated, sodden rabble, not only the laboring rabble, but even worse the "educated" rabble with its books and concerts and lectures, its liberalism and its romantic theatrical "loves" and "passions"--it all deserves to die, it will die. Okay. Still, your extremists must survive. No survival, no Amor Fati. Your immoralists also eat meat. They ride the bus. They are only the most bus-sick travelers. Humankind lives mainly upon perverted ideas. Perverted, your ideas are no better than those the Christianity you condemn. Any philosopher who wants to keep his contact with mankind should pervert his own system in advance to see how it will really look a few decades after adoption. I send you greetings from this mere border of grassy temporal light, and wish you happiness, wherever you are. Yours, under the veil of Maya, M.E.H.

Books, music, painting are not life, can never be as full, rich, complex, surprising or beautiful, but the best of them can catch an echo of that, can turn you back to look out the window, go out the door aware that you’ve been enriched, that you have been in the company of something alive that has caused you to realise once again how astonishing life is, and you leave the book, gallery or concert hall with that illumination, which feels I’m going to say holy, by which I mean human raptness. So

Logan began to sing, a lilting tune I didn't recognize. At first I wondered if we'd seen the band in concert together or had listened to it on one of our first dates. Then he reached the chorus, and the words were us. All my insecurities, all his excesses, all the ways we fought and pushed and pulled. And how it all didn't matter. Those things that tore us apart were no match for forever. ... I'd been so wrong about us. If he'd lived, we would've been happy. Not every day, but over the span of time that made up forever. But he hadn't lived. ... We had lost forever.

Focus on building up others, and your own sense of self-worth will improve. Some call these random acts of human kindness. But the truth is, acting unselfishly is not random at all. Instead, it is a conscious, concerted effort to make the world better by making someone else's life better. The bonus: you will be happier by doing it.

...Because beauty is typically the result of a few qualities working in concert, it can take more to guarantee the appeal of a bridge or a house than strength alone. (p 205)

I feel like a nineteen forties teenager at a Frank Sinatra concert! (On finally being published)

This seemed to be happening more and more lately out in Greater Los Angeles, among gatherings of carefree youth and happy dopers, where Doc had begun to notice older men, there and not there, rigid, unsmiling, that he knew he'd seen before, not the faces necessarily but a defiant posture, an unwillingness to blur out, like everyone else at the psychedelic events of those days, beyond official envelopes of skin. Like the operatives who'd dragged away Coy Harlingen the other night at that rally at the Century Plaza. Doc Knew these people, he'd seen enough of them in the course of business. They went out to collect cash debts, they broke rib cages, they got people fired, they kept an unforgiving eye on anything that might become a threat. If everything in this dream of prerevolution was in fact doomed to end and the faithless money-driven world to reassert its control over all the lives it felt entitled to touch, fondle, and molest, it would be agents like these, dutiful and silent, out doing the shitwork, who'd make it happen. Was it possible, that at every gathering--concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, and freak-in, here, up north, back east, wherever--those dark crews had been busy all along, reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday, all they could sweep up, for the ancient forces of greed and fear? 'Gee,' he said to himself out loud, 'I dunno...

I have found that there is romance in housework: and charm in it; and whimsy and humor without end. I have found that the housewife works hard, of course–but likes it. Most people who amount to anything do work hard, at whatever their job happens to be. The housewife’s job is home-making, and she is, in fact, ‘making the best of it’; making the best of it by bringing patience and loving care to her work; sympathy and understanding to her family; making the best of it by seeing all the fun in the day’s incidents and human relationships. The housewife realizes that home-making is an investment in happiness. It pays everyone enormous dividends. There are huge compensations for the actual labor involved… There are unhappy housewives, of course. But there are unhappy stenographers and editresses and concert singers. The housewife whose songs I sing as I go about my work, is the one who likes her job (pp. 6-7). From Songs of a Housewife: Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a lonely cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil.

brave thinking about truth is the secret to happiness: concerted and regular contemplation will transform us and let us taste what there is to taste of transcendence.

At every one of those concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. Well, there is the same thing in heaven. A number of people sit there in glory, not because they are happy, but because they think they owe it to their position to be in heaven. They are almost all English.

It seems to me the quality that makes any book, music, painting worthwhile is life, just that. Books, music, painting are not life, can never be as full, rich, complex, surprising or beautiful, but the best of them can catch an echo of that, can turn you back to look out the window, go out the door aware that you’ve been enriched, that you have been in the company of something alive that has caused you to realise once again how astonishing life is, and you leave the book, gallery or concert hall with that illumination, which feels I’m going to say holy, by which I mean human raptness.

Duncan kept his hand on Violet's and talked to her about terrible concerts he had attended back when the Quagmire parents were alive, and she was happy to hear his stories. Isadora began working on a poem about libraries and showed Klaus what she had written in her notebook, and Klaus was happy to offer suggestions. And Sunny snuggled down in Violet's lap and chewed on the armrest of her seat, happy to bite something that was so sturdy.

Worldly Christians look to God primarily for personal fulfillment. They are saved, but self-centered. They love to attend concerts and enrichment seminars, but you would never find them at a missions conference because they aren’t interested. Their prayers focus on their own needs, blessings, and happiness. It’s a “me-first” faith: How can God make my life more comfortable? They want to use God for their purposes instead of being used for his purposes.

Look at it,' he said, gesturing. 'This window looks down upon hundreds more panes of glass, and behind those panes live thousands upon thousands of lost souls. When I feel cast down and helpless, scores of other men do as well, and when I am bitterly angry at feeling cast down and helpless, countless other people languish in concert with me. When I'm happy, it's the same. It's a bit like...I used to play chamber music. It's like a vast orchestra. And so I shan't ever be alone.

Buy Experiences, Not Goods. Want to buy happiness? Then spend your hard-earned cash on experiences. Go out for a meal. Go to a concert, movie, or the theater. Go on vacation. Go and learn how to pole dance. Go play paintball. Go bungee jumping. In fact, get involved in anything that provides an opportunity to do things with others, and then tell even more people about it afterward. When it comes to happiness, remember, it is experiences that represent really good value for the money.

We have to be willing to become vulnerable to trust Him if we wish to find security and satisfaction in Him. We have to be willing to let go of what little we have, to gain the great riches and supreme happiness He has to offer. And we have to let Him have the helm if we wish to hear the sweeter song. The "something better" is found in emptying yourself, surrendering to his lead, letting go of your life and all you hold dear, and entrusting everything to Him. Because in doing that, you will be tenderly embraced by the sweetest Musician in all the universe and receive your own personal concert. [see Luke 9:23]

For him, too, starting over, departures, a new life had a certain luster, but he knew that only the impotent and the lazy attach happiness to such things. Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. He could hear Zagreus: "Not the will to renounce, but the will to happiness.

I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with the time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil.

Meg caught frequent glimpses of dainty ball-dresses and bouquets, heard lively gossip about theaters, concerts, sleighing parties, and merry-makings of all kinds, and saw money lavished on trifles which would have been so precious to her. Poor Meg seldom complained, but a sense of injustice made her feel bitter toward every one sometimes, for she had not yet learned to know how rich she was in the blessings which alone can make life happy.

Counterintuitive Case Study #3: Things or Experiences?: You have $1000. You can buy something to keep, or use it for an experience (trip, concert). Most assume the object will provide happiness for longer than a fleeting experience. Again, wrong. A study found that the happiness levels are equal at first, but as time goes by, people’s satisfaction with their material purchases decreased, whereas it increased for their experiences. In other words, people’s memories of experiences made them happier longer than owning objects.

But I don't want to take responsibility of your emotional baggage. That's up to you, when you walk through a hall, because that then determines what and how we listen to certain things. I may feel sorrowful, or happy, or exhilarated, or angry when I play certain pieces of music, but I'm not necessarily wanting you to feel exactly the same thing. So please, the next time you go to a concert, just allow your body to open up, allow your body to be this resonating chamber. Be aware that you're not going to experience the same thing as the performer is.

seems to me the quality that makes any book, music, painting worthwhile is life, just that. Books, music, painting are not life, can never be as full, rich, complex, surprising or beautiful, but the best of them can catch an echo of that, can turn you back to look out the window, go out the door aware that you’ve been enriched, that you have been in the company of something alive that has caused you to realise once again how astonishing life is, and you leave the book, gallery or concert hall with that illumination, which feels I’m going to say holy, by which I mean human raptness.

Rotstein was particularly affected. He stretched himself out across his mattress, just where he had fallen. Morel longed to bend over him and turn him over on his legs again, like a fallen and abandoned insect. To help him to fly away. But there was no need to help him. He flew by himself every evening. 'Hey, Rotstein, Rotstein.' 'Yes.' 'Are you still alive?' 'Yes. Don’t interrupt. I’m giving a concert.' 'What are you playing?' 'Johann Sebastian Bach.' 'Are you mad? A German?' 'Precisely. That’s just the point. To restore the balance. You can’t leave Germany on its back forever. You’ve got to help it to its feet again.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about this phenomenon in his 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness. “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real,” he writes. “The frontal lobe—the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age—is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.” This time travel into the future—otherwise known as anticipation—accounts for a big chunk of the happiness gleaned from any event. As you look forward to something good that is about to happen, you experience some of the same joy you would in the moment. The major difference is that the joy can last much longer. Consider that ritual of opening presents on Christmas morning. The reality of it seldom takes more than an hour, but the anticipation of seeing the presents under the tree can stretch out the joy for weeks. One study by several Dutch researchers, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life in 2010, found that vacationers were happier than people who didn’t take holiday trips. That finding is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the timing of the happiness boost. It didn’t come after the vacations, with tourists bathing in their post-trip glow. It didn’t even come through that strongly during the trips, as the joy of travel mingled with the stress of travel: jet lag, stomach woes, and train conductors giving garbled instructions over the loudspeaker. The happiness boost came before the trips, stretching out for as much as two months beforehand as the holiday goers imagined their excursions. A vision of little umbrella-sporting drinks can create the happiness rush of a mini vacation even in the midst of a rainy commute. On some level, people instinctively know this. In one study that Gilbert writes about, people were told they’d won a free dinner at a fancy French restaurant. When asked when they’d like to schedule the dinner, most people didn’t want to head over right then. They wanted to wait, on average, over a week—to savor the anticipation of their fine fare and to optimize their pleasure. The experiencing self seldom encounters pure bliss, but the anticipating self never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a favorite band’s concert and is never cold from too much air conditioning in that theater showing the sequel to a favorite flick. Planning a few anchor events for a weekend guarantees you pleasure because—even if all goes wrong in the moment—you still will have derived some pleasure from the anticipation. I love spontaneity and embrace it when it happens, but I cannot bank my pleasure solely on it. If you wait until Saturday morning to make your plans for the weekend, you will spend a chunk of your Saturday working on such plans, rather than anticipating your fun. Hitting the weekend without a plan means you may not get to do what you want. You’ll use up energy in negotiations with other family members. You’ll start late and the museum will close when you’ve only been there an hour. Your favorite restaurant will be booked up—and even if, miraculously, you score a table, think of how much more you would have enjoyed the last few days knowing that you’d be eating those seared scallops on Saturday night!

I will conclude this work with stating in what light religion appears to me. If we suppose a large family of children, who, on any particular day, or particular circumstance, made it a custom to present to their parents some token of their affection and gratitude, each of them would make a different offering, and most probably in a different manner. Some would pay their congratulations in themes of verse and prose, by some little devices, as their genius dictated, or according to what they thought would please; and, perhaps, the least of all, not able to do any of those things, would ramble into the garden, or the field, and gather what it thought the prettiest flower it could find, though, perhaps, it might be but a simple weed. The parent would be more gratified by such a variety, than if the whole of them had acted on a concerted plan, and each had made exactly the same offering. This would have the cold appearance of contrivance, or the harsh one of control. But of all unwelcome things, nothing could more afflict the parent than to know, that the whole of them had afterwards gotten together by the ears, boys and girls, fighting, scratching, reviling, and abusing each other about which was the best or the worst present. Why may we not suppose, that the great Father of all is pleased with variety of devotion; and that the greatest offence we can act, is that by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable? For my own part, I am fully satisfied that what I am now doing, with an endeavour to conciliate mankind, to render their condition happy, to unite nations that have hitherto been enemies, and to extirpate the horrid practice of war, and break the chains of slavery and oppression is acceptable in his sight, and being the best service I can perform, I act it cheerfully. I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree… As to what are called national religions, we may, with as much propriety, talk of national Gods. It is either political craft or the remains of the Pagan system, when every nation had its separate and particular deity…

What are you doing?" He's on one knee before me. "I'm doing what I've wanted to do for a long time." My hand covers my mouth as he pulls the lid back on the black box. "Heather Covey, I've spent a lifetime waiting for the woman I'd want to share my heart with. We met at this concert, we made love on this bus, and you're the only person I want by my side. I know we've said we were happy with how things are, but--" "Yes!" I scream out, unable to hold it in any longer. "I wasn't done yet," he complains with a laugh. I get on my knees with him and giggle with tears in my eyes. "I want it all, baby. I want you to be my wife. I want us to share everything. I need to give you my name just as I've given my heart. So.. will you marry me?

As the Princess performs the impossible balancing act which her life requires, she drifts inexorably into obsession, continually discussing her problems. Her friend Carolyn Bartholomew argues it is difficult not to be self-absorbed when the world watches everything she does. “How can you not be self-obsessed when half the world is watching everything you do; the high-pitched laugh when someone is talking to somebody famous must make you very very cynical.” She endlessly debates the problems she faces in dealing with her husband, the royal family, and their system. They remain tantalizingly unresolved, the gulf between thought and action achingly great. Whether she stays or goes, the example of the Duchess of York is a potent source of instability. James Gilbey sums up Diana’s dilemma: “She can never be happy unless she breaks away but she won’t break away unless Prince Charles does it. He won’t do it because of his mother so they are never going to be happy. They will continue under the farcical umbrella of the royal family yet they will both lead completely separate lives.” Her friend Carolyn Bartholomew, a sensible sounding-board throughout Diana’s adult life, sees how that fundamental issue has clouded her character. “She is kind, generous, sad and in some ways rather desperate. Yet she has maintained her self-deprecating sense of humour. A very shrewd but immensely sorrowful lady.” Her royal future is by no means well-defined. If she could write her own script the Princess would like to see her husband go off with his Highgrove friends and attempt to discover the happiness he has not found with her, leaving Diana free to groom Prince William for his eventual destiny as the Sovereign. It is an idle pipe-dream as impossible as Prince Charles’s wish to relinquish his regal position and run a farm in Italy. She has other more modest ambitions; to spend a weekend in Paris, take a course in psychology, learn the piano to concert grade and to start painting again. The current pace of her life makes even these hopes seem grandiose, never mind her oft-repeated vision of the future where she see herself one day settling abroad, probably in Italy or France. A more likely avenue is the unfolding vista of charity, community and social work which has given her a sense of self-worth and fulfillment. As her brother says: “She has got a strong character. She does know what she wants and I think that after ten years she has got to a plateau now which she will continue to occupy for many years.” As a child she sensed her special destiny, as an adult she has remained true to her instincts. Diana has continued to carry the burden of public expectations while enduring considerable personal problems. Her achievement has been to find her true self in the face of overwhelming odds. She will continue to tread a different path from her husband, the royal family and their system and yet still conform to their traditions. As she says: “When I go home and turn my light off at night, I know I did my best.

After a few minutes, she speaks up again. “You’re next. Sing.” Anxiety grips Hallelujah’s chest, squeezing. “I don’t sing,” she says. “C’mon, it doesn’t matter if you’re bad. It’s not like this is a concert hall—” “She’s not bad.” Jonah’s back. “She has a great voice.” Rachel swings around to look from Jonah to Hallelujah. “Really? Now you have to—” “No." “But—” “I don’t sing,” Hallelujah repeats, turning away. Jonah joins them by the fire. The silence stretches out. Except it’s not really silent, not with the birds and wind and fire and how loud Hallelujah’s heart is beating. And then Jonah clears his throat. “You used to sing,” he says. “You were great.” Hallelujah ignores the compliment. She looks into the fire. She feels the last of the day’s happiness fading away, already a memory. “Why’d you quit?” Jonah asks. “Was it ’cause of Luke?” Hallelujah inhales deeply. She feels the familiar spark of anger in her gut. “Yes,” she says. “It was because of Luke. And you. And everyone else. So thanks for that.” Jonah’s face drops. She can see that she’s hit a nerve. Well, he hurt her first. The way he took Luke’s side, shutting her out. The loss of his friendship, when she needed a friend most. The loss of their voices harmonizing, when she needed music most. How she just hurt him can’t begin to compare to all of that.

Your spirituality is simply the positive, loving side of yourself, the energy of joy and togetherness. It's the feeling you have when your dog bounds up wagging its tail, or the biggest laugh you have with your best friend. Or that feeling in a concert when sixty thousand people sing along in unison to a song you love, or the moment when you are looking into the eyes of someone you love, or when you feel at your most confident and happy, as if you can do anything. It is all the most positive aspects of our existence. In short, it is love.

I realized that the joy of order comes in large measure from what it opposes: chaos and disorder. Order isn’t dull and staid. It is a tangible manifestation of a vibrant harmony, of disparate parts working in concert to sustain the graceful balance of life.

Susan, another client, is a part-time college teacher. She works too little and recovers too much. When she first came to us, at the age of 42, our first impression of her was that she was depressed. She told us that she never liked to exercise, and even the idea of exercise was repugnant to her. What she loved to do was go to concerts and museums, read books, meditate, and go to fine restaurants.

My dad looks like Clint Eastwood. His half-Scottish, half-German face in repose is handsome but terrifying. I searched the audience for him during the sixth-grade chorus concert and, seeing his stern expression, was convinced that he had seen me messing up the words to the Happy Days theme and that I was in big trouble. I spent the rest of the concert suppressing terror bumps, only to be given a big hug and a kiss afterward. It took me years to realize, Oh, that's just his face.

And when we go to sleep, we ought to greet the bed completely out of breath from the day. We must have tree sap on our hands from climbing. Sand in our pockets and not know how. There must be some fresh wound on our body somewhere—a cut on the ankle, a bruised eye, or a chipped tooth. Our lips are to be kissed by anyone happy, our fingernails dirty, and we might have brought a bug or two home with us. On our wrist should be two bracelets: one from the hospital and another from the concert that got us there. We should have freed the heart in a streak of spoken desire, kind attempts to hold another hand, and by missing a thousand former lovers that you wish the best. We must find a way to revel in the dissatisfaction of a weary heart.

After another forty-five minutes, the train reached the station at Heron's Point, a seaside town located in the sunniest region in England. Even now in autumn, the weather was mild and clear, the air humid with healthful sea breezes. Heron's Point was sheltered by a high cliff that jutted far out into the sea and helped to create the town's own small climate. It was an ideal refuge for convalescents and the elderly, with a local medical community and an assortment of clinics and therapeutic baths. It was also a fashionable resort, featuring shops, drives and promenades, a theatre, and recreations such as golf and boating. The Marsdens had often come here to stay with the duke's family, the Challons, especially in summer. The children had splashed and swum in the private sandy cove, and sailed near the shore in little skiffs. On hot days they had gone to shop in town for ices and sweets. In the evenings, they had relaxed and played on the Challons' back veranda, while music from the town band floated up from the concert pavilion. Merritt was glad to bring Keir to a familiar place where so many happy memories had been created. The seaside house, airy and calm and gracious, would be a perfect place for him to convalesce.

Music: Stairway to Armageddon

Music needs to be felt to be heard.

I perform well enough to play for the choir and accompany singers but not well enough to carry my own concert. You don’t have the emotion, my Russian piano teacher says. You play everything correctly, the pedaling precise, but you play like a robot, without pain or sorrow, without happiness or joy.

On the other side of the river the lights of the South Bank theatre and concert halls were up. The actors would be preparing to perform emotions for those who had never felt those kinds of emotions in their lives and perhaps never would. Suffering had become a spectacle that served not to warn of the vagaries of misfortune but to remind the audience, sitting in warmth and comfort, of their own good fortune.

Do people really like the way they’re fucked? he thought. Do wives like their husband’s faces? Does my weak vocabulary annoy these intelligent CEOs? How long can I speak until I bother someone? They will all smile and shake your hand, but I am afraid I am just another omelet missing the ingredient they want. I am the wrong piano key fiercely played by a pianist’s regretful pinky finger in a concert hall blaring false to the audience’s disturbed ears that certainly caught the note but whose controlled heads do not dare betray their feigned enjoyment.

Look at her,” he said to himself. “Holding hands! She’s probably already camped in the woods with him! Exchanged supernatural stories. Dinner dates. Shared food! Sex in the car! Concerts! I can never reach a woman like that. She’s too experienced. What new could we do? Even if we were right for each other, I’d always feel small.” Once lonely, it seemed the evolution of lonely was getting lonelier, as if sad heads boarded a lifeboat in an ocean that naturally pulled one farther and farther apart from the coast of love. Andrei still hoped though. For that coast. That was the thing with this sailor—nothing was waiting for him, but maybe there was. Every time he met someone, his eyes were slightly far away, as if asking in his head: “It’s nice to meet you, but are you there? Did you suffer and reach that place yet? You know that place. Those in that place know that place. After Tolstoy? After a thousand movies? Will you say an honest sentence?” Oh, did he beg, secretly, for strangers to meet him on that lonely floor of life—where life, still hard, was earned, and true, and golden. The place, he cried, we recognize in media, binging in our beds, but don’t dare reach on sidewalks.

Grace and I had the kind of relationship that might have made other women jealous – I appeared happy to exist in her shadow. We always went where she wanted: bad comedy sets, bad poetry recitals, bad concerts by posh, sweaty men who subsequently developed a reputation for grooming schoolgirls. I was content to make room for her, to be a worthy and dutiful addendum to someone else’s life. There was something refreshing, perhaps even feminist about my turmoil. How good I was, how nice I was – I was so nice, it was almost unbelievable. I was the perfect man.

This feeling of irritability and alienation meant I was malleable. Have you ever tried to argue with someone who doesn’t want anything from you? It’s hard. Have you ever noticed in a row with someone that no longer loves you that you have no recourse? No tools with which to bargain. If you stroll up to a stranger and tell them that unless they comply with your demands they’ll never see you again, it’s unlikely that they’ll fling themselves at your feet and beg you not to go. They’ll just wander off. When people are content, they are difficult to maneuver. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. My intention in writing this book is to make you feel better, to offer you a solution to the way you feel. I am confident that this is necessary. When do you ever meet people that are happy? Genuinely happy? Only children, the mentally ill, and daytime television presenters. My belief is that it is possible to feel happier, because I feel better than I used to. I am beginning to understand where the solution lies, primarily because of an exhausting process of trial and mostly error. My qualification to write a book on how to change yourself and change the world is not that I’m better than you, it’s that I’m worse. Not that I’m smarter, but that I’m dumber: I bought the lie hook, line, and sinker. My only quality has been an unwitting momentum, a willingness to wade through the static dissatisfaction that has been piped into my mind from the moment I learned language. What if that feeling of inadequacy, isolation, and anxiety isn’t just me? What if it isn’t internally engineered but the result of concerted effort, the product of a transmission? An ongoing broadcast from the powerful that has colonized my mind? Who is it in here, inside your mind, reading these words, feeling that fear? Is there an awareness, an exempt presence, gleaming behind the waterfall of words that commentate on every event, label every object, judge everyone you come into contact with? And is there another way to feel? Is it possible to be in this world and feel another way? Can you conceive, even for a moment, of a species similar to us but a little more evolved, that have transcended the idea that solutions to the way we feel can be externally acquired? What would that look like? How would that feel—to be liberated from the bureaucracy of managing your recalcitrant mind. Is it possible that there is a conspiracy to make us feel this way? If we were cops right now, we’d look for a motive. If our peace of mind, our God-given right to live in harmony with our environment and one another, has been murdered, who are the prime suspects? Well, who has a motive?

The ability of ritual to evoke both positive and negative affect is, of course, not specific to religion. Secular dances, concerts, and -raves- induce feelings of happiness and joy, and military boot camp elicits pain, shock, and awe. Such secular experiences have strong emotional impacts on participants also, particularly during adolescence.

There are four primary chemicals in our body that contribute to all our positive feelings that I will generically call “happy”: endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. Whether acting alone or in concert, in small doses or large, anytime we feel any sense of happiness or joy, odds are it is because one or more of these chemicals is coursing through our veins. They do not exist simply to make us feel good.

What are you doing?" He's on one knee before me. "I'm doing what I've wanted to do for a long time." My hand covers my mouth as he pulls the lid back on the black box. "Heather Covey, I've spent a lifetime waiting for the woman I'd want to share my heart with. We met at this concert, we made love on this bus, and you're the only person I want by my side. I know we've said we were happy with how things are, but--" "Yes!" I scream out, unable to hold it in any longer. "I wasn't done yet," he complains with a laugh. I get on my knees with him and giggle with tears in my eyes. "I want it all, baby. I want you to be my wife. I want us to share everything. I need to give you my name just as I've given my heart. So.. will you marry me?

I'm happy to be Park Moon-dae of TeStar. It's very fun and enjoyable whenever I'm on stage, practicing, doing a concert, going through a hard process, and showing something to Loviewers. I'd like to stay at TeStar for a long time.

I took a black and white photograph, which I also posted on Instagram. Her New Balance shoes and her feet crossed, hanging as she sat atop the pile of aluminum chairs, against the backdrop of the many legs of the chairs shining in the street lights in contrast to her dark shoes and leggings, were so captivating. There was a lightness in the way she sat there with her crossed legs dangling, as if she was perched on a cloud and it was the most natural thing as she was my angel. I was still unsure if she really existed or if I had only made her up with Pinto cat one night. It was all like a lucid dream. I was so glad for us and for us becoming rich soon too. I was so glad I could provide her with a future in Europe. I was so glad we would be rich and happy and we would be able to make all our dreams come true and travel the world freely together. I can show her Italy and Hungary and Europe. We can pick where do we want to live or make family. I knew all my life, all my work had led to this girl, this moment, and this future. Ours. She started to rap in Spanish in the Rioplatense dialect as I started to record her. „Loco, loco…” - she was so cute, it sounded like she had learned it on the streets of Buenos Aires, skipping school. She was amazing - so young, so true, so natural and pure and cute. I couldn't get enough of her. I wanted to make kids with her. With only her. Nobody else. By the wall of the church and the bar tables, there were a bunch of metal mobile railings with the Ajuntamiento de Barcelona logo in the middle of each of them. I told Martina to squat down to the level of the Ajuntamiento sign, and before I could finish my sentence, she was already doing it. She posed with the mobile railings, making a funny, cool and happy face while squeezing the Ajuntamiento logo between two of her fingers and pointing at it with her other hand, as if we were mocking the authorities of the Ajuntamiento. She was reading my mind. Like she knew magic. She was such a good girl. She was so pretty, smart and sexy. She was smiling, biting her lower lip, excited, turned on, and in love, I thought, looking like a bunny, or like Whitney Houston on the Brazilian live concert video, so I began to call her “Bunny”. I showed her how Whitney was smiling the same way. I was so blind to see the connection. (“The Cocaine Queen”) I was so much in love with her, so under her spell, I just really wanted her to be the One, I guess. I explained to her that the Camorra was one of my costumers and they had a club close by too and they were taking away other people's coffeeshops, menacing their lives and their families'. I explained to her that we were going to do all demolition and remodeling without any permit, without telling a word to anyone. I told her that we would lie to the residents of the building above us about what we were going to do there for months and months. I told her that she must keep it as our secret. She was nodding happily and she seemed happy that I trusted her. I explained everything to her, I told her about Rachel and Tom and I signing the founding document at Amina's office at the beginning of the same year, 2013. She seemed to understand the weight of all I told her and the reasons why I told her about it all, so she would know, so she wouldn't make a mistake saying the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. I asked her to pay attention to her surroundings in Barcelona from then on, as there were a lot of criminals, and she was a very pretty girl - not only my girlfriend. She seemed to take it as a privilege to be my girlfriend, and she seemed eternally happy, as was I. I told her that she was the only person I fully trusted. I wanted to send the video of Martina rapping on WhatsApp to Adam, but Martina told me I shouldn't because it was late and, at the end, Adam was my boss. “Yeah but he is not really my boss, in Spain, I am the boss.

raise your awareness Any time you consider purchasing a new possession, stop yourself and think about what kind of experience it will give you. Ask yourself: How much joy will this bring me? Will the joy be temporary or long-lasting? Will this purchase provide me with an experience that will be unforgettable? Will the purchase be something I can share with others? If it becomes clear the purchase will provide only short-term benefit to you, think about an experience you could purchase instead that would provide you with longer-term benefits. For instance, if you have your eye on a new pair of shoes for $150, ask yourself what kind of experience you could enjoy for that same amount. Maybe you’d enjoy a concert with friends or a dinner cruise during the summer. Once you think of an experience you’d enjoy, seriously consider diverting the money for the purchase from possession to experience.

And if you are looking for a music fix, see what free concerts or performances are happening in your local community instead of going to an expensive show. the gift that keeps on giving For birthdays and holidays, gift loved ones with experiences instead of possessions.

express to loved ones Make an effort, at least once a week, to express appreciation to those you love. Although we don’t necessarily mean to, it is human to take the people we appreciate the most for granted. Yet expressing thanks for the things they do, their support, and their love will make them feel good and make you feel even better. Make a concerted effort to thank loved ones openly and to verbalize how much they mean to you. By the same token, part of practicing gratitude is being able to accept appreciation and thanks from others.

I would have to fill those little white rectangles with a lifetime of things that could generate happiness, contentment, satisfaction, or pleasure. I would have to fill them with every good experience I could summon up for a man whose powerless arms and legs meant he could no longer make them happen by himself. I had just under four months’ worth of printed rectangles to pack with days out, trips away, visitors, lunches, and concerts. I had to come up with all the practical ways to make them happen, and do enough research to make sure that they didn’t fail. And

I would have to fill those little white rectangles with a lifetime of things that could generate happiness, contentment, satisfaction, or pleasure. I would have to fill them with every good experience I could summon up for a man whose powerless arms and legs meant he could no longer make them happen by himself. I had just under four months’ worth of printed rectangles to pack with days out, trips away, visitors, lunches, and concerts. I had to come up with all the practical ways to make them happen, and do enough research to make sure that they didn’t fail. And then I had to convince Will to actually do them. I

I cannot marry you,” she told the clump of toadstools flourishing at its base. “I’m so terribly sorry. I should have told you years ago, but—” “For God’s sake, Cecily.” His soft laugh startled her, and she lifted her gaze. “You can’t do this, not yet. How can a lady refuse a man, when he hasn’t even proposed? I won’t stand for it.” “It’s not right, Denny. I’ve known for some time now that we wouldn’t . . . that I couldn’t . . .” He shushed her gently, placing his hands on her shoulders. “The truth is, we know nothing of what could be or would be. We’ve been delaying this conversation for years now, haven’t we? I’ve been waiting for . . . Well, I hardly know what I’ve been waiting for. Something indefinable, I suppose. And you’ve been waiting for Luke.” Her breath caught. Denny knew? Oh, dear. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so surprised. They’d grown up together. He’d known her longer than anyone. “Yes, of course I knew,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “Why do you think I invited you both here, to my home? I wanted to know how matters stood between you.” “And how do they stand?” she asked, hoping he would understand her better than she knew herself. He sighed. “I know he has some strange hold on your heart. But I believe you’d be happier marrying me.” Cecily shook her head in disbelief. If she didn’t know better, she would think him working in concert with Luke. Their arguments were one and the same. “But, Denny . . .” She prayed these words would not hurt his pride overmuch. “But we don’t love one another, not in that way.” “Perhaps not. But you’ve been in love with Luke for four years now. Has it made you happy?” She had no answer to that. “And I’ll admit, bachelorhood is losing its charms for me.” Gently, he folded her hands in his. “I know there is no grand passion between us, Cecily. But there is genuine caring. Honesty. Respect. Lasting unions have been built on foundations far weaker than these. And in time, perhaps some deeper attachment would grow. We don’t know what could happen, if only we gave it a chance.” He brought her hands to his lips and kissed them warmly—first the knuckles, then each sensitive palm—before pressing them to either side of his face and holding them there. The sweetness in the gesture surprised her, as did the fond regard in his eyes. This was Denny’s face she held in her hands. Dear, familiar, uncomplicated Denny, with the dimple on his right cheek and the tiny pockmark on the other. She’d known this face since her childhood. Could she learn to see to him in a new light, as a husband? She did want children and companionship and a happy home—all the things Luke refused to offer her. She sighed. “I don’t know what to say.” “That’s all right. I’m not asking you to say yes, not right now. Just . . . don’t say no quite yet?” He smiled then, that crooked, endearing Denny smile. And he kissed her, still holding her hands pressed against his face. It was sweet. He tasted of tea and peppermint, and his lips felt soft and warm. Denny’s kiss was mild, tender. Comforting and comfortable. And it was wretchedly unfair to him, that even as he claimed her lips, her heart remained divided. She couldn’t stop comparing this kiss to Luke’s. It just wasn’t the same. “Do

You do understand what I mean!” he exclaimed, pleased to see Maude responding to his song. “I chose Nina Simone to show you something else. Just like you, Nina Simone had a classical background. When she was younger, she wanted to become a concert pianist. Her skill was beyond measure and she used it in a wide repertoire of jazz, blues, and R&B songs. And I think you can do the same. Music knows no limits and I truly understand why James insisted on signing you, Maude.” Maude remained silent, still thinking about his rendition of Nina Simone. “All you have to do is dig deeper. Try finding some suffering in you. Don’t sing the Cenerentola with a smile. Although you look like a girl who’s had it all. You know, the nice girl from the North of France, who grew up in a quiet, small town with her loving mom and dad and brothers and sisters, always top of her class, quick-tempered when things didn’t go her way. A bit spoiled, I guess. You have to put all that—” “Spoiled?” Maude blurted in utter disbelief, the word echoing through her mind. Of all the things he could’ve said about her, spoiled was the last word that could have appeared remotely appropriate to describe her. As for suffering, she’d had plenty of that, too, which is why she didn’t want to think about it. Not while she was so happy in New York and Carvin and the Ruchets were the last thing she wanted in her head. She painfully pushed the Ruchets away from her mind and turned to Matt, eyes flaring up again. “You know nothing about me, Matt,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “And you obviously know nothing about suffering, or you wouldn’t idealize it the way that you do. You see it as a romantic notion that seemingly gives depth to songwriting. And it does. Not because the singers actually thought of woe in a purely aesthetic way, but because that’s how they actually lived. You will never understand that,” she finished, trembling from head to toe. And with that, she grabbed her bag, coat, gloves, scarf, and stormed out of Matt’s Creation Room, slamming the door behind her.

Being out and amongst other people made her happy, yet the feeling was tinged with regret at having missed out on so much in life, staying in alone for so many countless evenings when other people were doing things like this, going to plays and musical concerts, eating in restaurants or just chatting to each other at parties.

Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. He could hear Zagreus: 'Not the will to renounce, but the will to happiness

You’re going to go to concerts that ring truth through your bones and make you feel like your cells are vibrating. You’re going to stop and stare at the ocean and you’re going to feel so small, yet so fucking big, and you’re going to finally, finally, feel like things are falling into place. You’re going to be moved by your life. You’re going to feel everything all at once—you’re going to feel complete. Trust me when I say that one day it’s going to hit you—that you woke up happy, that you’re smiling for no reason, that your hands aren’t shaking anymore. One day, you’re going to remember what it was like to be you a year ago, or three years ago, or even a week ago, and you’re going to be so glad that you fought. You’re going to be so glad that you kept going.

Dear Reader: In Stacey and the Bad Girls, Stacey and her friends get into big trouble when they go to a concert. I never went to a concert when I was Stacey’s age. Instead, I went to my first concert when I was a junior in high school — almost seventeen years old. I went to hear a local group called Bop Shoo Bop that played 1950s doo-wop music. This was the early 1970s, when the TV show Happy Days was popular. My friend Beth was old enough to drive, so she drove us and a group of friends. Our parents knew what we were doing, of course, and nothing like what happened to Stacey happened to us at the concert. We just wanted to enjoy the music and have a good time. And that’s what we did. I’ve been to a number of concerts since