Five Letter Word: Let's Start!

There’s a new category on the web log. It’s called Five Letter Word. Hey, “What’s the five letter word?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s happy. Some years ago at the library, I noticed a recently published book, I think it was called On Happiness (or some other nonsense) and it seemed to be a kind of pop-psychology/pop-philosophy self-help kind of dealy. I’m not gonna research what I saw at the library and maybe heard about on Fresh Air or whatever. There will be no reference hyperlink in this post. It’s not gonna work and it’s gonna be the wrong book anyway. I didn’t read whatever it was, okay? My memory sucks. Reference points and documentation are beside the point & is kind of getting involved in the perpetual & disposable personality cult hype engine hoo-hah. I believe that shit can get dangerous to one’s sense of self knowledge. For real. Best to just kind of pitch that into the memory hole, okay? For the sake of this thing suffice it to say that I did kind of get the itch to think about what happiness is. Over time, and utilizing my usual method, I kind of let the question fester in my subconscious. Happiness is a thing I want of course, even if I’m not sure about how it works or even what it is. I mulled it over for nine years or so. But what I did start to intuit right away is this: getting fucked up all weekend long and then grinding through a work week was not a happy way to go through life. That, and getting involved in activities such as hitting a gong and wearing robes, sniffing weird incense and listening to the music of gourds was not going to do the trick, either. I needed some practical junk to push around to know if I was doing it right.

The way I approach life and the way I put things together in my brain is all in terms of definitions. Creating and testing language models… And very recently I created a definition for the word happiness. It’s this: Happiness is the willingness to participate in the activities of life. So that’s it. Over here at Five Letter Word, we’ll keep washing that rock and maybe, every once in awhile, get something going, something that works that you can use. Okay, cheers!