Perspectival Shift

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know - Ernest Hemingway
 
Numerous realizations over the previous 7 months have given me access to the bigger picture, not just of the corporate world I initially renounced, but of life itself. Perhaps this "view from the outside" may be what I had been striving for all along - back when I canceled my MBA applications. Like a pebble stuck in your shoe, under your foot... you can't see it but you can feel it. While it's administering intermittent spurts of discomfort, there's no way to guarantee that it's even a pebble. You might then wonder, "hey, maybe I'm just imagining it, you know, maybe there's nothing even there. Maybe if I ignore it, the discomfort will go away." But the feeling's undeniable. What is this feeling? It's the feeling of being detached from what truly matters.

I guess some people just try to pull the pebble out. Part of the research and studies I've been working on revolves around the scientific basis for happiness. Questions such as:

• what do we believe makes us happy? 
• are our beliefs correct?
• are there different types of happiness? 
• is anything preventing us from reaching it (them)?
• is there a common underlying structure to the experience of happiness?
• what is this structure?
• and... does happiness matter?

The collective findings may not be very comforting... for various reasons and especially at first. In the coming weeks I would like to share some of my personal thoughts on these findings and on the questions listed above. Let's see if this train goes anywhere at all.