Tag Archive: happiness


LEARNING TO GO WITH THE FLOW

Filed under: Books, Health and fitness — Leave a comment
February 8, 2014

FLOW by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Harper Collins, 1991)

This is not a self-help book but readers should gain some modicum of enlightenment from a study of the psychology of optimal experience.

In layman’s terms the Hungarian psychologist (who works in California) sets out to discover what makes humans feel happy and fulfilled. A definite plus from his findings is that this a life skill that can be enjoyed by anyone since “money, power, status and possessions do not, by themselves, necessarily add one iota to the quality of life”.

Anecdotal evidence to substantiate this is provided by surgeons, musicians or chess players but the theory is deemed to be equally applicable to all walks of life including plumbers or mechanics. More than once I was reminded of Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which covers similar territory in more poetic terms. Continue reading →

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Learning to go with the flow

Filed under: Health and fitness — 1 Comment
April 29, 2013

28827428_1722382701133852_2950931224236982814_oToday I’m feeling stuck with no sense that I’m making progress with anything.

This blocked state led me to explore thinkers who have studied what being creative means and, perhaps even more importantly, what makes us happy.

Higher income and personal wealth don’t create this state of bliss. As Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-eee) explains in his TED talk, it’s all about finding something that helps you get into a state where time seems to stand still and you feel fully immersed in a state of flow. The nearest to reaching this ideal place is being in control and getting stimulated  – I’m working on it!!

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COME ON AND …..BOOM! BOOM!

Filed under: Music, Poetry — Leave a comment
May 27, 2012

When I think of Englebert Humperdinck, I always think of  the god-awful Release Me, the single which prevented The Beatles Strawberry Fields / Penny Lane from reaching number one in 1967.

Nowadays ‘the hump’ is apparently big in Eastern Europe which may be one the reasons he was selected to perform the UK’s Eurovision song – Love Will Set You Free.

At 76 , he looks in better shape than the Buranovo grannies but it still seems bizarre and wrong-headed to select him as UK’s representative.

The turgid apology for a love song he sang was also completely  out of synch with the brash showbiz image of the contest. Continue reading →

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LIFE DURING WARTIME – THE ENEMY IS WITHIN

Filed under: Movies, Music — Leave a comment
September 7, 2011

Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime is a quasi-sequel to his controversial 1998 movie Happiness. Like Happiness the plot revolves around three sisters – Joy, Trish and Helen. Joy is plagued by the ghosts of dead lovers, Helen is“crushed by the enormity of her success” and Trish just wants a man who isn’t screwed up.

Confusingly, the main characters are the same but the actors are different ;  I didn’t , for instance, connect Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Allen with the role played Michael K. Williams (It doesn’t help that I always see the latter as Omar from The Wire).

In explaining his unconventional approach Solondz said: “I was more interested in approaching these characters from a different angle and portraying them in a fresh light, and I wouldn’t have been able to do this if I had cast the same people”. Continue reading →

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HAPPINESS – NATURAL BORN PERVERTS

Filed under: Movies — Leave a comment
September 6, 2011

I borrowed this movie from my local library not knowing what to expect. It’s probably the best way to see it as it revels in challenging conventional ideas of healthy sex and good family life.

The title is, needless to say, ironic as is the naming one of the three unfulfilled sisters Joy. The movie depicts interwoven dysfunctional lives where true happiness remains elusive.

It is unique in that I can’t think of another movie where three male characters are shown masturbating. The first to come is psychiatrist Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker) who jerks off to an innocent looking magazine for boys. He is a pedophile whose ‘perfect’ suburban marriage (wholesome wife + three kids) is a sham. Next is Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is in therapy with Bill because he feels he is world’s most boring man and can only communicate with women by making obscene phone calls while wanking. Finally, Bill’s son Billy, who spends the movie being frustrated at his inability to ejaculate finally does so while spying on a woman in a bikini applying sun cream.

You will gather from this that Happiness is not a movie that will sit well with the Tea Party’s notion of family values. Loneliness would be a more appropriate title, as all of the main characters are unable to find an ideal love match.

Todd Solondz - healthily warped.

My favourite scene is where the fat and frustrated neighbour of Allen (played by Camryn Manheim)  tells how she was raped by the doorman and reacted by killing him and cutting him up. She says all this while tucking into a big bowl of ice cream and maintaining it was a crime of passion; “I am a passionate woman” she insists.

The sad, depraved lives of these characters is made deliberately provocative by having this catalogue of immoral, perverted and criminal behaviour take place is a normal, polite suburban setting.

Director Todd Solondz has the kind of warped Lynchian mind I can relate to ; I’m now keen to watch the sequel to this 1998 movie called Life During Wartime which he made a couple of years back.

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