WHERE HAPPINESS AND BOREDOM COME FROM

If you had to categorize the normal (physically and mentally) adults in this country into three groups based on their chance for happiness, what three particulars would you choose? Before you start this interesting game, let’s make one rule: To avoid the twosome that can always give rise to argument and worse, politics and religion are out. Do not even begin to dictate for others in these two disciplines. So, what do we have to work with?

My list consists of Group 1, the athletic. This takes in the athletes themselves, the people who are eager watchers of the athletes at play, all those who fervently wish they were there at all costs and all those who prance around trying to keep fit on their own, and even perhaps showing off. Group 2 consists of the very opposite of Group 1, the literary type. Group 3 is everyone else.

By literary, I do not mean those people who read three books or more a week but cannot discuss any of them. In my court, these people belong to category 3. If someone tells you they read all kinds of books, place them in Group 3, for they are probably lying. They may not be aware of what Group 2 is really about. A good test for such proof is removing all other books from access to this reader, but leaving a copy of something like the unabridged Brothers Karamazov. If they read that book and can discuss it, they definitely belong to Group 2.

The point is we are primarily users of our bodies or users of our minds. Of course, normal people use both, but one path is going to be less traveled than the other. And one path will have longer-lasting memories. This philosophy works for both happiness and boredom. I was extremely young when I realized where my happiness came from, not from others and not from things, but from within myself. I was so busy being happy, even in my necessary solitude, I ended up a bit late realizing I had never been bored in my life!

As for the above groups, have you ever known a person who has never been bored? My guess is most of them are in Group 2. But this is my list. You can make your own and put yourself wherever you wish. ♥