Joy

The Happiness—and Holiness—of a Life Lived Joyfully

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ Leave a comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: cmophoto.net (freely available via Unsplash)

“Don’t try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.”
Blaise Pascal

With no disrespect to Pascal and his genius, while I agree with the latter part of his above assertion, I don’t agree with the first part. Yes, it is far more important to fill our years with life than it is to fill our life with years, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to add years. There are lots of things we can do to promote longevity, and, by all means, let’s do those things; let’s do what we can to live longer. But we must beware of confusing quantity with quality. We mustn’t focus so much on lengthening life that we forget to enjoy life for however long we have it.

After all, joylessness might just be the most innocuously damaging sin we didn’t know we were committing.

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Happiness through Mindlessness

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ 3 Comments

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: me

Following up on my last post’s discussion about happiness and mindfulness, I want to talk a little bit about something that’s similar, yet almost the inverse: flow. The experience of flow is still very much an experience of being in the present, but it involves being so fully absorbed by and engaged with what you’re working on that the associated feeling of well-being derives less from an active practice of mindfulness and almost more from a present mindlessness.

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