Is achievement and success brings happiness?
or
Is happiness that brings success?

Los Angeles, Dec. 19, 2016
NRIpress.club/Gary Singh Grewal

We always confused or think backward, but we always think achievement and success brings happiness.

• “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”............Seneca

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take your spouse out to dinner.
Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, teaching the people the rules of social relationships, justice, and sincerity. He focused on ethics within the family, educational system and public.  After his death, Confucius’ teachings became the official imperial philosophy of China. His values were ‘humanitarian’ values.

• Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.
• It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
• Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
• I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
• Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
• Whosesoever you go, go with all your heart.
• By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest
• The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.
• Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.
• When anger rises, think of the consequences.

We know we are guilty of putting off happiness until  we achieve some arbitrary goal. But as Fredrickson’s “broaden and build” theory proves, happiness is essential to building the skills that allow for success.
Happiness is both the precursor to success and the result of it.
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Love lessons from the great philosophers

By Vikas Datta// IANS 
Title: Love Voltaire Us Apart - A Philosopher's Guide to Relationships; Author: Julia Edelman (illustrated by Hallie Bateman); Publisher: Icon Books; Pages: 155; Price: Rs 499

It is inexplicable, irresistible, makes the world go around, but its course may never run smooth. Falling in love with someone, somewhere, sometime is inevitable and so is some problem, big or small, emerging in the relationship. Advice may then be sought from friends, tarot readers, or relationship gurus in lifestyle magazines, but how about from top philosophers?

It may not be very a promising approach, since despite their unflagging focus on human problems, most philosophers live up to their name as uncompromising lovers of wisdom, with all other more tangible influences secondary. And then, their love lives were not particular noteworthy -- or sometimes even non-existent, for that matter.

But still, for argument's sake, if we had to approach them on this issue, how would they have responded?

Does the Socratic method extend to romance, or Plato's Allegory of the Cave?

• Could Aristotle justify it by logic or Rene Descartes find a method for ascertaining romantic acquiescence?
• Could Albert Camus square it with the Absurdity that rules our existence or Karl Marx with dialectical materialism?
• Could Carl Gustav Jung extricate it from the collective psyche, or Nietzsche understand that though God was dead, was love?
  
  Let this marvelously inventive writer and comedian from New York show you with a much expanded and diversified version of her "New Yorker" article:

 "Excerpts from Philosopher's Breakup Letters Throughout History".

In this book, Julie Edelman adds advice from philosophers on relationships -- starting, maintaining or breaking them -- what some seminal quotes actually meant, pick-up lines from philosophers and thinkers across the entire spectrum of human existence. Apart from those mentioned above, they also range from Confucius to Ayn Rand, Immanuel Kant to Roland Barthes and Niccolo Machiavelli to Sigmund Freud -- while two foremost contemporary philosophers also pitch in with their own contributions.

And there is much more too, all accompanied with some simply delightful illustrations by Los Angeles-based Bateman.

Edelman, who has also written for "Cosmopolitan", "Playboy", and "Vice", says she began this book while in Montreal as it "was the dead of winter, and I continued to write only because my rough drafts fed the fire that allowed me to survive".

"At the time, I was studying philosophy and while I should have been finishing essays for class, found myself writing about philosophers' love lives instead. I liked thinking about Nietzsche's love life or what Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's breakup was like -- and then I got the chance to turn these thoughts into a book."

And the result has to seen to be believed -- if you can control your mirth.

Whether it is John Locke telling the object of his adoration that her mind is a "blank slate" but he can "colour it with knowledge", Kant, while sexting, informing his that he "was reflecting on the notion of aesthetic judgment and determined that **u r beautiful**", Ayn Rand telling her beau that "objectifying" him will make her happy and Freud reciting to his beloved a dream about chasing a fox wearing a top hat which was about her.

There is also a quiz to ascertain your philosopher crush, a guide to alerting you if you face losing your relationship to imminent revolution, how to get over a break with a philosopher, what would romantic films starring philosophers instead be like (for example, "Pretty Woman" with Marx instead of Richard Gere, and "Annie Hall" with Freud rather than Woody Allen) and a brief glossary of related terms but defining both what it actually means and what you think it does.

Will this book be any useful to the love-lorn? It may depend on objective conditions but is undeniably a vivid and illuminating look at how this vital but unpredictable human condition can overwhelm the best minds of all and the truth of the Latin saying "Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur" or "to love and be wise is a (privilege) scarcely granted even to a god".

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"With warmth and whimsy, Edelman breathes new life into the often too-somber philosophical canon. Bateman’s expressive illustrations compliment perfectly for a playful and thoughtful book."— Matt Lubchansky, The Nib

"Whether you love to love, love to hate, hate to love, love Must Love Dogs, hate Must Love Dogs, love Ten Things I Hate About You, hate one thing about Ten Things I Hate About You, or all of the above, you'll love Love Voltaire Us Apart. It's much, much funnier than this blurb." — Wendy Molyneux, Bob's Burgers

“This book combines all my favourite things: crushes, French literary theorists, and the illustrations of Hallie Bateman. Reading it is like having your smartest friend take you out for too much wine during a break up, plus there is a portion that re-imagines The Wedding Singer with Sartre in the role of Adam Sandler. A real delight.” —Monica Heisey, Broadly

“Can the love of wisdom make us wise about love? Has any philosopher come close to answering this question? From the transcendental X to XOXOXO, Julia Edelman deftly explores loving, lusting, and lamenting from Aristotle to Žižek.”.—Jan Mieszkowski, Labors of Imagination