What does it mean to be content?

I read some random blog post about this, now writing some thoughts about it.

Accept and appreciate internal and external states.

Accepting and appreciating external state could include looking at some trees or listening to a nice song. or doing mostly anything intentionally.

Accepting internal state seems challenging. this doesn’t mean striving for a constant sense of joy or even serenity. Instead it seems to be something like not being stressed about what emotions currently are present in your mind

I’m not sure what I think about this. I kind of like the idea that you can and should hack your emotions. but will also admit that you can’t 100% accomplish emotion hacking.

I like the idea “Regardless of how I feel, I can choose to act as directed by higher values.”

But I guess its important to understand what your higher values are. (recall higher values, from a previous blog post)

Appreciating internal and external states:

“I’ll be content once I grow up” seems like there’s no real reason to say time now is less valuable then time when you’re older

contingencies are certainly quite dangerous and good to rm

Q: should you eat candies?

  1. no: this results in you being less healthy and feeling worse overall
  2. yes: its a form of appreciating art and beauty in life.

A: It is not important to eat candy, and in general you should be somewhat discriminating in this regards and especially in regards to gluttony. but the appreciating art method is good. In fact this philosophy can be pretty generally extended to lots of frivolous comfort-driven parts of life. Comfort and pleasure aren’t intrinsically good or evil really. they’re not really worth seeking too much but when you can create small beautiful things that is really good. and its definitely not too healthy to over-analyze whether your choices in this regards are optimal.

Q: what about technology? A: ws10dczq. get buffer.

Q: which of the following methods is supported by the theory of contentment?

  1. whenever you hear about something that sounds kinda fun, e.g., a friend invites you to do something, default accept because weighing the opportunity cost of doing stuff is kind of stressfull and if you try to optimize things too much it drains the fun away
  2. default reject things, because you are content with the way things are already don’t need more things

A: serendipity can be awesome don’t reject out of nebulous fear I’m definitely have been leaning a bit towards (2) lately, and could correct to (1). but not terribly off course. Anyways, definitely reject if you actually have something specific goal that you’re going for.

this reminds me as many things do that its really fun to have arbitrary very specific goals todo: make some note: you gotta do it right or its too exhausting

like one mega-goal per week and per day and per quarter seems pretty reasonable

that thought, to be continued

oh unrelated art is good, as is adventure.

and here is some chinese vocabulary that I made up, sorry they are not google translatable would be my guess:

ok that’s enouguh! indeed it is indeed enough.

so in summary, accept all moments, the bad ones and the good ones, plan (short-term) some interesting ones. carp diem!