“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides…”
-- Goethe
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Gretchen Rubin is the best-selling writer whose book, The Happiness Project, is the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. Here, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.
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Jeez! You might consider prefacing such quotes with a warning like **Caution** Do NOT read the following quote if you are happy in your present state of consciousness (or blissful ignorance) and content to let the world just take care of itself....if you take the blue pill you will wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
However, if you read the quote and accept the notion that you are a Goethean "decisive element", then in your life from this moment forward your responses, choices, and actions will reflect this understanding. Depending on where you are now, this could bring new moral imperatives, challenges, burdens, or perhaps pathways to happiness -- it is your response that decides.
As far as moral imperatives are concerned, I've always dug the bit from Faust that Andrei Sakharov used so frequently as an epigraph: "He alone is worthy of life and freedom Who each day does fight for them anew."
Posted by: david bain | July 09, 2006 at 11:50 PM