I just saw this on the flickr home page:
The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness. - Friedrich Nietzsche

And yet, we live in the land of excess. Life in America is all about more. More servings, more calories, more fat, more money, more land, more power, more sex, more toys, more drama, more drugs, more politics, more drinks, more control, more girls gone wild, more of everything! And yet, we're no where near happy than we could be with the more.

My grandmother turned 90 last week, and she's probably the happiest she's been in probably most of her life. Is it because she's been through much and scaled her personal mountains and declared her personal triumphs? I hope it is, or maybe she's come to a point in her life when she realizes, that yes, the time is ticking down, and the only thing you should do is enjoy the ride.

I remember as a kid that when we went on family vacations, as the time drew near the end of the vacation, I started trying to savor every moment more, because I knew, come next week, all I could do was daydream about last week.

This also seems to be a problem with the present though, because I realized if I try to be cognizant of trying to savor any moment, I lose that zen moment of actually enjoying myself. Perhaps happiness is nothing more the ability to reflect back and say, "yeah...good times."

My wife had a book that I thumbed through when we first met titled, "Happiness is a Serious Problem" where it postulated that people always go out of their way to seek fun rather than happiness. I'm not sure, doesn't fun memories basically eventually distill into happy memories? I guess I'm confused coming from an asian background where "the pursuit of happiness" is nowhere on the list of priorities, its more like be a dutiful child, keep the face/reputation intact and do things that gain you more respect and prestige. Or that's the yellow brick road you're supposed to walk to find out at the end that maybe, just maybe, there is an all powerful wizard of oz that will whisk you back to Kansas.

The idea of freedom in this country combined with the "pursuit of happiness" has more or less confused me, and completely effed me up. Which brings me back to my conversation over the campfire, and perhaps, the whole point is to pepper your life with fun times while you're pushing yourself through the shit/meat of life to clear your own path, so when you're at 90, you can look back and say, I made that, and no one else could have, and no one can ever take that away from me.