Heavens was fed up with all these petty domestic spars.
Each time one of them wanted to show who was in command, there appeared these demands of a rash meeting of the Council to authorise a scolding for the supposedly guilty part.
Sky came into the Meeting Room donned in a pale blue garment as were his whims.
He had brought a present for Heavens (clever move), and immediately made his presentation.
Sky and Geah
Heavens thought it was a bit of a childish way to punish Sky's wife Geah and their children, but he had to recognise that Thunder was an impressive invention, and would scare those hearing it, besides the gift of the Lightning, another invention Sky gave him, was really nice, undoubtly, this will change deeply the way rain was up to now, and Heavens will be delighted to send some of those beautiful lines of light onto the rebel Geah!
Very few days ago I was enjoying one of those blissful moments where everything seems to have found its exact place in the puzzle of life. Then feeling a flamboyant sensation in my self I let it seep slowly from my inner interior (if there is something like that in us), which as everybody who has met Elf knows, is a mistake.
Elf
The impossible gnome raised his ugly head behind my contentment, and with relish started to read an essay I wrote for my thesis on Happiness, so long ago I forgot I had it, and worst yet, I forgot I do believe each one of the words I wrote on the occasion.
To celebrate the coming back to life of an interested nonsense full of truth and deceit, depending the state of your mind is at the moment of reading it, I compromised with the sprite to put it again at the consideration of those idle persons with the slant and the possibility to lose time enough as to read it.
But against the advice of Elf, I want to warn you gentle Reader that you are about to sink your unaware self in a quagmire of pseudo psycho, philosophy not worthy the ink it is written, supposing it would be written in ink, so:
WARNING: if you have anything better to do in the real world, do not lose your time reading this dense post-Socratic idiocy, born only of the need to fulfill the arcane design of College as proof that the writer has lost his time learning a lot of rubbish.
You are Warned!
No complains accepted if you overtake this line.
I feel (am?) happy.
My days are full of light and laugh.
I call it happiness. Then, I try to understand happiness, and that is a mistake.
I am happy! It seems as if I am content, but I am sure it is not the same thing. I can be happy and immersed in big distress at the same time. This seems an impossible feat, but is true. What I cannot be is content while immerse in big distress, then, happiness and contentment are not the same thing!
If I look into the word meaning: Content comes from a family of words that express delimitation as in 'Contain', so when I am content I am restrained to myself which in turn makes me feel satisfied with the environment: I am into myself and that's all I need.
What about happiness? Its means, chance occurrence, comes from the old word 'hap' as a chance; as in luck, an archaic form of good fortune. This is something broader than content.
We usually get confused, and when sad we think we are unhappy. Far from it! Sadness is that feeling derived from unpleasantness and this latter is a by product of our selfishness.
Yes, I hear my own brain crying: I am not selfish, (am I ?) so your last definition is not true since I feel sad now and again and I am not selfish.
But then again, my brain is wrong.
If I were not selfish I would be dead since long ago, it is a proven fact that our conservation spirit is strong enough to keep us alive, but I am talking about a residual sense of that need, and when I analyze the reasons I feel sad I always find it is because something is out of the order I want to put the world in!
Some, few, reasons to be sad:
This business, which I am interested in, went wrong. My health is not as I would like it to be. My best friend betrayed me. The government is making my life miserable. I feel sorry about a problem my neighbor has.
You name it, we cannot get around "me" "my", or "I", it is the subject! The situation just revolves around my poor dissatisfied self. Then, how do you define this situation?
Undoubtedly: «self centered».
What makes it complicated is that this is not an abnormal behavior, the world spin around our self, we can only grasp any meaning through our body and mind, that is our self, and express our feelings through our mind and body, which is... yes you guessed it!
There is a difference between what I just wrote and happiness, the latter is totally independent from feelings, I may be sad but perfectly happy...
Come again? Spell this oxymoron!
To be happy is a way, a trail, not an end, you do not feel happy, you 'are' happy and only in this context can you recognize happiness as a method of life, even I dare say we can decide to be happy, no matter what! When you are contented, in the etymological sense of the word, you are held as a whole, you are neither excised not divided, and you know your wholeness. You are satisfied, but are you happy?
The base of happiness, is not contentment, but of course, we can realize that if we are basically happy (a soul status), being content is easily recognized since happiness is the natural base for our feelings so we readily accept our content (a mind status, a feeling), that thing that makes us feel whole.
This psychological structure makes us aware of a real surprising fact: once you have happiness tightly sitting as the base in the core of your self, it can support several different feelings, such as: joy, elation, rejoicing, delight, sadness, depression, despondency, apathy, despair, and in the middle of all these feelings you still are happy!
Of course, it is easier to let our feelings command our life and think we "feel" happy or miserable following the whims of our hormones or our responses to reality. It is easier, but it is pointless, our stupid frenzy in the face of our feelings or facing reality moves us around as a crazy leaf in an uncontrolled gale and in the heat of our wanton desires, the yearning for things, tangibles or abstracts, disorderly craved and in haste, rules our life leaving us exhausted and disgusted; never satisfied, always confused about ourselves.
Then we *feel* unhappy, but this is a feeling, we are not unhappy, we are unsatisfied, discontent, even angry and revolted at the reality we are living with, that is true, but in that environment as unlikely as it may seem we can be happy simply because happiness finds its being in itself, forgetting "desires" and "wants".
Yes, it is difficult for us (pampered by our actual way of life, where everything points to get whatever we want "right now"), to ignore the advice of media, telling us to use "the right" to live our own life "now", wasting our efforts running behind "newly created" needs by a society that think nothing of (or worse yet, despise) duties and responsibilities.
So we put our selves first, leaving behind everybody else, even those we owe natural care: sons, daughters and relatives. All this is easily seen in the way we express when we try to say something about ourselves and some other person: "me and Pete". Just look who goes first!
This manner of being is a sure way to be unhappy even if we get everything we want since there is a small (but crucial) thing we leave out: "the moral right to be human" otherwise said: Love.
You arrived as a dazzling sunbeam,
I was roving the world without love,
All my hopes were gone, and not a dream,
my soul lost, just as a wounded dove.
You brought in your eyes, and in your voice,
The pure air of a sweet and better choice,
Your hands and my hands just met,
and again palpitated my heart yet .
You, with the goodness of your love,
Taught me to smile, forgive, and have,
Not a cry of surly umbrage,
In final despair, and wastage.
At the sound of your crystal music,
I learned to live again by your rubric,
And I was reborn, nevermore beset.
... and the interstellar spaceship entered the real universe after travelling from far away in hyperspace.
Everything was going as scheduled, the spot where the vessel materialized was empty, but there could be seen a star nearby with a planet orbiting it.
Captain Doyle secured the ship and told his aide, Liz, to prepare the landing.
They both were explorers hired by the Confederation to find places where humankind could expand and give relief to other overcrowded planets in several galaxies.
Some hours later, both Earthlings were flying over a very green planet. According to the computer aboard, this planet, classified as M302, was a jungle covered globe with atmosphere and humidity in the range looked for by the travellers.
After several observation orbits around the planet, they decided to land in a small clearing near a lake, where it seemed the provision of water could be at hand.
When everything was taken care of, they decided to walk around and make a preliminary survey. There were many trees, small and large, and a predominance of a plant composed by a long white tube with a cup like flowers adhered to the tube. There were also many animals, these creatures looking tamed and quiet.
They walked some meters when from no source at all a wonderful scent started to envelope them. They stopped delighted by the experience and tried to get most of the beautiful fragrance.
A fascinating dream where they felt as if they were living a wonderful vision shared by all living beings, took them. After some minutes things seemed to come back to normal, leaving a strange sense of dereliction in their bodies.
The captain and his aide looked at each other nonplussed. What was this feeling? they know all about it without talking, as if they have lived the experience with only one mind!
Fully tired by the effort they lived through, they came back to the ship and fell asleep immediately.
A few hours later, they awakened, and with amazement, they talked about a different dream they had shared while asleep, this time it was a wonderful treat of the best choice foods, where their palate was gratified with the most incredible tastes they ever had.
They were exchanging these feelings, when an irrepressible urge grab them and before they could recognize it, they were embracing and kissing passionately, and sensing as if all these things were shared by many beings.
Astounded by the events, knowing they had been working together for many years and never felt these emotions, they decided to investigate further.
Captian Doyle asked his aide to induce him into a trance that let him study his reactions without the interference of his mind.
He found himself into a nebulous world where he was just a speck of life probing into the unknown, in a moment the clouds opened and in the clear space he could see movable things of intertwined tendrils trying to flee from his contact. He moved quickly and could surround one of them which stood trembling at his mercy.
Our hero reached out with his mind and asked: "Who, er...what are you?".
The thing started to change hues as if different thoughts were colliding in its mind, then a clear thought reached the captain: "You are intelligent? How amazing!"
After a while it was clear that these things were those white tubes they had found and also, they were the dominant species on this planet, they were sharp and intelligent but for a freak of nature they could not experience any emotion, this lacking, they had found, could destroy their sentience, so they have developed a kind of telepathic tool to induce emotions into living animals and share, in a parasitic way, those feelings.
The captain awoke to see the perplex face of his aide, she has lived his dream as if she were abiding in his mind. They had a short conference and decided not to stay on the planet until some professional people had studied this situation and looked to find a way to interact with these new aliens. Their idea seemed to be seconded by all beings around them, but they could not be sure.
They prepared the ship and flew out the planet with a feeling of relief, and a dry farewell, friendly but unemotional followed them until they entered hyperspace.
