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ORIGINAL: Kana

OK I am going to jump back to the original question, which is what makes me happy.
Now its tangent time. For me there are two separate ideas that get confused a lot, happiness and what for lack of a better word I will call joy.
           Happiness is something that is externally based. That means that things outside of me can affect my happiness quotient. If I hit the lotto, guess what I am going to be happy, shit I will even be thrilled. On the contrary, should I walk out for work this morning and my car is gone, I am gonna be unhappy, quite a bit. To say that I am happy all the time would be to deny my emotions and the capacity that events have to affect me. Stuff happens, good and bad and an emotional response is evoked. I would love to say that I am so spiritually advanced that nothing affects my even keeled approach to life, but that’s just not so. Maybe if I ever each the eighth rung of buddhism that will happen but for now, if I leave work and someone has burned my house down, I am not going to experience equilibrium, I am going to be pissed. So to answer your immediate question, lots of things make me happy. Sunny days, pretty women, obedience, new friends, old friends, success, raises, family, beaches etc... There are also lots of things make me unhappy, most of which boil down to things just didn’t go the way I wanted them to.  What I don’t do anymore is confuse pleasure with happiness. Au contraire.  Matter of fact some of the things that have brought me the greatest pleasure over the years have brought me the greatest pain. I cannot be the only one who has been with someone who is fantastic in bed but awful in life or made a decision based on short term pleasure that cost me tremendously over the long run.             Now joy is a different beast entirely. That’s something that is internal and no outside events can touch that. For me its simply being alive, the sheer exuberance of life. I wake up and know that today is a special gift, that there will never be another today as long as eternity lasts and that I am graced to participate in it. That enables me to approach life from a vantage point that dissapates much of the external affects. Am I unhappy if my house burns down, you betcha. But I still am alive, I still have hope and I still have the opportunity to see, taste, touch, feel and hear. So that cannot be shaken. That’s just my two cents worth, take it for what its worth.

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ORIGINAL: scottjk

I guess I should have quibbled just a little with juliaoceania. ;)

No, I don't consider it a service. :) I consider it a necessity for a desired result for both, rather than just my own needs. We're more similar than you realize. Just distracted or influenced by others. lol

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ORIGINAL: LuckyAlbatross

Padriag- Yay authority!

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(shrug) you've said what you said, whether you recognize it or not is the issue.  I didn't imply any of those things on that list however and I can see any attempt at a conversation on this isn't going anywhere.  Good luck to you.

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ORIGINAL: LuckyAlbatross

Padriag- Yay authority!

For me?  I'm all about the happy, increase happiness all the way, happy happy happy, more happy.

But in the end, it's not about happy.  Happy is so transitory.  Heck, some days bliss just means sliding into bed.  For a lot of people in the world, bliss means eating a full clean meal.

I'm all about the fulfillment.  Long term.  Serving self.

Oh and while I DO love taking control of my boss by forcing him to use the intercom because it annoys me when he yells over at me- I also recognize it's a fairly flimsy and small point in the larger scheme of things.  He is clueless on how much I understand and control how his world flows at work, but he has the ultimate authority to remove me.

The important thing is to not let that enter his mind as an option, and certainly not as an appealing one.