26 Mar Benjamin Franklin on True Happiness
Set aside some times this weekend to read and ponder these wise words from Benjamin Franklin who believed that happiness and virtue were integrally linked.
That is, consistent with positive psychology, Franklin believed that real happiness was not just about pleasure and positivity (although these are indubitably important) but just as much about doing good deeds!
Read Maria Popova's article from Brain Pickings…
“Virtue is … the only true happiness of the mind and the best means of preserving the health of the body.”
The secret of happiness has been sought in cultivating optimism, in celebrating everyday moments, in finding one’s creative purpose, and in embracing uncertainty, but it remains forever elusive and forever alluring. Writing in a 1785 essay titled “On True Happiness,” originally printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette and eventually published in On True Happiness and Other Essays (UK; public library), Founding Father Benjamin Franklin — born 307 years ago today — considers the essence of the universal human pursuit that eventually found its way onto the United States Constitution, which Franklin co-signed.
The desire of happiness in general is so natural to us that all the world are in pursuit of it; all have this one end in view, though they take such different methods to attain it, and are so much divided in their notions of it.
Evil, as evil, can never be chosen; and though evil is often the effect of our own choice, yet we never desire it but under the appearance of an imaginary good.
Many things we indulge ourselves in may be considered by us as evils, and yet be desirable; but then they are only considered as evils in their effects and consequences, not as evils at present and attended with immediate misery.
Reason represents things to us not only as they are at present, but as they are in their whole nature and tendency; passion only regards them in their former light. When this governs us we are regardless of the future, and are only affected with the present. It is impossible ever to enjoy ourselves rightly if our conduct be not such as to preserve the harmony and order of our faculties and the original frame and constitution of our minds; all true happiness, as all that is truly beautiful, can only result from order.
…now I should note that I don't agree 100% with all of Franklin's thoughts but I share them with you because I definitely do agree with much of his position and his thoughts and ideas are certainly worth contemplating.
Read the full & original article HERE