Are you happy?

People try to do so many different things to be happy. But most of it will lead to a passing state of happiness. And there will be joy for a brief moment, that will soon fade away. The so desired "state of happiness" is not, however, dependent on the time frame. It's everlasting, for as long as the mind can keep track of it, not due to random timed events changing the perception. That's one way to define happiness the way people use the word for.

We thrive for making other people happy, so we can feel good for them. The betterment of the world, our surrounding environment, so we can have a place that will not deceive anyone from what we once felt as a good thing, a carefree sensation of the life. Money, so we could maybe exchange happiness with others who "have it". Or maybe just to blind ourselves and being able to concatenate moments of felicity one after another and feel comfortable for as long as possible, which could last a life time.

In a material world we try to use any resource we can touch and feel as real just to achieve happiness... But... What if our minds are not a consequence of our brains? What if the human mind is just manifested through our bodies? I can't understand how being unconditionally happy would be possible if matter is all that exists. Similarly, would a thought be made of matter, or just be manifested through it?

So...

If happiness is a state of spirit, a mental frequency to be tuned, or maybe just kept / recalled from childhood, since apparently every human spring is born happy, there is not a single thing a person can do in practice to achieve it because, after all, it's not something material. If it is a state of mind, it doesn't depend on other people, even if they can help or disturb it.

Maybe, then, happiness isn't the ultimate goal in life. By definition, it shouldn't be. To be happy, would require just understanding. Deeply. In fact, it would be so simple that it would be difficult to believe after experiencing so many complexity in the confused world of today. And just a glimpse of it might not be enough to get there, but it could be enough to start feeling good. To begin being happy.

Friends

This is about my idea about friendship... I was reading an e-mail from a friend and I decided to write back, since it seemed to me such a bad text! It was talking about friends in the wrong direction.

Just less than an hour ago I got to read and reply the e-mail with the following...

I want to add a few words of my own, if you will...

First an introduction. 2 paragraphs explaining why I'm replying to this text. Basically, the only good thing I could see in there was the last sentence... "Smile back to smile-less".

That text seems to be based in the so called "successful people". After that it gets a lot of popular sayings, old sayings, trying to reinforce the basic: "this is what successful people do". It does start telling you "be careful with your friends", but the only reason is about those "successful". Now, the way it's put, it seems to me
that "successful" is that person who have money. Who achieved a million dollars OR maybe that person who won some kind of prize.

I doubt whoever wrote the text was thinking about "successful" as someone who lived one's life without any worrying (stress) about what other people think about one. I highly doubt the "success" intended in that text was to talk about someone who died with a smile in the face, happy with the lost life, be it at 20 years old or 80 years, because hat person lived the life as good as possible and know it. Deceptions, pain, anything could have happened in that person life, but nothing that would affect the whole picture of one's life. That, to me is being successful in life. Dying without anything to regard in life. Of course, that's Utopian. I doubt it about the text because, if that was the case, the text would necessarily be different. Some text with that definition could not, ever, say something like "the more you associate with someone, the more your life will be miserable".

Friends are, to me, as important as breathing. Of course you have to be careful with about everything in your life, and nobody is perfect. We'll always be able to find flaws in any of your friends. If we get to read this text in a weak moment, in a big fight, we might grew some bad feelings for a 20 year old friendship. We might let ourselves believe there is no such thing as love. I believe we couldn't be more wrong.

To me friendship is one kind of love that is capable of never fading off in a life time. And over it. I believe a person can have a full hand of real friends, not any more. Because real friends are the ones we spend time with and build a "trust hold ring" that seems unbreakable. The more it stays, the longer it gets without anything trying to break it, the stronger the friendship become, and it can only grow more and more. A lifetime of hundred years can't cover much more than ten real, good, best friends. It might not find even one, because a friendship depends on two people wanting that to happen. If we don't want it, it will never exist to us.

To me, friendship is stronger than a "marriage" kind of love, because it doesn't depend on children, sex, government, money or any other possession. I'm not saying men and women can't be friends, but I do wonder why we struggle so much about male+female friendship. Friendship doesn't depend on gender, country, skin... And it can go beyond human-kind as well. It only depends on two life-beings wanting and slowly getting together. Having something in common. Building a relationship with limitless potential of growing.

So, let's be careful with our friends, with our life. But let's not be way too careful as we risk to see our life goes by and never have enjoyed it.


--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cacumer


On 11/28/05, Ribas, Erika (CS) wrote:
>
>
> The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you
> closely associate - for the good and the bad.
>
> The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.
> Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity.
>
> An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with
> negative thinking and negative people. As you grow, your associates will
> change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you
> to stay where they are.
>
> - It Is Better To Be Alone, Than In the Wrong Company
>
> - Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.
>
> - If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl, but, if you associate
> with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights.
>
> - A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the
> kind of friends he chooses.
>
> - Friends that don't help you climb will want you to crawl.
>
> - Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream.
>
> - Those that don't increase you will eventually decrease you.
>
> - Never receive counsel from unproductive people.
>
> - Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the
> solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to
> tell you how.
>
> - Not everyone has a right to speak into your life.
>
> - You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas
> with the wrong person.
>
> - Don't follow anyone who's not going anywhere.
>
> - With some people you spend an evening - with others you invest it.
>
> - Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of
> life.
>
> - Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships.

-- cacumer@gmail.com

Why I started this blog

I'm using this to organize my ideas to be able to better write a book.

I want to do that because I find myself frequently being misunderstood and I wish to give a better idea on what I really think about "it" (whatever it is).

That misunderstanding basically happens because of the lack on resources our human protocol languages have on transmitting thoughts.

Unfortunately, I can find no better way to be able to do it than writing. But writing is actually even worst than talking. Why, then, write a book? Because we still don't have the technology to create "books that talk", within the context on this post. So this seems to me like the best way to achieve my "transmission of thoughts" to more than one person.

I know that we actually have technology on computers to read texts, but that's reading, not talking. In that sense, it's not any better than writing. Also, I can't talk to the computer so the computer will understand what I want to reproduce it. So I can't really "create a book that talk", all I can do is write something so a computer can read it for blind people, basically.

Fortunately, I do enjoy organizing my ideas through writing. Although writing wouldn't be needed, at all, if we had more evolved computers. And I would definitely like it better. I know it's really hard to imagine. We've being reading and writing almost all our lives. But there are people who can't read and make their living, although I still would love to get to personally meet one.

Just try to imagine if you could talk to a computer connected to the internet who can google around any information better than any googler, the same way you talk to an old man, but it is actually acting the age you want it to act. When would you really need to read something in a situation like that? Or even write. The computer can draw pictures and symbols that you choose to organize information, in a big piece of bio cybernetic nano-technological place. Bigger than any paper that you could write. Faster than anyone could draw. And we're just talking about "talking to the computer"...

This isn't a new idea, it's among some places, even some movies, but with different points of view and aspects. Anyway, it is still just another sci-fi dream of a possible future.

About the book I want to write...
I was amazed when I was surfing in wikipedia until I fell into the Game Theory. I've seen this for first time while watching A Beautiful Mind and that's how I got there. This specific introduction alone includes every subject I ever wanted to study:

Although the underlying methodology is mathematical, game theory is widely used in many different fields including biology, computer science, economics, philosophy, and political science.

Those 3 fields are completely related to another subject I'm deeply interested into: statistics. Although I'm not sure if there's too much to learn about statistics concept itself, but the field gets wide when you start studying how to apply it or getting into probability (which I don't find very attractive so far).

It says in the first line: "Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics"... Well, I think that actually, "Game theory is a branch of statistics, which is a branch of applied mathematics.", and it's still amazing how being a branch of a branch it is so widely spread among so different fields (that are not actually that different after all). And I know that, although statistics could be considered a branch of applied mathematics, it's actually separated branches, at least in universities courses.

Well, anyone can co-relate game theory with open source? Be careful, it's not the limited "new concept" of open source applied for softwares. opensource.org gives a good while brief idea of open source, even though it's actually talking about softwares.

Getting to study all of this would be just the beginning of the book.


-- cacumer@gmail.com

A beggining - #1 tentative

Ok, I think I'll just get the last e-mail I've sent to google and make it look like a blog post...

*copying and pasting from gmail*

Summing up, anyone can see google exists because of the google ads.
That amazing technology made possible uncanny things software's and tools
made by google, and I believe it's a great new improvement to the
human society all the work google is making.

Just like anyone else, I find amazing the google philosophy, written on the web
site, and that interesting new way of computing. It is proving by
itself to be even better than opensource. Unlike an idea that did bring us linux, Google came up with this new and realistic idea in a word ruled by capitalism. It grows a lot faster than opensource, I just wonder when they'll be able to integrate both ideas.

So I want to be part of all this and my first attempt is through the
company I'm working on right now. I am managing e-mails on it and I
got the opportunity to add a lot to my technology knowledge and that experience shows me how wonderful gmail really is, even while it's still on beta.

All that I'm asking is for a Gmail corporate solution. I want Gmail Team to sell us a package, "just like" any other mail server, so we can handle our e-mail with
google technology. And maybe even without charging our clients for the e-mail service by getting a little share from google ads. If that's not possible, it's ok, we can keep charging our clients as well.

Google would get a public that's not used to act like a googler, that's not used even to get to internet. Just to e-mails. They use AOL e-mails, and poor mail services from other companies trying to build an e-mail solution from scratch, without even reading all information that's already on internet on how they could do it better.

This would be good for google, good for us, and would just add to everyone.

I myself could help to build that solution, although I believe it's
probably already being made by Gmail Team.

I just wish to have an answer, something, anything written by someone who can tell me if this is a possible dream or not. Just shot me dead if I'm dreaming too much.

I know this is a hard message to get to that person. I myself, as a support person, and a natural helper, have an idea of how many e-mails the support team must get per day, and how probably most of them are not fully read by someone. Maybe some of them don't even ever get to someone's eye.

I'll just keep trying, because I see no reason to give up on trying.


Too bad my firefox google bar couldn't fix my english, and I had to copy and paste to GMail to be able to check my spelling.

Looks like I've changed this message quite a lot...
Anyway...

*copying and pasting back to gmail*

Just two errors, not bad! =)


-- cacumer@gmail.com