To me, the exhortation to enjoy life seems to often be taken out of context. IMHO, it doesn’t mean that one should walk around in a happy, nonfunctional daze. It means that one should enjoy every effort, every pleasure and every strife….and take nothing personally, even when dismantling an opponent.
Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha 
The dismantling an opponent came out of nowhere, but I enjoy your take on it. I think that Americans and Westerners tend to expect happiness far too often. To paraphrase an eastern European woman on the show Sopranos: in Europe, we expect everything to go wrong; when nothing does, then we consider it a good day.
Who ever said happiness was guaranteed? Most of our quotes on life reflect a much more grim take on things.
To quote an old, Croatian, existential proverb: “Life is short, life is shit, and soon it will be over.”
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Love it! I think that’s a positive mental step (ironic isn’t it, that a pessimistic viewpoint could be positive), but leaping beyond the subjective, I do think it is possible to enjoy the “shit” by enhancing objectivity and contemplating the relativism and absurdity of our existence. If nothing else, there’s always dark humor, haha!
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Bog bless dark humor!
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Fill every second with meaningful activity. That’s fulfilment.
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When adversity hits, some people say ‘Why me?’ My answer would be, ‘why not you?’ Badparenting, you are right in that we in the west expect everything to be great. IMO, that’s why there are so many divorces. People think ‘happy ever after’ is true and when they hit problems, as they will, instead of working hard to improve things, they say ‘it hasn’t worked, lets get divorced.’
As someone who has been married for longer than many people have been alive, I say it’s not easy, but well worth the effort. It’s partly laziness, another thing that I think has increased, and that also makes for discontent.
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It’s better to find happiness in rare instances rather than think everything SHOULD make you happy. You’ll find happiness in the strangest of places where ever you go.
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Agreed. It’s a hard—maybe impossible—thing to plan.
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True. Happiness can be found either way.
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