#350 / Here's A Phrase To Think About

 

The illustration above was cadged from an opinion column that appeared in the November 13, 2022, edition of The New York Times. The column, by Tara Isabella Burton, was titled, "How 'Instagram Therapy' Creates a Moral Vortex." 

 

Of course, if you click that link you'll find a completely different headline. If you'd like to read the column, which I certainly encourage you to do, good luck with The Times' paywall. While I liked the column, and hope interested persons will be able to see the whole thing, I am not taking the trouble to reproduce the entire column here because I actually want to highlight just one phrase. 

 

Here it is: 

The pursuit of private happiness is increasingly celebrated as the ultimate goal.

The illustration, it seems to me, aptly pictures how that "pursuit of private happiness" looks. We can be blissfully dreaming on, in our "private happiness," while atomic war explodes, the ground fissures under our feet, and climate crisis fires burns through everything that we have been able to build, by way of human civilization. That is what "the pursuit of private happiness" portends.

 

Here's a question, making a point worth thinking about. Can genuine "happiness" ever be "private"?

 

I am always urging us to "talk to strangers," and to realize that "we're all in this together." 

 

"Private" happiness? That really is "dreaming." 

 

Our happiness comes from what we are able to do together, because creating a human world worth living in is what really makes us "happy." This is true because (let me say it, repetitiously, again), "We are all in this together." 

 

We won't be happy, truly, until we fully realize this - until we know it experientially, in "real life," and not, simply, as a theory promulgated by bloggers like me. 

 

 

To Subscribe Just Click This Link 

 

 

Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/opinion/mental-health-therapy-instagram.html