point of view

is being happy a skill? It probably is more than most of us realise. We tend to think of it as something easy. We think that happiness comes naturally. Happiness and pleasure is generally what we want and pain and sadness is generally what we don't want. And somehow we think that what we prefer is more natural - that it comes naturally....all things being equal, we will just be happy as a matter of course, and if we go through pain or anything unpleasant, we think something is wrong. That way of thinking is so deeply ingrained in our consciousness that we use the word 'wrong' to describe challenges and problems. We say, what's wrong? is there something wrong? 

We use the same word - wrong - to describe what is morally reprehensible, what is incorrect, and what challenges us. 

maybe things are meant to go wrong, and maybe that's a good thing

one of my favourite metaphors about life and its vicissitudes is the journey of the hero. the first step in the journey is the call, and the standard response to the call is refusal. being a hero is kind of like what Mark Twain said about the classics - everyone wants to have read them, but no one wants to read them. we are called in our weakness - called to be something we are not

Siri Hustvedt says some interesting things about looking at art. you have to come to the work without expectations. it's virtually impossible to really see a work like the Mona Lisa, because of its association with greatness. the word is always an abstraction in a way that looking at an image isn't. people who try to make the experience of the image the same as the experience of the text are wrong....text is more of a sequential thing, where, in an image, you can apprehend all the details at the same time...so the writer can't translate the image into text, but they can attempt to translate their experience of looking at an image into an essay