I wanted to be able to write on the book jacket: "Her triumph over cancer" or "She wins the cancer war." I wanted a perfect ending, so I sat down to write the book with the ending in place before there even was an ending.
Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Like my life, this book has ambiguity. Like my life, this book is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious ambiguity, as Joanna said. Delicious Ambiguity.
Your example
- Go and see the roses again. You will understand that yours is unique in the world. You will return to ...
I wish you endless dreams and the furious desire to make some of them come true.
I wish you to love what you need to love and forget what you need to forget.
I wish you passions, I wish you silences. I wish you bird songs on waking up and children's laughter.
I wish you to respect the differences of others, because the merit and value of each one is often to be discovered. I wish you to resist the bogging down, the indifference and the negative virtues of our times.
Finally, I wish you never to give up research, adventure, life, love, because life is a magnificent adventure and no reasonable person should give it up without fighting a hard battle.
Above all, I wish you to be you, proud and happy, because happiness is our true destiny.
- 1968 -
Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure.
To be happy is to learn to choose. Not only the appropriate pleasures, but also his way, his job, his way of living and loving. Choose your hobbies, your friends, the values on which to base your life. Living well is learning not to respond to all the requests, to prioritize your preferences. The exercise of reason allows a coherence of our life according to the values and goals that we pursue. We choose to satisfy one pleasure or give up another because we give meaning to our life - in both senses of the word: we give it both direction ...
To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you, not something that you magically discover in a top-ten article on the Huffington Post or from any specific guru or teacher. It doesn’t magically appear when you finally make enough money to add on that extra room to the house. You don’t find it waiting for you in a place, an idea, a job—or even a book, for that matter.
Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress—the solutions problems ...
