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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write. Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground. Kiya's gift. I love it!
Everyday Canvas
#963471 added July 30, 2019 at 11:32pm
Restrictions: None
Daily Life and Happiness
Prompt: "The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life." William Morris
Write anything you want about this this quote.


-----

Granted, the details of daily life add to, embellish, and enhance the evolutionary steps of the human journey. Granted, taking an interest in every little thing we do and doing it with gusto takes our attention away from the hardships of life.

I certainly agree to paying attention and taking a genuine interest in the details of daily life.

Yet, does this point to the true secret of happiness?

To begin with, I don’t think happiness is such a trifling thing. Yes, during the focusing of my attention on the mundane everyday things, I may be avoiding or covering up some suffering or negativity, but is this really happiness?

To me, happiness is something different. It is something much more complicated and very hard to define. In fact, I don’t think there’s a definition of happiness that is accepted worldwide. Just google “What is happiness?” and you’ll see what I mean. There are so many definitions and such conflicting ideas on what happiness is.

From this point of view, if we can’t even define happiness itself, how can we be sure of its true secret? And doesn’t this make William Morris’s quote a low-grade generalization?

Maybe during the nineteenth century, William Morris’s time, such generalizations involving large concepts were tolerable. I dare think and hope that in our century, we will try to look more closely into what makes us human.


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