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Ma vision du bonheur

by admin on 29/04/2010

Jordan - Dead Sea
Creative Commons License photo credit: © Salim Photography/ www.salimphoto.com

Regardez au fin fond de l’univers, là ou les supernovas engloutissent mais aussi créent les éléments chimiques qui composent notre univers.

Certains regardent le monde avec les yeux de l’implacable logique mathématique. Georg Cantor y a perdu sa sanité en ouvrant la porte des infinis. Il est dur pour moi de comprendre comment on peut lire, écouter, voir à travers les mathématiques, un langage pour interpréter l’univers que nous vivons. Comprendre en ordonnant en lignes, formules, sigles, chiffres. Un exercice de l’esprit qui veut comprendre ce monde rationnellement. Cantor qui était surement un homme d’une intelligence rare a été déstabilisé par ses propres découvertes. Il a voyagé dans des paysages inconnus, d’un infini à un infini plus grand.

S = k ln W

Cette équation a également exploré les limites de notre intellect et du rationnel. Boltzman a ébranlé les certitudes de la physique en mettant l’accent sur la probabilité. La graine de l’incertain en physique était plantée… Arroser et observer.

Un botaniste observe. Il observe au microscope du pollen qui danse saupoudré sur de l’eau. Mais pourquoi le pollen danse-t-il comme s’il était vivant ? Ce n’est que bien plus tard qu’Einstein l’expliqua. Le grain de pollen danse poussé par de petites particules, ridiculement petites. L’atome.

C’est au tour de Rutherford d’aller plus loin dans infiniment petit. Grâce à son intuition, Ernest Rutherford a découvert que l’atome était essentiellement du vide. Et oui, quand une feuille d’or est bombardée par des émissions radioactives de radium certains rayons ricochent. Seulement certains ricochent parce que ce petit nombre de rayons seulement a touché la matière de l’atome, le nucléon, 10000 fois plus petit que l’atome. Mais comme les strates n’en finissent jamais, tous les scientifiques du monde planchent où regardent la révolution faire son œuvre. Le proton, les neutrons, le quark, le nuage de particules fantôme… Toujours plus bas, plus profond dans la matière. Les Christophe Colomb de la science vont trouver leur chemin vers l’Inde mais quelle Amérique trouveront-ils ?

Nous vivons dans une soupe de particules, que la brique constituante soit les quark ou des filaments vibrants. Une soupe d’infinis, là haut dans les étoiles, ici dans les mathématiques ou dans l’infiniment petit. Partout où je regarde, l’infini des possibilités, l’infini des expériences, l’infini des rêves. L’infini.

Sénégal, Guatemala, Maroc, Nouvelle-Zélande, Corée du Sud, Pakistan, Malaisie, Chine, Inde, Laos… j’ai voyagé. Tantôt serveuse, tantôt enseignante, j’ai voyagé dans différentes vies. Peu importe le pays, la culture, peu importe l’histoire, un manteau de traditions, de croyances face à mes croyances, mes traditions. Où est le vrai, où est le sincère, le soi ?

A quoi ressemble mon manteau ? J’ai découvert l’histoire de ma famille et comment elle pouvait me pousser à faire des choix de loyauté plutôt que de bonheur. Vous êtes lié à la façon dont vous avez été éduqué, et à celle dont vos parents ont été élevés. La famille vous passe le flambeau pour aborder ce monde avec l’écusson, le trésor et le fardeau de la lignée.

Mais allégeons l’écriture tout de suite.

Le bonheur est la capacité à expérimenter chaque moment comme une chance unique dans l’infini. Alors oui, il peut y avoir des moments difficiles à vivre mais mon bonheur est là, j’ai confiance dans ma capacité à faire les bons choix parce qu’il n’y a pas de bons ou mauvais choix. Quoique je vive, l’important est que chaque moment me permette de me rapprocher de qui je suis vraiment, enfin sincère avec moi-même.

Le bonheur pour moi englobe la liberté, la vérité, l’amour, la joie.

Alors si ces mots sont mes valeurs et sûrement mes aspirations, le bonheur s’expérimente chaque jour de plus en plus.

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JK Rowling parle de bonheur

by Joanna on 11/03/2010

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

J’ai rencontré Harry à la Fnac. J’étais caissière. En fait on m’a surtout parlé de lui. Il est formidable avec les enfants! Il fait le bonheur des mamans ! Harry les séduit tous et toutes!

« Je n’ai jamais pu faire lire mon fils, mais avec Harry il est devenu vorace »

JK Rowling est pour moi cette magicienne qui a fait défilé des codes barres sous ma douchette et réconcilié des milliers avec la lecture.

Aujourd’hui connue mondialement, Joanne de son prénom nous confie quelques clés du bonheur : l’échec et l’imagination.

L’échec

J’ai longtemps hésité avant de publier, un peu en sourdine, certains articles de ce blog. J’y parle de mes difficultés, mes échecs. J’ai choisi de les publier car je les considère comme des apprentissages et que l’erreur n’est pas de les vivre mais de les ignorer.

JKR parle de ses échecs comme de son meilleur diplôme parce que ça l’a obligée à se débarrasser du superflu. Une réussite ailleurs aurait sûrement laissé Harry sur le quai.

Elle dit :

“Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist list of acquisition and achievement… life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone’s total control and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitude “

« le bonheur est dans le fait de savoir que la vie n’est pas une liste d’acquisitions et de performances… la vie est difficile et compliquée et au delà du contrôle de qui que ce soit et l’humilité de savoir ça vous permettra de vivre ses vicissitudes. »

L’imagination

Joanne aborde ensuite l’imagination ou l’empathie. Fermé son esprit et son imagination à ce que l’autre vie est se vouer au cauchemar. Elle nous appelle à regarder, utiliser notre empathie et agir. Elle cite Plutarque “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” « Ce que nous réalisons intérieurement va changer la réalité extérieure »

Comme j’avais déjà été portée par le discours de Steve Jobs à Stanford en 2005, je remercie JKR pour cette fabuleuse émotion. Une émotion et un partage que je souhaite de tout mon cœur favoriser le 5 juin à Paris lors de Bliss les explorateurs du bonheur.

Joanne conclue avec une citation de Sénèque et ce sera donc aussi ma conclusion:

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”

« La vie est tel un conte: ce qui importe n’est pas sa longueur mais si elle est bonne »

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Can happiness be measured?

by Joanna on 15/10/2009

When I was younger, I studied Economics at the University. I had to use esoteric terms, complicated theories, hypothesis “all things being equal”, going from micro to macro… I felt I had to understand a monster created by us but not for us.

We have to feed the giant to maybe have a chance to see him do what we want him to do. The pulse of the beast: the GDP. But didn’t we develop all those tools to have a better life? Is it working?  What’s the point of all that if human wellbeing is not in the center of our economics?

A small but famous country, Bhutan, is showing us a new way. Bhutan is Famous for it’s measurement of gross national happiness instead of GDP. But measuring happiness is a first step and doesn’t mean that the country is the country of happiness. A wave of suicide has been reported as a consequence of modernization and weaker family links. 

Measuring happiness video by New York Times

But can we really measure happiness?

Let me introduce you to my friend Gilles who is passionate about emotions and founded an emotion based city guide: Sencities. He is working with specialists in the field of emotions and introduced me to Florent from the Lab LUTIN (Imp in French). They pluged me on a machine that took several data like my heartbeat, my eyes movements and my breathing. The lab is studying and measuring our emotions for industrial purpose, in this lab it’s specifically for the videogame industry but we can easely imagine that it could be used to measure happiness eventhough for the moment they can’t make the difference between anger and happiness for example.


I tried an other machine/gadget/tool that claims it can raise your happiness level: hearthmath. It  helps you monitor your emotions and through exercices coordinate your brain and your heart. It’s called coherence.

Technology is trying to measure happiness but on a world level it seems that happiness became a hot subject. Even the very famous social network Facebook launched an analysis of our happiness level using keywords in users status. Learn more about it with this article or this video.

But in the end do we need so many criterias to measure happiness?

In Hypertension and Happiness across Nations , David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald measured blood-pressure of 15,000 randomly sampled individuals from 16 countries. They compared well-being with high blood pressure and found evidence that suggests that happier nations report fewer blood-pressure problems. It matched happiness measurements that were made with a simple scale of subjective happiness.

This other study “examined the accuracy of measuring happiness by a single item (Do you feel happy in general?) answered on an 11-point scale (0-10). Its temporal stability was 0.86. The correlations between the single item and both the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI; Argyle, Martin, & Lu, 1995; Hills & Argyle, 1998) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Pavot & Diener, 1993) were highly significant and positive, denoting good concurrent validity. Moreover, the single item had a good convergent validity because it was highly and positively correlated with optimism, hope, self-esteem, positive affect, extraversion, and self-ratings of both physical and mental health. Furthermore, the divergent validity of the single item has been adequately demonstrated through its significant and negative correlations with anxiety, pessimism, negative affect, and insomnia. It was concluded that measuring happiness by a single item is reliable, valid, and viable in community surveys as well as in cross-cultural comparisons.”

We can continue measuring cold data like money but I believe that there is space to use happiness as a legitimate indicator and driver for our society. Who’s in?

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Your own steps to happiness

by Joanna on 08/10/2009

step firestep seestep greenThere is no recipe for happiness.

Astounding. I have a blog about happiness trying to conceptualise it and now I say there is no recipe.

It’s true. For me. Everything I write on this blog is my path on happiness. Those are the steps I made to understand my truth. I guess there are as many ways to reach happiness as there are individuals.

So yes you can try to squeeze happiness in a book or an application but true happiness is boundless and there could be as many books as people. My happiness is what you may sense in this blog through words. But It’s a every moment appreciation.

Happiness is a cursor. Happiness leads you to your true self.

True self could sound mystic but let’s take out the glitter. True self is for me when my thoughts, my emotions, my acts, my heart are in sync.

Happiness opens the doors of compassion, love, excitement, peace.

It’s the flow of coincidences, the smile, the quick steps on the pavements. Happiness is confidence, the eye quick to catch. Happiness floats around you, generous.

Sure now I can look back and see the books, the people, the events that touched me but take those same books, people, events and throw them at me in a different timing and I would have heard nothing.

There is no recipe to happiness. There is a questioning and a listening to the answer that can come in any shape like a dialogue with yourself.

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Schopenhauer on happiness

by Joanna on 10/09/2009

schopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788 in Danzig, Poland. He had a pessimistic personality. He said for example: ““Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom”

Arthur was not a happy fellow so what a surprise to find after his death, in his personal notes, a manuscript in the writings entitled “Die Kunst, glücklich zu sein” which could be translated as the art of being happy. I couldn’t find any trace of it in English bibliographies. Schopenhauer says that we can’t be happy but at least we can follow rules to avoid pain. He lists 50 rules. The first rule is not to aim for an unachievable happiness but to manage your life as well as you can by avoiding unnecessary suffering for you and others.

The second rule is to avoid jealousy by comparing with others (hum that sounds like positive psychology)

The third rule is to not drift from your natural tendencies. Some are creative others contemplative. Don’t go against your nature

An Other rule is to be self-sufficient: “Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure, are by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.”

In his essay “on the wisdom of life” from Schopenhauer final work, “Parerga und Paralipomena” (1851), Arthur sees health as the most important factor of happiness that can’t be traded for honors.

“For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care. There can be no competition or compensation between these essential factors on the one side, and honor, pomp, rank and reputation on the other, however much value we may set upon the latter. No one would hesitate to sacrifice the latter for the former, if it were necessary. We should add very much to our happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that every man’s chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in other people’s opinions; and, consequently, that the actual conditions of our personal life,—health, temperament, capacity, income, wife, children, friends, home, are a hundred times more important for our happiness than what other people are pleased to think of us: otherwise we shall be miserable.”

“It is the possession of a great heart or a great head, and not the mere fame of it, which is worth having, and conducive to happiness”

Schopenhauer has been influenced by Buddhism and believed in the limitation of your desire to lower suffering. Life was for him a painful road and his (limited) happiness rested in avoiding, reducing, coping. None the less, his rules are good guidelines to live a happy life.

I leave you with a sample of a six part series on philosophy presented by philosopher Alain de Botton, featuring six thinkers and their ideas about the pursuit of happiness. This episode is about Schopenhauer.

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Click on the painting to discover the artist Bob Row and his gallery of portraits :)

You can also read this very good article about Schopenhauer and happiness.

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Where is happiness when it hurts?

by Joanna on 27/08/2009

“Writing from a moment of deep sorrow.

Tonight, I am alone in Spain. I feel lost. A dear friend touched a very ancient wound. I thought it was a cleared matter, a souvenir. But set the décor, rerun the script and bad memories come haunting you. You are only a nutshell on a furious ocean.

Where is happiness in those moments?

How can someone who is writing about happiness and living it everyday can make such a deep dip? I feel like a frog with my swollen eyes. Coldplay is signing melancholic songs for me, only for me. Far from everybody, I am a lonely soul. So where is happiness when my heart feels it has been left on the side of the road?

“If you ever feel neglected

If you think that all is lost

I’ll be counting up my demons”

It’s not the first time that the same demons come knocking so what is the way to go?

First, there was rage. It took over me. I was screaming, walking all over. I could have broken everything in the flat. Rage, what a curious emotion. Rage like a feeling of omnipotence. Rage, taking back the control over matter when you are totally losing it.

Second, there was self-pity. Why, why, why me?

Third, there was the need to run away. Fourth, fifth… just because the situation, the people touched a painful spot. I thought all this was far behind. What a surprise!

That’s where happiness lies: the truth. Oh yes, I wish I could be way ahead on the road but I still have some undone business to take care of. I have no clue on how to get this past me but I know that if I don’t change my methods of coping, it will rise again. It’s with a swollen heart that I wish I will get to a place of peace to talk to my friend. I know that in these moments you can be quickly overtaken by that suffering voice.

Happiness can’t ignore suffering just like with those kids in the japanese school.

I can’t hide or avoid. There are places, moments in this life that make me question the foundations of my happiness. It seems so clear and easy and suddenly concepts are shadowed by fierce emotions. But even then I can still see the shiny person within who is now coming back to the surface.

A happy life is not a life free of pain

The next day coincidences started to knock at my door again as if life was winking at me and a new door opened. I learned a lot from that moment of despair and how your mind can focus on details to match with your internal scenario. In a world where communication is a central matter, I realize that mine shuts down in crucial moments, only to push myself in recurring stories.

I wanted to share that moment because happiness seems so obvious to me but that little shot reminded me that it will always be an ongoing process.

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Is happiness dull?

by Joanna on 07/05/2009

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.
Can we be mistaken on the appearance of happiness?

First, what is the definition of Happiness?
In an online dictionary, that’s what you find:
“hap·py
1. Characterized by good luck; fortunate.
2. Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy.
3. Being especially well-adapted; felicitous: a happy turn of phrase.
4. Cheerful; willing: happy to help.”

Just like in french, the word comes from good fortune. Happiness comes from luck?! Is a happy guy, a lucky guy that has everything going his way?

According to Dr. Seligman, founder of positive psychology, happiness is made up of three segments:

1. Positive Emotion or experiencing pleasure.
2. Engagement in life or losing oneself in meaningful activities.
3. Meaningfulness or participating in meaningful activities.

Activities! That doesn’t seem dull.

Have a look at the wikipedia page on happiness and you realize that, even though happiness is a common human theme, we didn’t come to a unified definition yet.
How can we achieve happiness if we are not able to define it, if we don’t know what it looks like?
Could happiness seem dull from the outside? May be we judge of our happiness with a twisted set of believes.

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