Personal current situation plus book review

I am very glad to get an interview in the Commerical Radio HK. To be honest I think it is an important opportunity to develop my career in boardcast media, and to a person who is interested in almost everything the invitation of an interview is very tempting. Unfortunately a night before I got a call from the Associated Press Television Network that they decide to give me this job offer as a junior producer, so I am sorry to even think about my giving up. However, we never know the future.

So the above is my personal situation at the moment, which is quite trivial here indeed.

Today I finished reading a book, The Conquest of Happiness by Russell Bertrand. As I always say, the writer is my favourite and this book is definitely worth to have a look.

The master of philosophy divided the book into two parts to analyse the causes of unhappiness and happiness. I think the main point of this book is to remind people of human being very trivial in the universe and thereafter we should not be self-centred. There are many ways to build up our happiness, and the most important thing to do is to develop as many interests and hobbies as possible. This is easy to understand as the more interests we have, the easier we get the way to zest. When we are in troubles that cannot be solved instantly, Bertrand suggested we should put them aside and do some other stuff before we go back. His supporting is that our subconsious will do the job. If we concentrate at a thing for too long the efficiency will decline. Thus we should let it go for a while before we pick it up again. We may even get a better result afterwards, and certainly we will not make ourselves overstressed.

I may not agree with everything in the book, as it was written many decades ago. For instance, the role of woman in the society is vastly different from Bertrand's time, so some of the analyses are not quite appropriate in my point of view. However some of the words he spoke of deserve to put into consideration, and here are something I really want to share:

"Whatever we may wish to think, we are creatures of Earth; our life is part of the life of the Earth, and we draw our nourishment from it just as the plants and animals do."

"Our doings are not so important as we naturally suppose; our successes and failures do not after all matter very much. Even great sorrows can be survived; troubles which seem as if they must put an end to happiness for life fade with the lapse of time until it becomes almost impossible to remember their poignancy. But over and above these self-centred considerations is the fact that one's ego is no very large part of the world."

"The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give."

"Perhaps when biochemistry has made further advances we shall be able to take tablets that will ensure our feeling an interest in everything, but until that day comes we are compelled to depend upon common-sense observation of life to judge what are the causes that enable some men to take an interest in everything, while compelling others to take an interest in nothing."

"I should seek to make young people vividly aware of the past, vividly realising that the future of man will in all likelihood be immeasurably longer than his past, profoundly conscious of the minuteness of the planet upon which we live and of the fact that life on this planet is only a temporary incident;..."

"The man capable of greatness of soul will open wide the windows of his mind, letting the winds blow freely upon it from every portion of the universe. He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realising the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realise also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains. And he will see that the man whose mind mirrors the world becomes in a sense as great as the world. In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man."

"Grief is unavoidable and must be expected, but everything that can be done should be done to minimise it."

Personally I enjoy most of the happinesses mentioned in the book. For some reason I do not want to say it is because of my intelligence or some sort of cool reasons. Instead I would say I am lucky enough to be born in this world to experience all I have gone through which gives my current dispositions. Thanks to my previous institutions and my parents, I have the pleasures to learn how to enjoy what I possess.

For the last quote I put, I would say I also expect grief. However sometimes I choose to feel its flow upon my heart softly as I know I'll be fine very soon. It is not only about the very most effort we should put to minimise the grief, but we have to forgive ourselves and feel how this emotion interacts with our own impersonally. I believe it helps to understand ourselves and strengthen ourselves. However I am not to criticise anything and as I always say I always admire the way Bertrand wrote and thought. This is just the personal preference to make a conquest of happiness.