Q&A
1. Why happiness is a problem?
The premise that happiness can be worked for and earned and achieved is totally wrong.Happiness is not a solvable equation.
2. Why the author invented disappointment panda? What is it for?
The greatest truths in life are usually the most unpleasant to hear. Disappointment panda serves the function of telling us the harsh truth that they needed to hear but didn’t want to accept.
3. What is the role that emotions play in our life? Why they are overrated?
Emotions, serving as feedback, help us live and reproduce a little bit better. Negative emotions are a call to action while the positive emotions are rewards for taking the proper action. Emotions are part of the equation of our lives, but not the entire equation. We shouldn’t always trust our own emotions because emotions never last. We always base the entire life on the emotions without the aid of reason to keep it in line.
4. Why you don’t have chiseled abs?(if you do have, how did you make it?)
Just like the author, I always want the reward and not the struggle. I want the result and not the process. I am looking forward to the victory without any efforts and struggles.W
感想
本章作者陈述了以下的观点:
1. 生活就是一种受苦。正是由于感知痛苦的能力让我们人类生存、创新。
2. 人生是不断出现问题，不断解决问题的过程。幸福的根源在于享受解决问题。
3. 情感作为一种反思让我们不断进步，不断完善。可我们却往往忽视一个事实，情感无法持续，我们的决定不能只建立在个人的好恶之上。
4. 通往幸福人生的道路必然充满着荆棘。我们只喜欢享受结果，却从不希望解决问题。定义幸福的不是虚幻的结果而是我们为梦想付出的努力
The pain and loss are inevitable and we should let go of trying to resist them.
True happiness occurs when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
Who you are is defined by what you are willing to struggle for .
很喜欢作者的语言，一些比喻和排比的使用让枯燥的道理栩栩如生。
作者描述disappointment panda时He’d be the proverbial vegetables to our mental diet of junk food.
作者在描述自己向成为一个摇滚歌手的梦想时，it’s a mountain of dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what it took me a long time to discover is that I didn’t like climb much. I just liked to imagine summit.
People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who run triathlons and have chiseled abs and can bench-press a small house. People enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who fly to the top of it. People who enjoy stress and uncertainties of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.
Our struggles determine our successes. Our problems birth our happiness, along with slightly better, slightly upgraded problems.
词汇
1. People who abstain from worldly pleasures suffer because of their abstention.
Abstain:动词，自制、戒除、节制；同义词refrain, restrain 用法相似abstain from sth/doing sth.
Abstention:名词，自制、戒除、节制
2. Many people are taught to represstheir emotions for various personal,social, or cultural reasons—particularly negative emotions.
Repress:动词 抑制压制克制（情绪情感）
He could hardly repress his tears.
3. Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change.
Nudge:轻推
He nudged me to tell me someone passing
4. Numb the pain of our problems
Numb:v使麻木
Numb ourselves
5. Joy doesn’t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows
Sprout out of破土而生
Hardly anything can grow there due to the impossibly cold climate and any plant life that manages to sprout up out of the ground is rare and quite determined
6. Despite my fantasizing about this for over half my lifetime, the reality never came to fruition.
Come to fruition:成为事实
