Posted on 01/07/2024 10:44:22 AM PST by aspasia
Many parents put a lot of focus into teaching their kids about cleaning their rooms, acting responsibly and doing homework. These things are important, but there’s one thing that many of us are completely forgetting about: how to enjoy life.
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Children can easily get the wrong message about happiness In my experience, people are happiest when their life includes some type of meaningful, productive activity. Unfortunately, we are constantly being bombarded with the message that happiness comes from consumption.
When advertisers tell us to “treat” ourselves to their products, they are trying to make us believe that buying things is the ultimate reward, that we will be happy only if we buy a fancier car or a bigger house.
How do you fight back? Don’t make it a habit to take your children to stores where they can go running around saying “I want this” and “I want that.”
Even if your child isn’t directly exposed to a lot of advertising, they may be exposed to the culture that this advertising has created. Their friend shows them some incredible new toy they got that the friend will play with for the next week until they get another toy, for example, or they attend a birthday party at which a friend is showered with gifts.
The happiest kids value experiences over material things Don’t encourage your child to believe that having things brings happiness by giving them too many gifts.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
“Ask Jesus into your heart.”
“He loves you and will always be with you, help you and take care of you.”
Studies have show that the LACK of finances or money is a DISSATISFIER (makes sense) BUT HAVING MONEY is NOT a satisfier (one less dissatisfaction, but go elsewhere for satisfaction).
Happiness is your number of followers on TikTok.
Throw into the mix the fact that children today are bombarded with bad news. Racism is everywhere! Climate Change is going to destroy the Earth!
Heck, when I was a kid my biggest worry was…well, nothing. I had an old but decent baseball glove, and mom always had a nice meal ready. Good times.
Maybe they had Madonna's material girl in mind and not Jesus.
Life is very complex today and hits kids with problems their own parents never see coming. Parents need to lead by example and involve their kids in adult problem-solving, time and resource managent, and independent living ASAP. However technologically advanced and “civilized” it seems to be (or did), it’s still a wild world and parents need to prepare their kids to live in it.
I know. It doesn’t help that many adults in their 30’s haven’t progressed developmentally out of their teens yet.
I’d like to see people embrace humility.
A lot of people are walking through life as if they are the superstar at the heart of everyone’s big movie. It’s all about them. You need to shut up — because only my opinion matters. I am always right. You are always wrong. Pay attention to me because I am a very important person.
Heck, when I was a kid my biggest worry was…well, nothing.
We were supposed to be in fear that the world would end with a nuclear war.
I didn’t really thing about it that much, to be honest.
More worried about getting beat up by some bully or the other kids finding out something hugely embarrassing about me or my family.
But kids? Very few kids really embrace the hard stuff. It can be had vicariously for free.
A luxurious age is a difficult age.
Dialectic materialism. Yup, good old Marx, variations spread through the Frankfurt School, the French "intellectuals" and into American classrooms for decades.
Consume. Material. It is the world and the worldview, and today's corporations and politicians and "thinkers" think consumption and consumables and consuming and....
Alongside with consumption is 'discardability'. Fetuses can be discarded. Merit can be discarded. Accomplishment can be discarded. Just get the latest device, watch the latest entertainment, protest the latest target. Material.
In a world without God, there are gods and they are demanding the due daily.
There number 1 thing is nonsense.
Hard work
Honesty
Learning
Politeness
God
Independence
“enjoy life???” That’s all they are learning.
Allow me to recommend learning to read Shakespeare. Shakespeare had a keen insight into the dark side of human nature. If you read Shakespeare with the understanding that you, too, are Macbeth . . .
> We were supposed to be in fear that the world would end with a nuclear war. <
Yes. During the Cuban Missile Crisis I was in grade school. We’d have air raid drills. As I recall, that never bothered me. And after the Crisis was over nothing more was said about it, or about nuclear war in general.
> More worried about getting beat up by some bully… <
Yes. I had a bit of trouble with a bully in middle school. Then it just stopped. Only later did I find out why. My schoolmates were mainly like me. Grandkids of immigrants from Eastern Europe. We had only two black kids in my grade level.
Well, these two black kids took the bully aside, and told him to lay off or they’d beat the crap out of him.
Interesting, eh?
But come to think of it, humility is not exactly happiness inducing. As they say, “the truth hurts.”
Sorry, what is nonsense?
I know a guy that is pretty well known that teaches a class at UCLA on “How to be Happy”, Yes I am serious. Anyway I have always been pretty much the happiest person on the planet every day, just because I woke up!!. So he asks me straight up, why are always so happy. I responded immediately with, I don’t watch Television or partake in anything involving the Entertainment industry, I’m not an actor and am not trying to become one, and those 2 things appear to me as the only reason to ever complain about life, and after a couple near death experiences, you realize that life is short and enjoy everyday as if it’s your last.
Get you children As far away from the entertainment industry as possible. They will be your most formidable enemy.
Finding satisfaction in a well lived life is the key. Everything you wrote is part of a w3ll lived life.
It's very hard to buy a car.
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