Monday Muse: Dr. Frankl on Suffering

An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature.  But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces...If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.  Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.  Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.  The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity--even under the most difficult circumstances--to add a deeper meaning to his life.

-Dr. Viktor E. Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning

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Monday Muse: My Cookie Recipe for Happiness and Baking with Chef Ryan

After watching Hector and the Search for Happiness (last week's Monday Muse) I had this idea that the pathway to happiness is a lot like a cookie recipe (stay with me on this one, it's gonna be one long metaphor here).  Everyone has their own favorite cookie recipe but all cookie recipes have similar base ingredients like flour, butter, sugar, eggs etc.  And in much the same way, everyone's recipe for happiness is different but with similar foundations (like Maslow's hierarchy of needs).  So here is my personal recipe for happiness.  

5 cups of basic needs: physiological needs (food, water, shelter) and security (living in a safe country and a safe neighborhood)

4 cups of quality friends and family

4 cups of a happy marriage

4 cups of financial security (this may seem high to some, but I'm just being honest here.  I learned in my marketing class that income dictates needs, and I have grown accustomed to certain needs.  For example wifi, LTE, and an iPhone and personal laptop have become needs).

4 cups of finding my element/the thing that gives me "Flow".  For a long time I had trouble finding this ephemeral "flow".  I was bored at my job and bored at home, and thus spent my time passively consuming (food, tv, material items, you name it).  Once I quit my job (and after a prolonged period of consuming--what can I say, old habits die hard), I've finally found my flow in producing (taking pictures, writing this blog, food and drink recipes, etc.). Now there's not enough time in the day to do all the things I want to accomplish.

3 cups of learning.  I just love learning, and do especially well in school-type environments (aka I'm a nerd) but I'm also learning the art of self-teaching (with the internet as my textbook).  Right now I'm learning all I can about marketing and specifically digital marketing, which I'm finding is the art/science of cutting through the daily internet noise so that your target audience can hear you (*wave* hello target audience!).

3 cups of physical activity.  For me this is mostly running and yoga.  For a while I neglected this part of my life and though I wasn't unhappy without it, my moods tended to stay at a lower baseline level.  Physical activity helps me clear my head and is a form of meditation.  Also it allows me to fully enjoy the next ingredient:

2 cups of delicious mouth-watering food (of all kinds).  I live to eat.

2 cups of meditation/a gratitude practice.  I also try to meditate frequently.  I find that by meditating I can bring my focus back to the present, it allows me to step away from my "monkey mind", and I'm grateful for more things in my life {Reading 10% Happier by Dan Harris helped me start my meditation practice.  I really like this book.}

3 cups of helping others/of being useful to people/making contributions to the world around you.

Season with large quantities of free time and a sprinkling of travel and a dash of good music.

Bake in good vibes/luck and at a low temperature.

Was that too cheesy for ya?  Well sometimes we all need a little cheese, or at least cookies.  And if you were expecting an actual recipe with this post, here is my recipe for my favorite chocolate chip cookies (I like mine soft but not too doughy) {found on Allrecipes 6 years ago}.  

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F, line cookie sheet with parchment paper

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt

Cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar.  Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk.  Mix in sifted ingredients until just blended.  Stir in the chocolate chips by hand.

Drop 1/4 cup of cookie dough onto cooke sheets about 3 inches apart.

Bake for 15 minutes or until the edges are lightly toasted.  Let it cool (or don't and then burn your mouth like I do).

And to showcase my point of different cookie recipes for different people, here is the recipe to Chef Ryan's cranberry oatmeal cookie (pictured above){adapted from Martha Stewart}:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cups packed light-brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, room temp

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup wheat germ

1 and 1/2 cups of dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, line cookie sheet with parchment paper

Cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar (if using a mixer, mix on medium high).  Beat in the vanilla and eggs (on high).  Mix in sifted ingredients until just blended.  Stir in the chocolate chips by hand.

Sift together the flour, rolled oats, baking powder, baking soda, and wheat germ.  Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix on low for 10-15 seconds.  Stir in your cranberries.

Drop 1/4 cup of cookie dough onto cooke sheets about 4 inches apart.

Bake for 14-18 minutes or until the edges are lightly toasted.  Rotate rack half-way through for even baking.  Let it cool and store in air tight container for up to a week.

Monday Muse: Peter Thiel on School

Photos from here

"More than anything else, competition is an ideology--the ideology-- that pervades our society and distorts our thinking. We preach competition, internalize it's necessity, and enact it's commandments; and as a result, we trap ourselves within it--even though the more we compete, the less we gain. This is a simple truth, but we've all been trained to ignore it. Our educational system both drives and reflects our obsession with competition. Grades themselves allow precise measurement of each student's competitiveness; pupils with the highest marks receive status and credentials. We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective of individual talents and preferences. Students who don't learn best by sitting still at a desk are made to feel somehow inferior, while students who excel on conventional measures like tests and a assignments end up defining their identities in terms of this weirdly contrived academic parallel reality. And it gets worse as students ascend to higher levels of the tournament. Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them... For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?"

Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

By Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

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