Arthur C. Brooks

Life is so boring when you're with yourself all day long.

It's like me, my roommate is me.

I mean, it's just like, it's just, we have this psychodrama.

Mother nature puts us into the psychodrama of the, you know, the intense scrutiny of ourselves.

And I understand why mother nature does that, but she doesn't care if we're happy at all.

She just wants us to survive and pass on our genes.

If you want to be happy, that's your business.

And one of the two best ways of doing that are looking upward in awe or looking outward to serve other people.

And that's a sense of transcendence is the I self looking out as opposed to the me self looking in.

So the way that you do that is I recommend that everybody start getting serious about a spiritual or at least philosophical practice.

Okay.

Yeah.

They find something else, but they get a lot more interested in spirituality and religion.

And part of that is when you're in your 20s and you're like, I don't know.

I mean, you taught me in Sunday school that there was a good God, a merciful God, but I'm looking around all these starving children.

So it's not consistent.

I don't quite buy it.

By the time you're in your 40s, you're like...

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense out there.

So I think I'm going to be okay with things not quite making sense because maybe I'm not the smartest person in the world.