Give a man a thing
And he will use it
Give a man a use
And he’ll need to find a thing.
Find a man a thing
And he will be happy
Teach a man to give
And you’ll get yourself a thing.
Spread some happiness, I am beginning to doubt it’s existence.
The man next to me on the train, who looks a lot like Gareth from the office, is flicking open and close what looks to be some kind of fold away utility cutlery.
Fork, Spoon, Fork, Spoon, Fork, Spoon, Fork…
That is really sad. 
This has made me profoundly happy. I’d say your work here is done.
Happiness is a choice.
As don Miguel Ruiz would say, “If you’re not happy, you’re stupid.”
It’s not that simple.
For the sake of an interesting discussion, it is customary to elaborate on your pithy but somewhat uninformative statement:p
If I were you, I’d be happy it’s fork, spoon. It could have been knife, knife, knife, knife 
It was probably just his way of crying out for help.
Dude wants a spork.
tobbogonist:
Is that your poem?
I really like it
Beautiful in its simplicity.
A simple idea, but yes, it requires a lot of background information, and belief in yourself, to make it actually effective. The better you get at understanding how you can be happy, the simpler it is.
One of my favorite moments in the movie WALL-E is where he gets confused trying to put the spork he found into the correct spot in his organizer.
BTW, I thought that poem was great also. 
Do you prefer to be called SwamiJi?
People ask WHY I am uncycling. I say because it is fun and makes me happy. I was trying to body surf in NC with friends and a young woman (30’s) asked what we were diving for. Someone responded that we weren’t diving, we were just a bunch of old people having fun. Do what makes you happy. Don’t think about your age.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
and for you, a memorable and historic first post 
In the past year, I went to a funeral for a person who committed suicide. This person was very smart. She was in a reputable medical school, and she was the top of her class… she was not stupid. She tried to be happy, in many ways. Ways that many of us would have thought would guarantee happiness, but that was not the result for her.
I am also close friends to another person who has suffered many hospitalizations as a result of their mental struggles with being happy. I may not ever understand their mental disability and their struggles to be happy, but I have been very close to this person, and I do know that if it were simply a choice, they would not be struggling with being happy.
To say that happiness is simply a choice is to be ignorant of the reality of how some people work.
This thread is doing absolutely nothing to increase my total happiness in life.
I generally wouldn’t take that as a sign of intelligence (by my standards, anyway). Being the top of your class is usually some combination of motivation, lack of distractions, and knowing how to work the system. It seems kind of misguided, to me, but then again I’ve always cared more about learning than jumping through the education system’s hoops.
It depends on what exactly your goals are, I suppose.
And yes, there are a number of smart people who are miserable.
I have my ups and downs, and they mostly average out to neutral. I also don’t think I’d be justified in calling myself smart.
Edit because I accidentally typed “some a combination.”
When it comes to mental disorders/illness, you may be right about that. What works for most of us may be blocked by a chemical imbalance, or other malady that affects a person’s mental processes.
At STEP we work with a lot of people with varying forms of mental illness, combined with cognitive or other disabilities. For some, it’s a struggle just to get through the day and be functional; to discern the real world from the voices, or other issues people may be dealing with. It can be very tough.