Happiness, Part V

'There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others.'
--Anton Chekhov. You can review earlier ruminations on this topic here. And just for the sheer bloody hell of it, check out The Happiness Project's 8 tips for making yourself happier in the next hour. Special thanks to my omniverous pal Jeff Hess for pointing me toward that interesting tidbit. You can check out earlier mentions of JH here. But do also check out his blog as well. As for the immortal Chekhov--who has been dead for 104 years, but whose reputation rightly looms larger each year--you can learn anything you'd care to know about him at Paul Jones' Ibiblio here, and sample from a vast array of his translated work here. He famously observed that "if there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last," which has come to be seen as a pithy bromide about removing all extraneous details from a piece of writing. But I've always thought this lesser-known observation was perhaps his most memorable: "A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He is a man who has signed a contract with his conscience and his sense of duty."