Happiness

Here's a New York Times headline from Nov. 16, 2010:

When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays

The article goes on to say, basically, that people who focus on the task at hand are more likely to be happy. That when the mind strays, unhappiness can follow. Even people who think about pleasant activities when their minds wander are vulnerable to, if not unhappiness, then being less happy than those whose minds weren't wandering at all.
Furthermore, even enjoyable activities don't necessarily stop the mind from wandering, and the evidence indicates that a wandering mind causes unhappiness, as opposed to unhappiness causing a wandering mind.
When the researchers contacted people to determine their states of mind, people engaged in sex were happy, at least until the phone rang. Personal grooming, commuting and working ranked low on the list of happiness-producing activities. I can see that. I hate brushing my fucking teeth. I also commute too much, which can really suck.
But back to the matter at hand. The article contains a quote: “Life is not long,” Samuel Johnson said, “and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.” It contains a few other quotations, similar in nature. Reminds me of John Lennon's observation that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
I've conversed with therapists on the mind-wandering subject and self-talk. They both possess destructive capabilities. Positive self-talk requires so much effort after conditioning has instilled in one a proclivity to skew toward the negative. Like John Hiatt says, "It takes every drop of energy just to run my brain." So, then, the challenge lies in preventing the mind from wandering. I'm relatively ignorant when it comes to meditation, but it seems as if that's one of the objectives, to not think about anything. How do we do it, stop the mind from wandering? The more you think about keeping the mind from wandering, the more it wanders. The more it wanders, the more unhappy you potentially become. I don't know if people can learn to keep their minds from wandering. I think you can learn to cope more effectively when your mind does wander, but I have a natural predisposition to mind wandering. If I didn't, I guess I couldn't write any of this shit. I've long since resigned to being fucked when it comes to that.