It's an art......................

 

It’s very difficult to be very lazy. It takes a lot of imagination to do nothing and you have to be sufficiently self-confident not to have a bad conscience. You have to have a taste for life, so that every minute is complete in itself and so you don’t have to keep saying ‘I’ve done this or that.’ You need strong nerves to do nothing. Being lazy also means that other people’s opinions don’t matter. Nor does the idea of always having to prove yourself.

-Françoise Sagan, as quoted here

Really look.......................

 

3.  Look beneath the surface:  never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six

clumsy........................

 It also seems that, where a mass movement can either persuade or coerce, it usually chooses the latter.  Persuasion is clumsy and its result uncertain.

-Eric Hoffer

I'm thinking the first.....................

 .............will be much easier than the second and third:

We need to eliminate the Federal Reserve, and cause Congress and the Executive Branch to take responsibility for their failed policies.

-David Merkel, from this post

The Second Amendment and "gun control".......

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

On December 15, 1791 the Bill of Rights (the given name for the first ten amendments to the Constitution) was ratified.  Many a debate has been had over the interesting way the Second Amendment was worded.  We are in the midst of another one.

Seems from here that the Framers of the Constitution built into their system the solution to gun control.  Don't like what the Second Amendment offers you?  Get Congress to approve the wording of a new amendment and have 75% of the state legislatures ratify it.  

Difficult to craft an amendment that a vast majority of the citizens and states of the U. S. of A. will support?   Absolutely.  So do the hard work anyway.  It is the only way.

Look.....................

3.  Look beneath the surface:  never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.

-Marcus Aurelius,   Meditations, Book Six

If only this were true...................

". . . the first rule is simple: it should be as simple to fix an error as it is to make one."

-Seth Godin, from here

On happiness.........................

When Epicurus defined happiness as the supreme good, he warned his disciples that it is hard work to be happy.  Material achievements alone will not satisfy us for long.  Indeed, the blind pursuit of money, fame, and pleasure will only make us miserable.  Epicurus recommended, for example, to eat and drink in moderation, and to curb one's sexual appetites.  In the long run, deep friendship will make us more content than a frenzied orgy.  Epicurus outlined an entire ethic of dos and don'ts to guide people along the treacherous path to happiness.
     Epicurus was apparently on to something.  Being happy doesn't come easy.  Despite out unprecedented achievements in the past few decades, it is far from obvious that contemporary people are significantly more satisfied than their ancestors in bygone years.

-Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus:  A Brief History of Tomorrow