Joy

Psalm 118:24 (NLT)
This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Happiness Is A Warm Puppy

I am well aware that most of my blogs lately have been a bit 'heavy' so I thought I would devote a blog or two to some alternative sources of wisdom that I use from time to time. Today features the collected works of Charles Schulz.

'Sparky' Schulz is no longer with us now, but his work lives on. His work as an art teacher and on a Christian comic magazine eventually led him to regular work cartooning for The Saturday Evening Post. His first regular strip was called "Li'l Folks". first published in 1947, and featuring a character called Charlie Brown, and a dog which had yet to be named. The strip was dropped in 1950, however United Feature Syndicate were approached with some of his best strips from 'Li'l Folks', and 'Peanuts' made its first appearance on 2nd October 1950.

'Peanuts' became one of the most popular comic strips of all time, and Schulz continued with the strip until just before his death in 2000, aged 77. Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Peppermint Patty and the others have featured in animated shows of their own. And that little dog (Snoopy, pictured at the top of this feature) is perhaps the best known of the group, recognisable the world over. Amongst my collection of 'Peanuts' memorabilia I have a large book of the strips, and regularly read through these. Some quotations:

"It was a dark and stormy night..." (the opening line of the novel Snoopy is forever starting. It's actually a quotation from Edward Bulwer-Lytton.)

Snoopy's oft-repeated line: "Curse you, Red Baron!"

Woodstock's oft-repeated line: "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The Pursuit Of Happiness

After reflecting for most of the day on how I felt both emotionally and physically (I didn't feel well but still went to work), I decided to focus tonight on Happiness. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness " is one of the most famous phrases in the United States Declaration of Independence. These three aspects are listed among the "inalienable rights" of man. So what is this happiness that we’re supposedly all pursuing…

Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) – "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965) – "Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892) – "The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions."
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948) – "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Meher Baba (1894-1969) - "Don't worry, be happy" (later used by Bobby McFerrin in a song, 1988, a favourite of mine)

"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is a song by The Beatles featured on The White Album. It’s a parody of "Happiness is a Warm Puppy," a Peanuts book written by Charles Schulz in 1962. I'm more familiar with the works of Schulz than that of the Fab Four, but that's just me. And finally, Happy is of course one of the dwarfs in the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

More later…