life stages

I read the following somewhere (or maybe I saw it in a movie), and I really can't confirm this. John the Classics major is skeptical.

But apparently (or not so apparently), in ancient Athens, a boy was considered old enough to go to school when, being offered a coin and an apple, he'd choose the coin over the apple. The idea was that at this point in his life, he finally understood that the coin could buy multiple apples in the future; he was therefore mature enough to forgo immediate pleasure for greater future benefit (i.e. delayed gratification).

Presumably, girls never went to school because they never would choose the coin over the apple. Or maybe it was for some other reason, I forget :P

If only maturity at other stages in life were so easy to test.

gross

I still remember when I was little, and I had diarrhea, I would reassure myself by thinking: "There are a finite number of times in my life that this will happen to me. One down, X to go."  More recently, I've recalled hearing people say "this is my 3rd to last finals week, ever", etc. Does it help at all to know that the amount of suffering we will face in our lifetime is finite, but that the happiness we experience now is only a shadow of what's to come?

Somewhat of a tangent, but I've always wondered whether it should be called number 1.5 (because it's a cross between number 1 and number 2), or number 3 (because it's the sum of number 1 and number 2).

happiness

You know, someone once told me that if there's one thing worth pursuing, it's your own happiness (in whatever form that may come). I thought that was incredibly profound. People who pursue money are often unhappy after becoming rich. The same could be said of people who pursue fame, education, etc. So shouldn't we pursuing that which makes us happiest?

Now, I find myself too easily caught up in the pursuit of my own happiness. I want to find a good fellowship next year, a good church, friends, etc. And when I think about it, I want these things to be happy? I need to remind myself that there is a reason that I am going to be where I am next year, and that my immediate happiness is secondary to that (even though I don't know what that is)?.

This is not to say that the pursuit of happiness is bad. But maybe some qualification is necessary?

On a side note, Obama's been trying to regulate executive pay at financial firms in order to reward long-term (rather than short-term) performance. People argue that executives deserve what they're paid based on their performance, but the incentives are currently such that short-term (and unsustainable) gains are preferred. I have this image in my mind (that could be totally off) of a cross between the St. Petersburg paradox and Russian Roulette. Anyway, whether Obama is going about this in the right way is debatable. But I feel that there's an analogy to be drawn to the pursuit of short-term (unsustainable) happiness vs. long-term happiness.