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George Lucas on Happiness

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 11:08 PM

Found a very inspirational video of George Lucas giving a talk on his success, and more importantly his take on "happiness". I couldn't find a transcript of his talk anywhere on the internet. So I attempted to transcribe the part of his talk on "happiness" below:

Happiness is pleasure and happiness is joy. It can be either one, you add them up and it can be the uber category of happiness. Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month. And it peaks and it goes down. It peaks very high. But the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. It's like drugs, you have to keep doing it because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, weather you're shopping, or weather you're engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it. On the other hand is joy and joy is the thing that doesn't go as high as pleasure, in terms of your emotional reaction. But it stays with you. Joy is something you can recall, pleasure you can't. So the secret is that even though it's not as intense as pleasure the joy will last you a lot longer. And people who get the pleasure they keep saying "well if can just get richer and get more cars." You'll never re-live the moment you got your first car, that's it that's the highest peak. Yes, you could get three ferrari's and a new gulf stream jet and maybe you'll get close. But, you have to keep going and eventually you'll run out. And you just can't do it, it doesn't work. If you're trying to sustain that level of peak pleasure, you're doomed. It's a very american idea, but it just can't happen. You just let it go. Peak .. break .. pleasure is fun it's great, but you can't keep it going forever. Just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone, and maybe again it'll come back and you'll get to enjoy it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about your pleasure, it's about you. It's a selfish self-centered emotion, that's created by self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion, joy is giving yourself to somebody else or something else. And it's the kind of thing that is in it's subtly and lowness more powerful than pleasure. If you get hung up on pleasure you're doomed. If you pursue joy you will find everlasting happiness.