{"id":4140,"date":"2019-12-23T07:02:50","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T11:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=4140"},"modified":"2019-12-23T07:02:50","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T11:02:50","slug":"sunday-walk-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=4140","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Walk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Missed the F-16s that were over the city on their way to the Eagles game. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was thinking a lot about this article<\/a> as I was walking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the truth is that the longer I have lived, and the shorter my future, the less pursuing I have done. Some of this may come from a peculiarly Irish positive pessimism \u2014 be happy, things will get worse \u2014 more of it from the history of disappointment all artists know and the rest from a remnant Catholic guilt that says you don\u2019t deserve happiness anyway. The point is, in my case, happiness seemed a thing that could not be pursued, only realized and chosen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the ending of the article: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI mean, what do you do to be happy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question was a novelty to him and he considered it from all sides before answering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I want a holiday,\u201d he said at last, \u201cI go over the road as far as the meadow. I go in there, take off my jacket, and lay down on it. I watch the world turning for a bit, with me still in it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smiled then, and held me in his blue Atlantic eyes, full of the ordinary wisdom of a well-lived life, a wisdom that saw the many failings of the world but our still breathing and dreaming in it, and with a conclusive nod that defeated all arguments said, \u201cThat\u2019s happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was thinking a lot about this article as I was walking. But the truth is that the longer I have lived, and the shorter my future, the less pursuing I have done. Some of this may come from a peculiarly Irish positive pessimism \u2014 be happy, things will get worse \u2014 more of it … Continue reading Sunday Walk<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-of-note","category-walking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-14M","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4141,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4140\/revisions\/4141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}