Well, it's been over a year since our last episode! As a COVID-19 pandemic project, sticking to a consistent publishing schedule for this podcast has been tough. But we've always said that even if our focus on it fades and drifts, we'll continue putting out content as long as we have something to say.

So, we threw this episode together on New Year's Eve to at least say that we put out one episode in 2024. Enjoy our lessons, observations, and reflections on 2024, which includes topics we hope to cover over a few episodes in 2025.

We talk about the value of simplicity, gratitude prayers, learning to surrender, knowledge vs wisdom, and the meaning crisis in our culture and why there are so many zombie movies/TV shows.

"It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple." —Rabindranath Tagore

• [01:48] Gratitude practice/prayer
• [06:16] Earning your simplicity
• [08:52] The value of surrender
• [18:04] What is wisdom?
• [22:03] Meaning of life vs. meaning in life
• [39:24] The Greek word tonos and embracing healthy tension
• [45:19] Thoughts on toxic compassion

• Overcoming Nihilism (My 2022 article)
• Zombies in Western Culture A Twenty-First Century Crisis by John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, and Filip Miscevic

You can always support us by leaving a rating or review in your podcasting app. You can also share our episodes with friends on social media.

But it does take a lot of time to put together a podcast, maintain a website, and write new content every week. So if you would like to support us in a more substantial way, consider making a donation through the PayPal buttons on our website:

https://exploringkodawari.blog/donation/

• Our Website/Blog
• Newsletter
• Twitter: @EKodawari
• Instagram: @exploringkodawari
• Facebook: facebook.com/ExploringKodawari

In this episode—especially since it has been so long since our last one—we decided to revisit the concept of kodawari and how it has changed for us over the three years of doing this podcast/blog.

Over time we encounter more knowledge and have more life experiences. And as we attempt to integrate those into a coherent life philosophy, our ideas about life change and update. I believe we have a duty to regularly bring a beginner's mind to our ideas so that we can "rediscover" them with novelty.

There is something cyclic to the way that we descend into a more chaotic state of confusion and then emerge from it by finding once again our deep truths with freshness in the present moment. This cyclic process can subtly or drastically update our ideas, making them more personal, genuine, valuable, and "true".

So since we are very different people than when we started the podcast three years ago, we felt it would be good to revisit the meaning of kodawari with fresh eyes. We especially lean into the uncompromising element of kodawari and why our society needs more "skillful inflexibility" to continue functioning.

• [04:36] Why are we revisiting the meaning of kodawari?
• [09:09] How has kodawari changed for us?
• [12:12] What are we uncompromising about?
• [20:41] Rethinking how perfection fits into kodawari
• [23:11] Why humility is crucial
• [26:32] Limitations of the intellect and Chekhov’s The Seagull
• [32:59] Our official 2023 definition of kodawari

• First podcast episode on kodawari
• Article: What is Kodawari?
• Japanese Ramen’s Kodawari
• The Japanese philosophy of "Kodawari"
• Chekhov’s The Seagull
• A Rabbi, a Priest, and an Atheist Smoke Weed Together

You can always support us by leaving a rating or review in your podcasting app. You can also share our episodes with friends on social media.

But it does take a lot of time to put together a podcast, maintain a website, and write new content every week. So if you would like to support us in a more substantial way, consider making a donation through the PayPal buttons on our website:

https://exploringkodawari.blog/donation/

• Our Website/Blog
• Newsletter
• Twitter: @EKodawari
• Instagram: @exploringkodawari
• Facebook: facebook.com/ExploringKodawari

The topic of this episode is happiness and hedonic adaptation, otherwise known as the hedonic treadmill. Hedonic adaptation is a phenomenon of our psychology and physiology that keeps us at a stable level of happiness over time. This adaptation is like an immune system that desensitizes us in relation to negative and positive experiences, making us continually find our happiness baseline.

The concept of hedonic adaptation dates back to a 1971 paper by Philip Brickman and Donald T. Campbell called "Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society", and it was made even more famous in a 1978 study called "Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?" The study compared lottery winners and paraplegics with a control group to show that both groups eventually adjusted and returned to a baseline of happiness.

The hedonic treadmill, or happiness treadmill, is named as such because no matter how much you chase happiness and increase it in the short term, you end up in the same place continually chasing. The hedonic pathways in our brains become desensitized to pleasurable things that we encounter regularly. So after big life events like winning the lottery, getting a job promotion, getting married, etc, we will tend to settle back to our happiness set point.

Aside from the science of hedonic adaptation, we also talked about the philosophy of happiness and whether it is a good goal in life. How is happiness different from words like joy, pleasure, tranquility, peacefulness, excitement, satisfaction, content, cheerful, or well-being?

Is happiness something we get from the external world or does it come from within? Do we seek happiness or are we really running away from suffering? And what is the difference between a meaningful life and a happy life?

Lastly, we talked about ways to overcome hedonic adaptation so that we do not continually get caught in the same traps throughout life. Routines such as a dopamine detox and spiritual practices like gratitude and Beginner's Mind are all ways to avoid getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill.

• [06:08] What is happiness?
• [10:05] What is the difference between happiness and well-being?
• [15:28] Dopamine
• [27:57] What is hedonic adaptation?
• [35:14] Hedonic adaptation towards negative phenomena
• [39:23] How to combat the hedonic treadmill
• [50:40] Why negative emotions are necessary

• A French poet’s beautiful advice on how to be happy (Luke's Medium article)
• Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative? P Brickman, D Coates, R Janoff-Bulman
• Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill
• Beyond the Hedonic Treadmill: Revising the Adaptation Theory of Well-Being
• How Does Hedonic Adaptation Affect the Pursuit of Happiness? - with Joe Gladstone

You can always...