Being happy has nothing to do with money (or drugs) | Nick Offerman | Big Think

Being happy has nothing to do with money (or drugs)

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You have to pursue a discipline of one form or another to be happy in your life, says Nick Offerman as he explains his life's philosophy and why he loves woodworking. Just don't chase after perfection and learn to love mistakes. He also shares how his life experiences shaped him, how he grew up, and his passion for making ukuleles.

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NICK OFFERMAN:

Nick Offerman is an actor, writer and woodworker, best known as the character of Ron Swanson on NBC's hit comedy series Parks and Recreation. His long list of film credits also includes The Kings of Summer, 21 Jump Street, Smashed, and Sin City.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Nick Offerman: Well I often espouse a general philosophy in my life of pursuing a discipline of one sort or another. But it’s not to ever approach any level of perfection. You start, you go in knowing that as human beings we never can achieve perfection, and so I feel like mastery of any skill or art form really more involves becoming much better at covering your mistakes. But no matter how much of a virtuoso a person becomes I feel like if they’re still in the mentality of a student pursuing their discipline then they’ll never finish ripping out a Beethoven symphony or playing a game of basketball and say, “There, I’ve done it. That was the perfect rendition.” Instead what keeps us living and what keeps me vitally engaged is a constant pursuit of betterment. So I gave up on perfect a long time ago, and now I’m just chasing halfway decent.

Part of this philosophy I’m talking about came to me naturally. I grew up in a family out in the country in Illinois. Both my mom and dad grew up on farms. I grew up working on my mom’s family’s farms. And so we were very frugal. It was very Little House on the Prairie in the 70s and 80s which means we had a television but we were still raising as much garden as we could and everything – we got this free farmhouse in exchange – my dad had to build some cabinets for this farmer and we hired a guy to roll this house six miles and then we spent our lives there improving it. We painted it every couple of years; we built a little barn.

And so I don’t know, just by naturally learning to enrich in my own life through my parent’s activities—I complained about it a lot. I wasn’t a 12 year old saying, “Hey dad, is there something I can dig up for you this weekend?” I was griping like any kid! I wanted to stay in and watch cartoons, and so we would work out a deal.

And the thing that I see as a major difference between my childhood and a lot of society today is that we’ve become so good at comforting ourselves. Consumer luxury has become sort of a given. In most walks of life in this country you can choose to live a life of ease where you never have to really try very hard. You can cruise through school as long as you get passing grades. You can get some job with which you can cover your living expenses and that allows you to just watch TV, play video games, to amuse yourself, to engage in leisure all of the time you’re not earning your living. And to a certain frame of mind that might sound attractive. But I’ve kind of tried it at times. A lot of marijuana was also involved in my particular formula, and I quickly learned that it’s depressing.

I don’t know, for me I quickly thought, “What are you doing with your life? Are you just going to watch cool movies… and then die?” Again to a certain part of the id I think that sounds like a great idea. “Let’s just hang out and watch The Big Lebowski over and over.” But for me thankfully because of my chemistry I came to understand that even if I wasn’t succeeding, even if I was making woodworking projects in an alley in Los Angeles 25 years ago, I was improving.

And they were crappy, and I would make mistakes. But I pretty soon came to learn that those mistakes were some of the most valuable time I ever spent. Because if you want to become great at something whether you want to make a living at it or—there are other ways to make a happy living than earning money. There are a lot of people who don’t like their jobs but who go home and knit or they go home and take care of kids, or they cook or they do any number of things with their hands. They engage this magic...

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