1. What is Joy?
Joy isn’t hedonistic pleasure. It’s the simple, profound moments—hugging your child, a shared Korean BBQ, or discovering an interesting idea. Joy is grounded in presence and connection.
2. Why is Joy Elusive?
Modern society profits from misery, not joy. Media and consumer culture amplify drama and discontent to keep us consuming, distracted, and unfulfilled.
3. Joy is Already Within You
Like Thich Nhat Hanh and even Jesus said, the seeds of happiness and heaven are within us. Joy isn’t external; it’s our inherent state when unburdened by societal pressures.
4. Our Duty to Joy
Sharing joy with others is an act of compassion and humanity. A smile can disarm hostility, and kindness costs nothing but yields immense returns.
5. The Power of Walking
Walking is the simplest embodiment of joy. It’s meditation in motion, a declaration of freedom. The joy isn’t in the destination; it’s in the act itself.
6. Break Free from Misery Traps
Sitting—whether in cars, offices, or couches—is the enemy of joy. Movement, activity, and freedom are the antidotes. Avoid the consumer-driven suburban rat race; opt for simplicity and mobility.
7. Consumerism vs. Real Joy
The endless chase for material wealth—cars, houses, and status—isn’t joy. Joy is in experiences, creativity, and shared moments.
8. Rethink Your Lifestyle
Live closer to what matters. Avoid long commutes, prioritize outdoor time, and embrace minimalism. Freedom is the ultimate luxury.
9. Bitcoin and Joy
Bitcoin represents invisible, incorruptible wealth. Unlike physical property tied to governments and taxes, Bitcoin is a form of economic freedom—secure, universal, and unseizable.
10. Exclusivity is Key
Joy isn’t about inclusivity for everything; it’s about discerning what truly matters. Like Harvard, Bitcoin’s exclusivity makes it valuable.
11. Retire on Bitcoin
Use Bitcoin to escape the hamster wheel. Living abroad in places like Vietnam or Mexico can reduce costs by 90%, enabling financial freedom and joyful living.
12. Think Long-Term
Bitcoin is immortal capital. Never sell it. Like prime real estate, its value only grows over time.
13. New Goals, New Life
Break out of routines, embrace change, and let curiosity guide you. Joy isn’t found in the old patterns but in the pursuit of something new.
Final Takeaway:
Joy isn’t complicated—it’s presence, simplicity, and freedom. Align your life with what truly matters, reject societal misery traps, and let joy be your compass.
***
The Imperative of Joy
Joy, maybe the simplest Three letter word in the American dictionary, but kind of what we are aiming for.
For example, the joyful wisdom from Nietzsche,  or thinking about Christmas carols, “joy to the world!”
how and why is joy so elusive?
 many problems at hand:
First, modern Day Society is not about joy, rather it is about like hedonic pleasure maximization, which is different to me than joy.
What is Joy? Joy is the hug and snuggle and embrace of your child, reading him a bedtime story, or the joy of getting all you can eat eat Korean Japanese Wagyu barbecue with your beautiful family (Chubby cattle, my new favorite joint!)
Joy is the joy of discovering an interesting idea or concept, and also the joy of sharing it with others.
The reason why joy is such a difficult notion is that actually, modern day society is more focused about misery. Misery is much more profitable than joy.
For example, when is the last time you watched a joyful movie or film or television series that did not have some sort of strange fake drama added to it?
Joy is already within you
If I invoke Thic neat Hanh, the wise Zen Sage, the general idea that he has is that the seeds of happiness are already within us, they lie nascent within us.
For example, even Jesus, I think his words are often misconstrued, like a simple one… The kingdom of God is already within you. And that heaven, is essentially the joy of your family on earth. Heaven is not a place that you go in the afterlife.
Even the Jesus saying about the kingdom of God, the wisdom of a child.
Generally a lot of modern day Christian theology should just be thought of as “St. Paulism”– who sent you was kind of a troubled man, fighting his own demons, insult salvation and trying to misconstrue the teachings of Jesus to fit his own personal narrative?
Anyways, joy is critical. I almost feel like it is our duty to be joyful, and also more importantly to spread joy, seeds of joy and hope.
Why?
I mean first thing is kind of like a love of humanity. For example if you have dear friends and family, who you care for, and they do not show any signs of joy, in fact they show the signs of misery the exact opposite… Obviously from a basic perspective we’re going to feel some sort of compassion and we’re going to want to help alleviate their situation and reduce their suffering. I think there’s naturally a bit of autism in all of us, even though that these haters of humanity might think otherwise.
My mom told me this interesting saying in Korean is that you cannot spit on the face of somebody who smiles at you.
So generally, I always try to approach and treat everybody with love, kindness, gratitude, even if it looks like they’re not having it. Why? It Doesn’t really cost me anything, and also, it just feels like the right thing to do!
How to spread seeds of joy
First, I think joy could be infectious, and I also believe that the power of joy can actually supersede that of hate envy jealousy and all these other negative emotions.
I think the first thing is to deposit that we desire joy. That it is a desirable thing.
The archer
So for example, if you’re an archer, and your goals to hit the mark, you kinda need to know what to aim for. If you’re aiming for other random stuff, you might hit the mark, but you’ve hit the mark and the target of something other random thing.
So for example most of modern day capitalism and hedonism maximization has to deal with silly notions of purchasing stuff? Like purchasing the Rolls, the Lambo, or having a certain amount of money in your bank account. Now that I have achieved all of my flesh found goals, and have achieved all the rings of success, I could actually honestly a test now that it is all fine, but not really the goal. Maybe to me joy is much more interesting.
So for example, the joy of being outside, the joy of walking, even Thich Nhat Hanh talk a lot about the joy of walking meditation. The general idea and just is every time you take a step, you just repeated to yourself “I have arrived, I have arrived, I have arrived.
The general idea is that you don’t really have a destination you need to get to, but instead the joint itself is the walking.
Walking is joy?
To me actually the thing I hit the most feeling cramped at home. I don’t know… Maybe my personal ethos and spirit is like an outdoor spirit; I must be outside.
Often times the reason that I hate the winter months is simply that it is kind of a discouragement from going outside. If the ultimate goal is to be outside, any sort of circumstances which allow for it is good.
For example, it seems like in America at least, Los Angeles may be the least bad place to be because you could essentially always be outside. Even when it gets cold, trust me you could get cold, but it never gets that cold. Like not Michigan winter cold.
As a consequence, I think the wise goal is to be outside all day every day! The only thing I hated about employment was feeling trapped like a prisoner inside the cubicle office; I almost feel like the humane thing to do is give your employees the option; I’m going to the office whenever they want to, or just working from home if they want to. Or be able to take Zoom calls while hiking in the mountains with their AirPods, voice without WebCam.
Because the issue is post of employment is more about monitoring, rather than maximization. It seems that everyone is so afraid that your employees are going to become lazy, complacent, fail to obey the rules etc. Or worse, they’re going to be degenerates just watching Netflix all day, while they should be working.
My personal belief and thought is that actually… Perhaps the purpose of it all should be to simply maximize your efficiency yield, which does not require a simple mathematical equation: more hours in the office do not equal more productivity. For example, if the ultimate goal is productivity maximization, then actually, the real wise goal is instead, to allow your employees to work however they want, because the truth is happy employees are productive employees.
And isn’t the goal to squeeze out productivity from your employees and or yourself? If that is the case, make happiness enjoy your goal ethos and method.
Tips
As a general thought, anything which encourages you to do more walking, taking the bus or public transit, the train or whatever is good. Anything that motivates you to be stuck in a car is bad.
For example, one of the worst trade-offs that people do is to live somewhere super super far away, in the suburb somewhere in order to somehow increase their living space, like buying a bigger house outside of their general workplace or whatever. But once again this is like the worst trade-off ever.
To be stuck in a car More than necessary almost seems unethical to me. It’s like chickens stuck in a cage, forced to cluck more and more, to produce more eggs, stimulated by fake natural and artificial sleep cycles. 
And if you think about the average human being, the average worker be, it is almost kind of like the same idea. We are conditioned to think that the desired outcome is to be stuck inside some sort of cubicle luxury cage, even this whole ridiculous notion of wanting some sort of luxury vehicle is like promoting sitting?
To sit is the exact opposite of joy 
The joy of life is inside your legs, the muscularity of your Bipe lifestyle, not your butt. To me butts are only for pooing, nothing else.
And also, I think it is quite apparent, that the more time somebody spends seated, it actually shuts down your metabolism, power, energy etc. For example even if you’re in the world‘s best Ferrari Lamborghini Porsche 911 GT 3S whatever, or even a Tesla model S plaid or a cyber truck, the losing bet you have here is that once again, you’re forced to sit on your butt! Another crime against humanity.
To think more walk more 
Many of us, thoughts are our primary joy, the joy of thinking, of being, of existing in the world.
No human being wants to be stuck inside an apple Vision Pro with a multi directional treadmill thing, with all the haptics in the world, even if you have a flashlight attached to your dick, and something licking your testicles, no no no this is not the goal.
Once again, this sounds like a bad joke but it’s actually pretty true. For women you might not know but I would actually say with quite certainty that 99.999% of men probably release their seed at least once a day on some sort of laptop iPad or iPhone device, often in incognito mode, or a VPN enabled. Just ask any techie, what their opinion of Maria Ozawa is, and you could see the wheels turning in their head. 
Or, a simple thing is if you have a friend with a laptop, like a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro or whatever, just go to the application folder, and see whether they have a VPN enabled or not, whether they have some sort of torrenting application. I could then guarantee you with almost 100% precision that they’re dipping into pirate Bay, and also probably downloading stuff which has something to do with naked women doing stuff.
so why does this any of this matter?
I think this matters a lot because at least for men… 99.9% of all this consumer nonsense we are being sold is apparently to increase our sex appeal, in order to bang more beautiful babes?
Even money, it’s typically seen as a conduit to attracting beautiful women, with marvelous breasts, butts, faces physiques etc., in order to ejaculate in them or on them or whatever.
Now I find this whole thing kind of ridiculous because once again, actually if you think about the real men of antiquity, they would actually practice semen retention, knowing that their seed was the most valuable thing of them all, for example, if you wanted to obtain the semen of Elon Musk, How expensive would it be worth? A lot.
Or, if you obtain the semen of like an old 80-year-old man, was like 4’10” tall, how much would that be worth? Not much.
And actually, this is where the whole thing is a bit tragic is that we men are simply wasting our energy and physiological power, into thin air.
In the Bible or whatever or Christian morality we are taught that masturbation or spilling your seed on the floor is considered sinful. But I don’t think it is sinful, it is just like wasted energy. For example if you had 1 million bucks, and you just threw it into the shredder or furnace, Certainly this would be a poor idea. If you think about your semen like being economic and physiological energy and power, your physiological capital,  would you just dump it somewhere that does not yield a child? Obviously not!
NEW GOALS
So I thought I had this morning is why is it so difficult to become new? Do you think new, to adopt new lines of thinking etc.
I think it might be a natural thing, we are like dogs, trained in our old ways and habits etc. This is where traveling could be so beneficial to many people because when you start to travel, it forces you to break out of your routine, to find new grooves in your old vinyl record.
I think the human mind is also similar, the only reason people typically consume three square meals a day is that they have been conditioned to do so. The human body is not like an automobile gasoline car, you do not need to insert food in order to yield energy and movement. The average human has enough body fit on themselves to themselves for 40 days without dying. Let alone four hours, maybe even four days.
And for people who think that this is so crazy, I’ve essentially done intermittent fasting ever since as in Vietnam in 2017, for almost 7 years now. No breakfast no lunch, only a 100% carnivorous dinner.
The joy of bitcoin
A lot of people ask me what the point of purchasing bitcoin is, there’s almost like the joy of ownership, the joy of owning property. So for example if you’re like an average American, a baby boomer or maybe even Gen X, the general idea is that if you own a piece of land property, you can sit on your patio, And smile thinking that “this belongs to me!” But the sad reality is that it does not, it belongs to the government, to the federal government.
And this is where I think the great innovation and disruption of bitcoin is; it actually belongs to you and cannot be seized or text without your consent.
However, if you own prime real estate in Manhattan or Gangnam or Tokyo, you cannot hide it from the government or the local federal government agencies. They’re going to find a way to text you, find a way to spite you and hate you for owning all that stuff.
invisible wealth
Once again, the reason why bitcoin is so disruptive is that it is like having invisible property and well, which is real.
For example, people often criticize bitcoin for not being real, but then again… Are the ones and zeros in your bank account balance real? Is your Apple stock “real“, can you print out a piece of Apple stock or 100 or 1000 of it, or can you print out Tesla stock, and say that it is “real”?
One might then say the analogy that it is real because Apple critic is real products and services and Tesla produces real vehicles.
But look at Google, do they produce anything “real”? No. Their search business is like 99% of their revenue, but does Google exist in the physical realm? No! But then you can talk about the data centers whatever… Then if you use that analogy, then, don’t you realize that the bitcoin network is like if you took all the data centers of Apple Amazon Facebook Google and combined all of them, it wouldn’t even be a 10th of the power of the bitcoin network?
Also what a lot of people don’t understand is that there has already been like $890 billion of real US dollars injected into the network. And there has also been billions of dollars invested in the bitcoin mining centers, which should just be better seen as a security network, one does not really “mine“ bitcoin, rather, you just protect it.
And also if you think about cryptography it is just like a bunch of computers solving very difficult mathematical equations, to prove security.
ephemeral things are difficult to understand
It is difficult to explain the cloud to your mom or grandma.
Even for my mom, for a very very long time I tried to explain the whole idea of the Google cloud etc. to her, it doesn’t really make sense.
We understand money, dollar bills, paying the rent and paying for food and gas etc., but how many Americans or people really understand how money is created, minted, and also destroyed by a central government agency?
Even in the past, people understood that gold was money. That gold coins and gold bricks were money. Can you imagine showing up to King Agamemnon or Achilles with a bunch of green blue paper notes, with a face printed on it, telling them that they could exchange this for 100 heads of oxen? No! Or can you try imagine getting them to trade their mythical armor for a suitcase of paper slips? No!
Even Fernandina Kalyani in his treaty on money, de Monetta, commented how it was strange for the Puritans in America at the time, I think he wrote this in the 1700s, over 300 years ago, the only reason why paper trade was facilitated amongst the Quakers was because there was some sort of religious God trust between them; One of the earliest accounts of paper fiat currency.
Even if you think about a stock, or a bond, historically it was just a piece of paper which was a certificate which was faith in the US government or the other party, and there was often a trusted intermediary in between. And if you did not have a trusted intermediary, The whole thing would fall apart.
And this is where bitcoin is so radical, you could essentially store or transfer value an economic energy power and capital without a trusted intermediary, and now that we live in the year 2024, and we have self driving cars, robot etc.… Come on, Shouldn’t we make money cyber digital and infallible?
Nobody knows how many US dollars actually exist
The closest thing we could do is track the M2 money supply, but even that… It is impossible to account for every single hundred dollar bill stuffed under a mattress in Brooklyn Queens, or in Saigon, or how many US dollars have simply been lost, or fell to the bottom of the floor in a shipwreck.
With bitcoin, you could exactly 100% track all the bitcoins on the planet. 21 million, forever. Forever times forever. And it could exist even if America no longer exists, and this is a big idea because America has been around for what like 350 years so far? It will probably be around for another three 400 years, if we think about the Lindy effect of Nasim Taleb, but doubtful if America will be around 3000 years from now, but bitcoin will.
The unity and unifier of humanity
If bitcoin bonds me with somebody from Sri Lanka, the Middle East, northern Sweden, Nigeria, Lagos, El Salvador and the like,,, and we could all accept the fact that this is in fact, valuable digital capital, digital property, isn’t this a good thing for humanity?
Even the biggest threats that we have is about China maybe Russia and North Korea; etc., but if everyone adopted bitcoin, certainly no one would want a World War III because without a world there would be no bitcoin.
Peer to peer seems to make more sense.
So one of the things I like about cash is that if you give somebody a $20 bill, or $100 bill or $50 bill, it means something. To me I consider cash paper money to be warm currency, for example if you tip the waiter $60 in three $20 bills, or if you insert a $10 bill to your local coffee bar barista, it will bring them 1 million times more joy than if you deposited that money in a computer.
I almost think that bitcoin and Satoshi’s should be the same: for example if I want to buy your house, and let us say that your house is worth one bitcoin, isn’t it easier that I just use my iPhone to send you a bitcoin, directly to your iPhone, and we could immediately prove that the bitcoin was sent, and then you could just hand over the deed to your house? This would be a big deal because we would no longer need these sleazy real estate agents.
Or, let us say that I like your cyber truck, and you like my bitcoin. Then I could send you like a 10th of a bitcoin for your cyber truck. Or I could send you half of bitcoin for your Lamborghini. Or I could send you a bitcoin for your yacht. Whatever it may be.
It seems to be so much easier, even right now on craigslist, cryptocurrency OK is an option. And to me it seems much safer than walking around with a suitcase full of cash, for example if you just want to buy even a basic vehicle from somebody, on craigslist, assuming that it is less than $5000, it seems kind of dangerous to try to wire somebody the money through a bank, or certainly showing up with a suitcase of $100 notes also seems dangerous. I would not trust this.
With bitcoin it is great because nobody could like confiscate it from you, and also… Nobody has any idea how much bitcoins you own, you could just memorize the number inside your head.
inclusive vs exclusive 
Nowadays the rhetoric is all about inclusivity, the truth is we seek exclusivity.
For example, if you really believe that inclusivity or a virtue you would probably say that McDonald’s was the best restaurant on the planet. Or that a Starbucks Frappuccino is in fact the best vintage on the planet. Or that a Toyota Corolla was the most desirable car. Or that Cal State Fullerton was the most desirable university to go to.
Everybody knows that exclusivity is critical here; for example, the reason why Harvard is the number one institution in the states and possibly the planet is because of their exclusivity. Ain’t not nobody could just go to Harvard, you can’t even pay your way in, you need money and you need skills and brains.
Everyone wants to send their kids to Harvard, every rich mainland Chinese person, all the Gark from South Korea whatever. Even I believe that Kim Jong-un studied abroad as a student at some sort of private UK university?
I think people get a little bit confused with words; certainly I believe in the notion of equal access like anybody could apply to go into Harvard, but whether everybody will be accepted into Harvard is a different thing. 
So currently people like to throw around the word crypto, thinking that crypto and bitcoin is the same thing. No it is not.
It’s also kind of like how people like to use the notion of just calling it a smart phone, but no it is not a smart phone it is an iPhone, just like we called a Kleenex not a paper tissue, these differences matter.
Even the whole notion of a EV electric vehicle is bizarre; it is either a Tesla or nothing.
So I think the whole market of cryptocurrencies, essentially anything that is not bitcoin is kind of bad. Why? Considering that Ethereum and everything after it is based on proof of stake, like proof of stake it makes no sense, imagine like staking a piece of wood into a piece of land and property and just exclaiming to the universe that “this belongs to me“!” Versus proof of work, proof of work is like actually inputted energy and physical power to yield this product.
To anybody who says that bitcoin is bad for the planet… Don’t you realize that air conditioning accounts for like 33% of the worlds electricity? And nobody is really on a Crusade to ban air conditioning. I think bitcoin accounts for like .01% of the world energy usage.
I think… If we banned air-conditioning what would happen to all the poor people in Arizona and Nevada? 
Also another random environmental thing, apparently I learned that gasoline petroleum and oil prevents like 95% of humanity from dying.
If you think of bitcoin like the first true perfected money, like switching the From toxic to clean, shouldn’t this be the primary focus of humanity?
For example, if the whole time you just been drinking sewer water, and then somebody finally gives you a glass of Fiji, wouldn’t you want yourself with your family and your best friends to drink the Fiji not the sewer water?
The traditional fiat currency US dollars and its derivatives is like sewer water, bitcoin is like the Fiji water. 
a new purpose in life
So I think my first decade and a half of my journey was focused on photography Street photography open-source photography and photography empowerment and the like. And I’m still going to do it for the rest of my life – people are a little bit confused with my interest in bitcoin and economics and money, but don’t you understand… If you have financial freedom using bitcoin, like if you could retire right now with bitcoin, wouldn’t you just retire right now travel the planet and shoot photos?
So in this sense, bitcoin may be more important than photography and our hobbies because if bitcoin could enable you 100% financial independence, shouldn’t this be your focus?
how to retire right now with bitcoin
So some simple ways you could do it:
The first thought is just figuring out your monthly expenses, and actually ideally, you would not live in America, but rather live in a developing country like Cambodia allows Thailand, Vietnam, even in Mexico City or I guess El Salvador?
Things in America is starting to get ridiculous.  even now… When I stare at a $20 bill it almost feels like the new five dollar bill? A dollar bill feels like a quarter, even $100 bill feels like the new 20?
I mean just look at housing prices, a tiny single-family house in Culver city is 1.5 million for a two bedroom one bath.
Or eating out, the average all you eat Korean barbecue is not like $75 a person. Compare this to Vietnam where you could afford the same meal for like $8 to $12.
Or rent, $3200 a month for a nice two bed one bath apartment in Los Angeles, maybe $320 a month in Hanoi or Saigon for the same level. You’re literally overpaying 10 X in America, assuming that you live abroad you could reduce your living expenses by like 90%.
52 years of paying rent?
So Trump has not yet taken office, and it seems that the truth is nobody knows with 100% certainty what is going to happen to the future of the economy.
The tricky thing with inflation is that it is kind of like a one-way ratchet; if you increase the minimum wage to $20, you cannot rewind it back to 18 or $19 an hour, there might be riots.
So at best, we can either slow down or maybe potentially stop inflation, but the damage has already been done.
Even in LA, buying a single-family house in the hood is going to run you at least 1 million, $1.1 million. And if you do the math, with interest rates or whatever… You’re gonna be paying like what $8000-$10,000a month? That’s insane!
If there’s no strong reason for you to be in America I recommend you to leave.
Living forever
So the great promise I have with bitcoin, micro strategy stock is that I will never run out of money, neither will Seneca or his kids.
Creating immortal capital for your kids and their kids kids kids kids, seems to be a good idea.
And also the good thing with bitcoin is that assuming that bitcoin is the first true digital and cyber property and real estate, that doesn’t require maintenance costs, or the decay of physicality, this is kind of a big idea. Why? They could just sit and do nothing and remain wealthy forever. The only dumb thing to do is sell the bitcoin.
Never sell the bitcoin, it’s like selling land or property on fifth Avenue in New York!
ERIC