In an effort to boost our page views with pleasure to the reader, and now that the fever has passed (thanks to Spivonomist’s cool, damp, washcloth), I thought I’d celebrate by transmogrifying Sweet Talk into Sweet Buzz. Lists are cool because, you know, reading. If I had some real wherewithal, I’d conjure up some animated GIFs to squeeze out some extra lulz. But without further ado, here’s how you can achieve eudaimonia.

1. Google eudaimonia. If you’re reading a list like this with any real interest, you have no idea what eudaimonia is, do you? And, no, I’m not going to do your double-click + right click + left clicking for you; I’m well on my way to advanced curmudgeonhood, and I don’t want to risk retarding my progress thence. Reward yourself with an orange M&M. Sweet!
2. Open every link on that Wikipedia page as tabs in your browser. It’s time for a green M&M.
3. Save all tabs as bookmarks in a special folder labeled “Eudaimonia.” When you’ve accomplished that, eat a brown M&M; it’s just as sweet as the first two, eh?
4. Read all the pages in that folder. When you’re finished with all that reading, you should feel brave enough to eat a red M&M. Courage!
5. I hope you were smart enough to open every link on all those pages, too. If so, then it’s time for the precious green M&M.
6. Subscribe to this blog. The contributors are very nice, clever, thoughtful, helpful people who actually mean to help you think through big issues to apply them to our much smaller daily lives. Occasionally you might have to ask what a particularly difficult vocabulary word means, but such humility never did no one no harm nohow (I have to do it all the time with these guys, but they never ever call me stupid to my face). Yes, yellow M&Ms are for happy, nearly the sweetest of them all. Eat one now.
7. Don’t take advice from silly lists. Eat the black M&M, which is the sweetest of them all, greatly to be desired.
8. To thine own self be true. This is a Shakespearean (the guy who wrote “To be or not to be”) variation of the ancient maxim which is delivered best in King James English as “Know Thyself.” You may have heard it in a different context as “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” As Spivonomist has proclaimed in more than one place, but lateliest here (and as others who are wise have also noted in some of our discussions), knowing yourself takes a great deal of work. One may get tired from pursuing eudaimonia and thereby find one’s self wallowing in self-pity, and worst of all, self-centeredness, but rejoice! There is, for those of us who wallow, another Greek word, bestowing upon thee the will to take up arms again in the task to fight evil and do good.

Eat the rest of the M&Ms (but not the blue ones, which are anathema), then buy a bag for someone near and dear to you. That, of course, would be a euvoluntary act, most blessed of all acts. And the sweetest.