Buffet

You can see the world as a shopping mall of experiences for you to consume or as a factory in which you are a small but significant contributor. The best way to enjoy the buffet is to put on your plate only the good tasting and good feeling stuff. Don't stand near the bad food wrinkling your nose all day and miss out on eating anything good. The best way to enjoy yourself in the factory is to give only your best even if those besides you are working half-assedly, or worse, actively producing dangerous garbage. Regardless of what kind of environment others seem to produce, you are still completely free to decorate your own windows to the world, still completely free to contribute to the cosmos more of what you would like yourself.

The best thing you can give the world is your own happiness because you are in a unique position to understand your needs and provide for them. You can see the positive repercussions of a happier you: you are more generous, less suspicious, and less judgmental. Self-pity is not the same thing as humility; it is the resignation of happiness to a cruel and indifferent world. Self-love is not the same thing as disregard for others. Awakened from the dream of separation, service to the self is indistinguishable from service to others, and the salient feature of the transaction shifts from who's giving and who's receiving to the pleasure in the air of the interaction.

Some say work hard play hard. I would add, playfully work, and take enjoyment seriously.