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In fact, the opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives. But also the potentialities alone are so affected. For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irrevocably lost, but rather, on contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past - the potentialities they have actualized - and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past. ... But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy an, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program, that is to say, "mercy" killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer.

--Man's Search For Meaning

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to "be happy". But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to "be happy". Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation. This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon - laughter. If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Doing so would be the same as urging people posed in front of a camera to say "cheese,", only to find that in the finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial smiles.

--Man's search for meaning

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape- descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.

This is her story.

--Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy part IV - So long, and thanks for all the fish

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Oh, and Zaphod?"

"Er, yeah?"

"If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you're in trouble,
need a hand out of a tight corner ..."

"Yeah?"

"Please don't hesitate to get lost."

--The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large 
fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small 
horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its 
lips.

"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am 
the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" 
It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a 
more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.

Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and 
Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from 
Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal, "Braised 
in a white wine sauce?"

"Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper.

"But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, 
"nobody else's is mine to offer."

Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the 
animal's shoulder appreciatively.

"Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been 
exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good 
meat there." It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to 
chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again.

"Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added.

"You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?" whispered 
Trillian to Ford.

"Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes, "I don't mean 
anything."

"That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting 
thing I've ever heard."

"What's the problem Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his 
attention to the animal's enormous rump.

"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting me 
to," said Arthur, "it's heartless."

"Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said 
Zaphod.

"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it 
for a moment. "Alright," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't 
care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..."

The Universe raged about him in its death throes.

"I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.

"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be 
very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for 
months."

"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.

"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at
Arthur.

"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green
salad?"

"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear 
on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through 
the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted 
to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And 
here I am."

It managed a very slight bow.

"Glass of water please," said Arthur.

"Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal 
of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten 
in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years."

The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.

"A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good," it said, 
"I'll just nip off and shoot myself."

He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.

"Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane."

It waddled unhurriedly off into the kitchen.

A matter of minutes later the waiter arrived with four huge steaming 
steaks. Zaphod and Ford wolfed straight into them without a second's 
hesitation. Trillian paused, then shrugged and started into hers.

Arthur stared at his feeling slightly ill.

"Hey, Earthman," said Zaphod with a malicious grin on the face that 
wasn't stuffing itself, "what's eating you?"

And the band played on.

--The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

So we are a happy family and we have no
secrets from one another.
If we are unhappy
we have to keep it a secret
and we are unhappy that we have to keep it a secret
and unhappy that we have to keep secret
the fact
that we have to keep it a secret
and that we are keeping all that secret.
But since we are a happy family you can see
this difficulty does not arise.
---
s/family/company/ || s/family/group/