Three things from DAH. 

DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. Just me and my struggles.

First up this week, Utilitarian …  
My grandfather preferred useful over beautiful. He didn't agree with my reading fiction, for example. But I like things that are beautiful, and useful. I'm also generally in favor of that which brings the most happiness to the most people. Per Jeremy Bentham, I recommend that one: "Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove." In my little life this seems do-able, as does the pursuit of beauty with utility. Sadly, when I look beyond the borders of "today-in-DAH's-tiny-fiefdom" things get more complicated and unjust consequences begin piling up. Thus it is decided: I will endeavor to stick within the present day in my small world, and strive to promote beauty over utility (secretly hoping for both). 
Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics

Second up this week, Universal …  
According to proverb, life counts only three universals: birth, death, and change. Nobody I've yet met has had control over their birth. So many of us are surprised by death. Mostly we spend our days struggling with change. It is the root of my greatest anxiety: believing that I should have more control over change. If change is universal then everyone is struggling with it (or relaxing in its flow). With everyone change wrangling in their own ways I'm back to having only my small world where I'm likely to wrangle to my advantage. 
What is truly universal?

Third up this week, Utopia …  
The trouble with Utopia is that someone (likely not me) determines perfection. As one character is presented in Gilbert & Sullivan's "Utopia, Limited" …  

And that's it, isn't it? Utopia, the perfect place where someone else decides what's perfect. Unless there exists a fourth universal: agreement on perfection. Everyone who thinks so: raise your hand. The rest of us will sit on our hands and worry what you envision. 
Creating Utopia: Exploration and Implementation

And a bit more:

Happiness, by Jane Kenyon

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
                     It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes …  

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. 

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