The Happiness Project: Some thoughts about the passage of time, or, how to get more out of life.

The Happiness Project

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT is the memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier – happily, it was a #1 New York Times bestseller. As one of the hundreds of experiments I've conducted, I started this blog. Here, I recount my daily adventures in pursuit of happiness. –

Gretchen Rubin

What Started Me Thinking

"The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." Mark Twain
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
“Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
“Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Sartre: "Hell is other people."
Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

I just finished The Magic Mountain, where Thomas Mann points out that most of us think that when we’re bored, time passes slowly, and when we’re interested, time passes quickly.

He argues that that’s only partially correct. True, hours pass slowly when we’re bored—but years speed by in a flash, because the time holds nothing. By contrast, while hours fly when we’re interested and engaged, eventful years hold so much experience that they seem to last a long time.

I think that’s true. I clerked for Justice O’Connor for only one year, and although those twelve months passed quickly, I feel like the experience lasted much, much longer. A friend made the same observation about the birth of his first child: before she was born, he felt like time was passing quickly, but it slowed to a crawl during the first three months of her life. So much was new.

So—how to take advantage of this observation, without taking a new job or moving to Mombai? I crave routine and predictability, but my happiness research is making me think I need to break out of my gerbil-cage existence, even though that’s what I like.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.