Twelve Personal Commandments

Four Splendid Truths

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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.”

If you're interested in reading compelling memoirs of catastrophe...

MorestacksOn the last day of each month, I include a happiness suggested-reading list.

For the month of memento mori, I read a huge number of memoirs dealing with issues of divorce, illness, death, and other catastrophes. Here are a few that I found especially compelling.

Violet Weingarten, Intimations of Mortality
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
Robert Murphy, The Body Silent
Martha Beck, Expecting Adam
Penny Kaganoff and Susan Spano, Women on Divorce
Cornelius Ryan and Kathryn Morgan Ryan, A Private Battle (memoirs of husband and wife)
Marjorie Williams, The Woman at the Washington Zoo
Michael Korda, Man to Man
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (look at the cover--you'll see that a few of the letters in the title are in a different color. The letters spell JOHN.)
Gilda Radner, It’s Always Something
Anne Lamott, Hard Laughter (a novel)
Gene O'Kelly, Chasing Daylight

All of these books are well worth reading, but I especially recommend Stan Mack’s account of Janet Bode’s struggle with breast cancer, Janet and Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss.
*
I'm pleased to have discovered the Happiness and Public Policy blog. I just started poking around--lots of interesting material and links there, with a strong point of view, which makes it fun to read.


Posted August 31, 2006

Comments

How do you find time to do all this reading and have a family etc.?

Posted by: Mark | August 31, 2006 at 11:38 AM

If you haven't already read "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls, I highly recommend it. I had to keep reminding myself throughout the entire story that is was all true, because the story just seemes so unbelievable.

Posted by: Monogram Momma | August 31, 2006 at 11:41 AM

Uncanny! My theme for the month of September is "Focus on Books," and one of the things I want to do is figure out--when DO I actually read? I feel like I never have time to read, but obviously I do. And how could I read more?

ALSO, at dinner just last night, a friend handed over a copy of "The Glass Castle." So I just got my hands on it. Maybe I'll read it over the holiday weekend. We saw Fight Club last night; I'm going to get the book out of the library this afternoon, dying to read it. So which to read first?

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | September 01, 2006 at 10:24 AM

i just wanted to add another book to your list, if i may.
'Paula' by Isabel Allende - a memoir that she wrote while her young daughter was in a coma. it's a tragic story, but very beautifully written.

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Posted by: complementary medicine | September 16, 2007 at 04:16 AM

Reading The Happiness Project now - I love it. I'm planning on creating my own Happiness Project for 2012. Just a few more recommendations for this list: Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett, History of a Suicide by Jill Bialosky, and Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell. Also, I recently read Joan Didion's Blue Nights. It was beautiful. Also, do you have a Shelfari page? It's essentially a list of books you have read, are reading, would like to read... I'd love to follow your Shelfari page!

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Gretchen RubinGretchen Rubin is the best-selling writer whose book, The Happiness Project, is the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. Here, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.

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