The Happiness Project: This Sunday: a quote from Marilynne Robinson.

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

Twelve Personal Commandments

Four Splendid Truths

First: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
Second: One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Third: The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)
Fourth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

30-Second
TV Commercial

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.”

This Sunday: a quote from Marilynne Robinson.

“When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.”
--Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Posted October 29, 2006

Comments

You may think I'm a little nutty with all these comments (yes, I do have a life), but so much of this rings such a bell for me!
"Ordinary" really HELPS me remember what matters! This quote speaks to me of something I think of very often - how wonderful "ordinary" is, how what's "ordinary" is what truly matters - waking up next to your spouse each day, taking your kids to school, going to work each day. It's so easy to think the same old, same old is boring (and I do like to try new things, travel, etc.), but what matters, what there is to be truly happy about, is in the ordinary moments. I try to think about "you don't know what you've got till it's gone". Mitch Albom wrote a book recently, "For One More Day" and if I could have a deceased one back with me for one day (the idea of the book), it would be to cherish very consiously a simple day together - the "ordinary".

Posted by: Sharyn | October 30, 2006 at 08:01 AM

I COMPLETELY agree. To remember to appreciate the "dear ordinary" is one of my chief goals for this whole year. It's so hard not to get caught up in minor complaints, but so important. I remember in one of the cancer memoirs I read in August, the month of Memento Mori, a woman wrote about how the day before she went to the doctor, she'd been complaining about having to change a poopy diaper. The next day, she said, "How happy I would be now to change that poopy diaper, the way I did yesterday." Have you read GILEAD? It is an extraordinarily good book. You'd love it.

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | October 31, 2006 at 12:45 PM

I just finished Gilead. Yes, awesome book. It held a mirror up to my life and I found my life wanting. Shallow. Lacking in any deep convictions, beliefs or passions. Too much time spent chasing money, not enough on seeking spiritual wealth. I'm trying to change that, but it's slow going. Lastly, it made think about Mortality and the meaning of Grace.

Posted by: J | October 31, 2006 at 11:21 PM

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Gretchen 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.