The Happiness Project: If you just can't get enough on the subject of happiness, check out this live online chat.

The Happiness Project

I’m working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, a memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happy--from Aristotle to Martin Seligman to Thoreau to Oprah. On this daily blog, I recount my adventures as I grapple with the challenge of being happier. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will hit the shelves in December 2009 (Harper).

What Started Me Thinking

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." 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.”

As if blogging for Slate weren't already a lot of fun -- tomorrow Thursday January 15th, I'll be doing an online chat, hosted by Slate and the washingtonpost.com, on the subject of happiness and how to be happier.

So if you're so inclined, check it out tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. EST. You can submit questions or comments any time.

I've never done anything quite like this before, and it sounds like fun (novelty and challenge bring happiness, it's true). The prospect of doing an hour online chat makes me glad, however, that I'm a fast typist. That class I took during the summer after seventh grade really did turn out to be useful, just as my parents insisted it would.

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Comments

Awesome! I *love* the WaPo's chats and am a daily addict. I will be there!

Posted by: Emily | January 14, 2009 at 07:41 PM

Good luck with the live chats. I'm sure there will be tons of good questions asked. Take notes. Many questions can be turned into great topics for articles.

Posted by: FupDuckTV | January 15, 2009 at 01:07 PM

Just read the transcript - nice job! Thoughtful answers to tough questions, well-written under tremendous time pressure.

Posted by: ella | January 15, 2009 at 01:54 PM

I also just read the transcript (I'm in New Zealand so it was about 5am here when you were online! - so if the sun never sets I guess it also never rises). :)

The nihilism stuff was very interesting to me. I sometimes find it hard to be happy when I think about the suffering in the world, it's hard not to let it all weigh me down.

Posted by: Annette | January 15, 2009 at 04:40 PM

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