The Happiness Project: Francis Ford Coppola's Insight About Sin.

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.”

A smart friend told me that I had to read The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje. Even though this wasn’t a topic in which I had much interest, he spoke so highly of it that I decided to read it.

He was right. It's a fascinating book, on many levels. I love finding a book like this – which gives me entry into an entirely new world (sound and film editing, in this case) and also insight into a great creative mind like Walter Murch. There are a lot of almost throw-away lines that really struck me. I've quoted Murch for my weekly happiness quotation..

Another provocative line appeared in the book's discussion of The Conversation, a movie written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, with Murch as the supervising editor and sound designer.

Coppola’s notes for the script of The Conversation include this line:
There is always the idea that the sins a man performs are not the same as the ones he thinks he has performed…

What does this mean, exactly? How do we take this observation into account as we reflect on our actions?

Are the sins I think I’m performing not the ones I think I performed? Very likely. How, then, does one become virtuous? What do you think?

* Last week I had coffee with Amanda Freeman, a friend who is one of the creative minds behind Vital Juice, the free daily email that gives info about fitness, nutrition, health, etc. Funny and useful.

* As I posted the other day, I'm trying to figure out the level of interest for a book tour. If I did a book event in your town, and you'd come, it would be very helpful if you'd either post a comment below or drop me an email at grubin[at]gretchenrubin[dot com]. (Sorry about the weird format – trying to thwart spammers). Just write "tour" in the subject line, and be sure to include the name of your city! Thanks very much to all the people who already answered; the information is enormously helpful.