The Happiness Project: More Paradoxes of a Happiness Project: I Desire to Not Want.

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.”

One of my Secrets of Adulthood (cribbed from Niels Bohr) is "The opposite of a great truth is also true." As I’ve worked on my happiness project, I’ve recognized many paradoxes.

In Marc Lesser’s book Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less, I read a fascinating list of such paradoxes by Chade-Meng Tan, a Google engineer whose title is “Jolly Good Fellow.”

I was quite struck by his list – and also by the number of times that my resolutions and paradoxes overlapped with his.

His list, with my comments:

I strive hard to be lazy. I resolve to Force myself to wander.
I’m selfishly compassionate. This reminds me of the Second Splendid Truth!
I desire to not want. Oh, I recognize that one.
Sometimes, I’m not myself.
Often, I’m not here, where I am. I have a big problem with this one, mindfulness.
I actively engage in nonactivity. I resolve to Schedule time to play.
I feel spiritual about my earthly desires. I loooove this one.
I sometimes fail at failing. I have to remind myself to Enjoy the fun of failure.
I make careless mistakes carefully.
Sometimes, my mind is full of nothing.
My own arrogance humbles me.
I’ve become a famous unknown.
I sometimes pity the more fortunate.

Have you found any paradoxes in your happiness project?

* I get a big kick out of the Art of Manliness blog, especially because I don't actually worry about my manliness. (When I read a site like How Not to Act Old, I end up thinking about my wardrobe, my slang, my music, etc.)

* Seems like I had something I wanted to mention...hmmm, what was it? Oh, right, MY BOOK IS COMING OUT IN A WEEK! Yipes. As a thank-you, if you pre-order, I'll send you a pack of bonus materials -- just email me at gretchenrubin1[at]gmail.com, and I'll send it to you. More info here.