Since arriving at this biography conference, I’ve been flooded with memories of college. Cut off from my usual friends and family, figuring out the lay-out of a new place, eating dining-hall food three times a day, making small-talk with people I don’t know as I struggle to memorize the pertinent details of their lives, deciding whether to raise my hand to make a comment during a seminar discussion…it all feels very familiar.

I feel the urge to be social, to get a fix on everyone around me, to make sure I’m not missing anything. At the same time, I want to retreat and be alone with my familiar solitary self.

At least I don’t have to size up the romantic prospects.

One of my happiness resolutions is to “find an area of refuge,” that is, work to find a peaceful refuge for my thoughts. I assumed I’d invented this notion (using a term I lifted from a sign near an elevator at Yale Law School, a locution that struck me as very funny), but now it occurs to me that all I’ve done is to give a different label to the much-mocked admonition to “find your happy place.” Aaaack.

Oh well. In the area of happiness, it turns out, some of the most useful ideas are embarrassingly banal.

In any event, just as in college, I’ve found my area of refuge, a/k/a my happy place: the library. And this library is comfortingly similar to the library to which I retreated in college, with an intricately patterned ceiling, leather-covered chairs, and the calming smell of wood paneling.

Plus, all our talk about the challenges of biography has prompted me to call up my memories of writing Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill and Forty Ways to Look at JFK.

What a pleasure it was to work on those projects! To remember a happy time is a distinctive kind of happiness, and a refuge that always waits.

I’m in Salzburg, Austria, at a conference on biography at the Salzburg Seminar.

Several months ago, when I received an email about to the conference, my impulse was to hit the delete button — Salzburg was too far away, I had too much work to do, it would take too much effort to unpeel myself from my life.

But my finger hovered for a moment over the keyboard, and various of my happiness-project resolutions pushed themselves into my mind: “Focus on books,” “Show up,” “Follow my curiosities,” “Only connect,” “Push myself,” “Take time for adventure,” “Listen.”

So…here I am in Salzburg.

Now that the conference has started, I’m astonished I hesitated even for a moment. This afternoon I sat in a seminar room with seventeen people, all absorbed in questions of biography. We’re provided with everything necessary for intellectual stimulation — everything from pens and paper, to a picturesque mountain outside our window, to plentiful coffee. We have no task except to wrestle with questions like, “Where and how do you begin the story of a life?” and “How should you think about objectivity and subjectivity?” and “Why do you decide to write a particular person’s biography?”

Fact is, in ordinary life, people rarely mention Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Here is come up in practically every conversation.

Order is Heaven’s first law.
–Alexander Pope.

On the last day of each month, I include a happiness suggested-reading list. (I’m fudging it a bit this month, because Saturday is always my day to post my favorite quotes.)

Here is a list of just a few of the key classic works on the subject of happiness — ones that I found particularly useful or interesting. It’s a stretch to include St. Therese’s memoir here, because it doesn’t really fit, but I couldn’t resist — I love Story of a Soul so much.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
Cicero, On the Good Life
Epicurus, The Essential Epicurus
Plutarch, Selected Essays
Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena I and II
Seneca, Notes from a Stoic
St. Therese, Story of a Soul
Montaigne, Essays

As part of my resolution to “Lighten up,” I’ve been trying to remember to smile in odd moments.

At first I felt a bit silly as I walked along with a smile on my face, but I quickly realized that no one minds if you’re looking happy. I also try to smile whenever I interact with someone—buying a cup of coffee, checking in at the gym, going through security before going up to an office (is it only in New York City that you have to show your driver’s license in order to go into an office building?).

Facial expressions don’t merely reflect emotions, they also affect emotions. In “facial feedback,” studies show, the mere act of smiling makes people happier—even when they smile mechanically, as I’m doing, or when they’re asked not to “smile” but rather to contract specific facial muscles.

Random smiling is an example of my resolution to “Act as I want to feel”: while people suppose that feelings inspire actions, in fact, actions also inspire feelings. So by acting happier, I should feel happier. And you know, I think I do. “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,” Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

Also, because of emotional contagion, people often mimic the faces of people they see. I’ve definitely noticed that people are much more likely to smile at me when I’m smiling.

The biggest challenge is to remember to do it. I’m reminded of my various efforts to improve my posture. I’m good for a little while, then get distracted and don’t think about it for the rest of the day. So I’ve been trying to use the sight of a traffic light as a prompt.