Happiness

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This is the original cover of my very first book proposal. It was fortunate to be picked up by an agent and I spent a good part of a summer writing about happiness, to my heart's content, readying it for a publishing contract.

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I wanted the book to be easy to read, insightful to ponder, and credible as in backed by real research; not stuffy research, but with real facts about who's happy and why. My agent wanted the book to be a light 'how to'. I couldn't bring myself to write it that way, so I put it aside. One of these days, perhaps soon, it will find its way to me again and I will play it forward.

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The Book identifies ten qualities of a happy life. I liked them then and I like them now. I loved searching for and selecting quotes to introduce each quality. I first posted them on my blog when my blog was brand new in 2006. Here they are again.

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I hope you find one that speaks directly to you.

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1. Keep It Simple

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“A mess can cover up more than tables and floors. People lose themselves in the day-to-day stuff, and they don’t get to be who they really are.”

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Organizer Extraordinaire, Laurie Arriola
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2.Stay Present: Correct the Past, Plan the Future, But Live Now

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“We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever; and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, “Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday?”
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Michael MacLiammoir, The Bell,
“Hamlet in Eisinore”, 1952

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3. Commit: Find a Purpose and Live It

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“I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific”

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Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner
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4. Don’t Turn on Yourself

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“When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included?”

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Mary Oliver
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5. Keep Conflict to a Minimum
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"One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat. "

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Woodrow Wilson, 1916
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6. Laugh and Cry

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“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson,
The Conduct of Life, 1860

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7. Do Good Work

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“Don’t ask your self what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who come alive” (Harold Whitman). (for my twinkly twin Angela)

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8.Bend Bend Bend: Choose Happy Instead of Right

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“There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.”

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James Russell Lowell, “Democracy”
address in Birmingham England 1884
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9.Create

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“I entered biology to understand the beauty of life. I started with the ecology of animals, but that wasn’t quite right, so I went one level deeper, to the study of tissues, then to chemistry, and finally even dabbled in the depths of quantum mechanics. Yet when I got there, I saw that the wonder of life had somehow slipped through my fingers along the way.”

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Allbert Szent-Gyorgyi,
Nobel Laureate Biologist
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10. Connect

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“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love IS everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. ..It really IS worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”
Erica Jong, How to Save your Own Life, 1977

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And a final word from the Saint of the Universe:

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We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I do not agree with the big way of doing things.
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Mother Theresa, 1975

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xoxo from kj