a marvelously rich panorama

"I would not call myself happy--no man can be quite happy in the midst of the poverty and suffering that still survive about him today; but I am content, and inexpressibly grateful.

Where, in the last resort, does my treasure lie?--in everything. A man should have many irons in the fire; he should not let his happiness be bound up entirely with his children, or his fame, or his prosperity, or even his health; but he should be able to find nourishment for his content in any one of these, even if all the rest are taken away.

My last resort, I think, would be Nature herself; shorn of all other gifts and goods, I should find, I hope, sufficient courage for existence in any mood of field and sky, or, shorn of sight, in some concourse of sweet sounds, or some poet's memory of a day that smiled. All in all, experience is a marvelously rich panorama, from which any sense should be able to draw sustenance for living."

— On the Meaning of Life by Will Durant
https://a.co/01SShLe1

Already “justified”

The happiest people after 70 aren't the ones who found purpose — they're the ones who stopped demanding that every day justify itself, and that permission to exist without producing, achieving, or proving was the thing their happiness was waiting behind the entire time.

https://www.threads.com/@evavila99/post/DVhhu7rk50d?xmt=AQF0A4_OgjNNMFNpRtxQYxsljFjCS6mshEoqDifzDBHNH63B3uz_if9ZeqDQUXsp8h1WIjw&slof=1

Now is Better | Stefan Sagmeister | TEDxPorto

https://youtu.be/Ox6JOa8lJIQ?si=HDkJ_0SZJdyp6KBE

The Happy Show - MOCA LA... Novus TV

Fun and the importance of play

"Anthony Clare and I were planning to write a book together about happiness, but then he died. (There is quite a lot of death in the pages that follow, but don't let it get you down. As Shakespeare reminds us: All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.') This book includes all that I learnt from Anthony Clare and what I have discovered since. And what are my credentials? They don't amount to much. I am a former European Monopoly Champion and the founder of the National Scrabble Championships. I have been interested in 'fun' and the importance of play and playfulness for a long time. I am a former chairman and now vice-president of the National Playing Fields Association—which is how I came to meet the Duke of Edinburgh. (There is a word of advice from him in here, too.) Play, sport and recreation contribute to happiness, for sure."

— The 7 Secrets of Happiness: A Reluctant Optimist's Journey by Gyles Brandreth

A Reluctant Optimist's Journey by Gyles Brandreth
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074PHJSTW?ref_=quick_view_ref_tag

Pollan's happy place

 Michael Pollan's new book on consciousness, A World Appears, was released Tuesday. He announced it on Substack.* I was pleased to be able to express there my appreciation and gratitude:

Enjoyed the opening chapter on my commute from Nashville to Murfreesboro this morning. Excellent! And may I offer a much-belated thanks, Michael, for your having taken the time back in '99 [or maybe a bit earlier] to respond with constructive comments to the unsolicited draft chapter of my Vanderbilt dissertation on William James and consciousness. It was such a generous act on your part, and came for me at the most opportune moment. And now I'm president of the William James Society (wjsociety.org) - thanks in no small part to your kind encouragement.

That's not idle flattery. Michael's positive reinforcement was a shot in the arm at a time when I needed one. We corresponded after the publication of his second book, A Place of My Own, and discovered our mutual interest in the permeable boundaries of nature and culture (and of John Dewey's exploration thereof). I'm still envious of Michael's "place":

 

How to Stop Ruminating and Reclaim Your Mind | Michael Pollan

*https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelpollan/p/a-world-appears-appears?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

“You must not give up on being happy”

She Survived Mass Rape. Now, She's Speaking Out to Build a Better Future.

…Her story, perhaps, offers victims a different path for survival. Her message, she says, is not that they can forget everything, but "you can choose what to do with it all." The title of her book, in French, is "The Joy of Life."
…
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/gisele-pelicot-interview-hymn-to-life.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Conditions

"To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy is to set your own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances, instead of being conditioned by them."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Epicureans knew this too

"We've all experienced it: that Sunday evening moment when you emerge from an hour of phone scrolling with nothing to show for it but a vague hollow feeling. Not quite anxiety, not quite sadness—just the sense that something essential is missing. This feeling, paradoxically, defines our era of unprecedented abundance.

We live with more information, entertainment, and choices than any generation in history. Yet loneliness, anxiety, and existential confusion continue to rise. The question pressing on so many minds isn't "How do I get more?" but rather "What's it all for?" The convergence of ancient Buddhist wisdom and contemporary psychological research offers surprising—and surprisingly similar—answers

What Eight Decades of Research Reveals

Since 1938, Harvard researchers have tracked 724 individuals through their entire adult lives, conducting thousands of interviews and hundreds of medical assessments. Now continuing with their descendants, the Harvard Study of Adult Development represents the longest scientific investigation of happiness ever conducted. After 85 years, the conclusion is remarkably straightforward: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Not wealth, not fame, not achievement—the quality of our connections with others predicts both physical and mental wellbeing as we age.

This finding would have resonated deeply with the Buddha, who identified tanha—the endless craving and reaching toward the next thing—as the root of human suffering 2,500 years ago. Without research grants or brain scans, he recognized our fundamental confusion about where happiness actually resides…"

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertwaldinger/p/beyond-the-scroll?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Humanism and the Great Conversation

From David Brooks's farewell column:

...Trump is that rare creature, a philistine who understands the power of culture. He put professional wrestlers onstage at the last Republican convention for a reason: to lift up a certain masculine ideal. He's taken over the Kennedy Center for a reason: to tell a certain national narrative. Unfortunately, the culture he champions, because it is built upon domination, is a dehumanizing culture.

True humanism, by contrast, is the antidote to nihilism. Humanism is anything that upholds the dignity of each person. Antigone trying to bury her brother to preserve the family honor, Lincoln rebinding the nation in his second Inaugural Address, Martin Luther King Jr. writing that letter from the Birmingham jail — those are examples of humanism. Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs singing "Fast Car" at the Grammys — that's humanism. These are examples of people trying to inspire moral motivations, pursue justice and move people to become better versions of themselves.

Humanism comes in many flavors: secular humanism, Christian humanism, Jewish humanism and so on. It is any endeavor that deepens our understanding of the human heart, any effort to realize eternal spiritual values in our own time and circumstances, any gesture that makes other people feel seen, heard and respected. Sometimes it feels as if all of society is a vast battleground between the forces of dehumanization on the one side — rabid partisanship, social media, porn, bigotry — and the beleaguered forces of humanization on the other.

If you want to jump in on the side of humanization, join the Great Conversation. This is the tradition of debate that stretches back millenniums, encompassing theology, philosophy, psychology, history, literature, music, the study of global civilizations and the arts. This conversation is a collective attempt to find a workable balance amid the eternal dialectics of the human condition — the tension between autonomy and belonging, equality and achievement, freedom and order, diversity and cohesion, security and exploration, tenderness and strength, intellect and passion. The Great Conversation never ends, because there is no permanent solution to these tensions, just a temporary resting place that works in this or that circumstance. Within the conversation, each participant learns something about how to think, how to feel, what to love, how to live up to his or her social role.

 

One of the most exciting things in American life today is that a humanistic renaissance is already happening on university campuses. Trump has been terrible for the universities, but also perversely wonderful. Amid all the destruction, he's provoked university leaders into doing some rethinking. Maybe things have gotten too preprofessional; maybe colleges have become too monoculturally progressive; maybe universities have spent so much effort serving the private interests of students that they have unwittingly neglected the public good. I'm now seeing changes on campuses across America, from community colleges to state schools to the Ivies. The changes are coming in four buckets: First, a profusion of courses and programs that try to nurture character development and moral formation. Second, courses and programs on citizenship training and civic thought. Third, programs to help people learn to reason across difference. Fourth, courses that give students practical advice on how to lead a flourishing life...

 

nyt

NYTimes: The Peculiar Magic of a Winter Snowstorm

Nice meditation on winter, snow, and spirit from our Fall Lyceum (and Happiness class) guest Megan Craig.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/winter-snow-storm.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share