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

Staff Meetings

On our conference room bulletin board…

The Mattering Map

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, The Mattering Instinct: how our deepest longing drives us and divides us

Happy aging

The 7 factors that most reliably predict happiness and health as we age are:

• Don't smoke
• Limit alcohol
• Eat well
• Exercise regularly
• Keep learning and stay mentally curious
• Have a practiced way to deal with suffering
• Love

Arthur Brooks
https://www.threads.com/@arthurcbrooks/post/DTq49UUElNg?xmt=AQF0LSQF0pZk6SVYuA1azex4cPeaoyp1ge5Ghj8azwu113qBM2KpMMZNL-UWDhqw7vxNMxCd&slof=1

Spotted at Parnassus

Just takes one.

A proposal

Ihave a proposal to make: 2026 should be the year that you spend more time doing what you want. The new year should be the moment we commit to dedicating more of our finite hours on the planet to things we genuinely, deeply enjoy doing – to the activities that seize our interest, and that make us feel vibrantly alive. This should be the year you stop trying so hard to turn yourself into a better person, and focus instead on actually leading a more absorbing life… Oliver Burkeman 

We’re #32

Americans like to boast that "we're No. 1." But a careful new study suggests that in quality of life, we rank No. 32. And we're slipping. This study should be a wake-up call. Nick Kristof

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/opinion/america-quality-of-life.html?unlocked_article_code

As Newsroom's Will McAvoy said…

Now or never

Ralph Waldo Emerson: there is no mythical future where you'll be a perfectly happy person; all we ever have is now...

"These roses under my window," Emerson writes in his 1841 essay, Self Reliance, "make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence...

"Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike.

"But man postpones, or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with a reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time."

https://www.threads.com/@philosophybreak/post/DTdUj9YDALS?xmt=AQF0pt6wi77Rylliq8_z5yWVQXtH5dtcpGjgtKL8Wl5tGhQ-yyQS7FfKTwdTiYlog6QCBQI&slof=1

Arthur Brooks’s 5 steps

Make a routine. Get physical. Get metaphysical. Live with your grandchildren. And never, ever go to a work dinner. Read all about the five small steps Arthur Brooks took to get happier.

https://www.thefp.com/p/arthur-brooks-five-steps-to-a-happy-life?link_source=ta_thread_link&taid=6967773de96061000177d381&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_source=threads

“strange in-between creatures”

"Our inability to live entirely in the present (like most animals do), combined with our inability to see very far into the future, makes us strange in-between creatures, neither beast nor prophet. Our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival. We plunder the earth, hoping that accumulating material surplus will make up for the profound, unfathomable thing that we have lost."
— Arundhati Roy, Listening to Grasshoppers; Field Notes on Democracy, 2009

On the Transitory Nature of Happiness and Why It Doesn't Matter

https://open.substack.com/pub/rebeccanewbergergoldstein/p/on-the-transitory-nature-of-happiness?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

Beyond happiness

The philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's latest book looks beyond happiness as the goal of a well-lived life.

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/01/the-mattering-instinct-rebecca-newberger-goldstein-book-review/685536/?gift

Eat your ice cream, build your relationships…

And don't be a schmuck.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/dr-ezekiel-emanuel-eat-ice-cream-and-other-tips-for-a-long-and-healthy-life/

Seek wisdom

"Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul."

— Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Inside the world’s first happiness museum

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0922rw5/inside-the-world-s-first-happiness-museum

Pluribus

Apparently this is a show about happiness. I haven't seen it.

"Why is Carol so unhappy? Well, first of all, she is created that way. Vince Gilligan deliberately set out to have a protagonist who is the "unhappiest person in the world". The brilliance is how he challenges many assumptions about happiness. People ask what made her unhappy, well here goes…"

https://www.threads.com/@calmrev/post/DTBrhjKEzgR?xmt=AQF0HE0LBvKf-gPTtxzD_lR2wgMSs4D0LRGqXodiKOHDkAby7odmJVxuFNQis2cVJLwSnjJE&slof=1

Happiness equals love

We're Living Through the Great Detachment

America is becoming more loveless: less dating, less marriage, less friendship, less patriotism. But love outside of self is what makes life meaningful.

"Happiness equals love — full stop." You don't have to commit to any single one of the attachments, even marriage, but if you want to flourish, you do have to prioritize loving attachments over individual autonomy, and over the past few generations, our culture has forgotten that core truth.

David Brooks

Happy in MN

Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota), a Central Division past president, discusses happiness and flourishing on MPR News. (audio) https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2025/12/17/what-does-it-really-mean-to-be-happy