All That Happiness Is

All That Happiness Is
By Adam Gopnik
Narrated by Adam Gopnik

Accomplishment is happier than achievement, making the pursuit of happiness intrinsically rewarding.

Listen on Audible:
https://www.audible.com/pd/B0D6NMQ9CF?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp

How to Avoid Work: A 1949 Guide to Doing What You Love – The Marginalian

"…Actually, there is only one way in this world to achieve true happiness, and that is to express yourself with all your skill and enthusiasm in a career that appeals to you more than any other. In such a career, you feel a sense of purpose, a sense of achievement. You feel you are making a contribution. It is not work..."
https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/12/14/how-to-avoid-work/

Joy in the flowers

“Happy are those who sing with all their heart, from the bottoms of their hearts. To find joy in the sky, the trees, the flowers. There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” —Henri Matisse

 

What Does Freud Still Have to Teach Us?

Come for the Oedipus complex. Stay for the later troubled musings on the fate of humanity.

...he had written the most influential biography of us—of man, a creature of pleasure who had been civilized into unhappiness, and of mankind, its members instinctively bound by Eros and aggression...

Merve Emre, NYer 

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On Getting the Life You Want

by Adam Phillips

Both Freud’s psychoanalysis and Rorty’s pragmatism tell us, in their different ways, why wanting matters, and also that wanting has become the thing we most want to know about, as though now we are simply our wants.
…
In an implicit critique of, among other things, American pragmatism, Charles Taylor, in The Ethics of Authenticity, defines his notion of a moral ideal: ‘I mean a picture of what a better or higher mode of life would be where “better” and “higher” are defined not in terms of what we happen to desire or need, but offer a standard of what we ought to desire.’ Rorty’s work always runs the risk of seeming to promote a kind of capricious, impulsive egotism.

...it tends to idealise both autonomy and the self; to privilege our capacity for making choices over whatever it is about ourselves that we are unaware of. It privileges experiments in living over the need for safety. Psychoanalysis with pragmatism, and pragmatism with psychoanalysis, however, seem unusually promising for helping you get the life you want. Unless, of course, there is something you want more than the life you want. LRB

Happiest cities

"After looking at all their data, it named the tiny town of Aarhus, Denmark, as the happiest in the world. But just a few spots down, it added Minneapolis, to its "Gold" ranked list, making it the No. 1 in the U.S."

https://www.travelandleisure.com/minneapolis-named-the-happiest-city-in-united-states-8659687

Aristotle & the Stoics

While Aristotle thinks it's just obvious that the good life depends in part on 'externals' like health and access to resources, the Stoics think the value of someone's life — and the limits of their happiness — should not be judged or imposed according to circumstances outside their control.

Who do you side with?
https://philosophybreak.com/articles/aristotle-vs-the-stoics-what-does-happiness-require/?utm_source=threads&utm_medium=social&utm_content=existentialism

"These Books Might Make You Happier"

"With the pandemic receding and a fraught election season looming, Americans seem more concerned than ever about mental health — yours, mine and that of the next leader of the free world. According to the C.D.C., a whopping 57.2 million Americans a year make visits to the physician where the primary diagnosis turns out to be a mental disorder. That's a whole lot of anxiety and depression.

Not surprisingly, there's a small library of titles that touch on these subjects in different ways. Most are pretty bad; I don't need to spend $30 for someone to tell me that the secret to stress reduction is a combination of affirmations, nature walks and journaling. But a few new books offer fresh approaches to seeking contentment and peace..."

nyt

Reasons to Have Hope

"More than three-quarters of Americans saythe United States is headed in the wrong direction. This year, for the first time, America dropped out of the top 20 happiest countries in the World Happiness Report. Some couples are choosing not to have children because of climate threats. And this despair permeates not just the United States, but much of the world.

This moment is particularly dispiriting because of the toxic mood. Debates about the horrifying toll of the war in Gaza have made the atmosphere even more poisonous, as the turmoil on college campuses underscores. We are a bitterly divided nation, quick to point fingers and denounce one another, and the recriminations feed the gloom. Instead of a City on a Hill, we feel like a nation in despair — maybe even a planet in despair.

Yet that's not how I feel at all.

What I've learned from four decades of covering misery is hope — both the reasons for hope and the need for hope. I emerge from years on the front lines awed by material and moral progress, for we have the good fortune to be part of what is probably the greatest improvement in life expectancy, nutrition and health that has ever unfolded in one lifetime..."

Nick Kristof

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/opinion/journalism-reporting-progress.html

Steve Gleason’s good life

What's the last great book you read?

When I was diagnosed [with ALS], one of the first questions I asked in a journal entry was, "Can I discover peace of mind, even if this disease destroys my body?" That inquiry has been a guiding light for me the past 13 years. "The Good Life: Lessons From the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness," by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, has real-life stories I could relate to, providing insights which have helped illuminate the path for me to live longer, and be grateful and content."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/books/review/steve-gleason-a-life-impossible-als.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Mary Oliver’s owlish happiness

Of Owls and Roses: Mary Oliver on Happiness, Terror, and the Sublime Interconnectedness of Life themarginalian.org