The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

happier, and no one appreciated my efforts, no one even noticed. I was particularly mad at Jamie. Did he ask me about my research? Did he utter one word of gratitude for the clean closets, the sweet e-mails, the decline in nagging? Nope.
    I could hear the girls in the next room. “Mine!” “No, mine!” “Well, I was playing with it!” “Don’t push!” “You hurt my arm!” And so on.
    I stormed into Jamie. “Get up! Are you just going to listen to that? Do you enjoy hearing that shrieking and hitting?”
    Jamie rolled over and rubbed his eyes. He fixed me with a look that I interpreted to mean “I’m waiting for you to get yourself under control.”
    “Don’t just lie there, this is your problem, too,” I snapped at him.
    “What is?”
    “Listen to Eliza and Eleanor! They’ve been like this all day. You fix it!”
    “I’m sorry I’m not being helpful,” he said. “I just don’t know exactly what to do.”
    “So you figured you’d wait for me to deal with it.”
    “Of course,” he said, smiling. He held out his arms to me. (I knew from my February research that this was a “repair attempt.”)
    “Are you giving me a gold star?” I lay down next to him on the bed.
    “Yes,” he said. The yelling from the girls got louder, then ominously quiet. “Ah, the happy sounds of home.” We both started laughing.
    “Are we in harmony?” he asked. “Even if I am a slacker napping husband?”
    “I guess,” I said. I put my head against his chest.
    “I’ll tell you what, let’s go to the park. We need to get outdoors.” He sat up and yelled, “Put your shoes on, you two! We’re going to the park.”
    This announcement was greeted with wails of indignation: “Don’t wanna put on shoes!” “I don’t want to go the park!”
    “Well, you’re going to. I’ll help you both get ready.”
    It was one of those days—and there would be others. A happiness project was no magic charm. But that night I did manage to keep one resolution, “Go to sleep earlier,” and in the morning, things looked a little better. Although it took several days before my bad mood lifted completely, at least I was ready to tackle my resolutions again.

8
AUGUST
    Contemplate the Heavens
    E TERNITY
    Read memoirs of catastrophe.
    Keep a gratitude notebook.
    Imitate a spiritual master.
     
    I ’d become firmly convinced that money could help buy happiness. Still, there was something unappealing about thinking about money too much; it made me feel grasping and small-minded. By the end of July, I was relieved to turn from the worldly subject of money to the spiritual realm.
    I figured August was a particularly good time to focus on eternal things, because we’d be taking our family vacation. Stepping out of my usual routine would allow me to see more clearly the transcendent values that underlay everyday life. First, however, I had to figure out exactly what I wanted to achieve in my contemplation of eternity.
    My upbringing wasn’t religious. As a child, I went to Sunday school when I visited my grandparents in Nebraska, and we celebrated Christmas and Easter with lots of decorations, but that was the extent of it. Then I married Jamie, who is Jewish. His upbringing had been about as religious as mine, and since we now had a “mixed” household, we had even less religion at home. We celebrated Christian holidays with my parents and Jewish holidays with his parents (which made both sets of parents very happy, because they never had to switch off ) and observed all holiday traditions in a very secular, Hallmark-y way.
    Nevertheless, I’ve always been interested in learning about religion and in the experiences of devout people. I’d describe myself as a reverent agnostic. I’m attracted to belief, and through my reading, I enter into the spirit of belief. Also, although I’d never thought of myself as particularly spiritual, I’d come to see that spiritual states—such as elevation, awe, gratitude, mindfulness, and contemplation of death—are essential to happiness.
    When I mentioned to Jamie that my focus for August was “Eternity,” he asked suspiciously, “You’re not going to engage in a lot of morbid activities, are you?”
    That actually sounded intriguing.
    “I don’t think so,” I answered. “Like what?”
    “I have no idea,” he said. “But contemplating eternity sounds like something that might get tiresome for the rest of the family.”
    “No,” I assured him. “No skulls on the