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

coffee table, I promise.”
    But I had to find some way to steer my mind toward the transcendent and the timeless, away from the immediate and the shallow. I wanted to cultivate a contented and thankful spirit. I wanted to appreciate the glories of the present moment and my ordinary life. I wanted to put the happiness of others before my own happiness. Too often, these eternal values got lost in the hubbub of everyday routines and selfish concerns.
    Will focusing on spiritual matters make you happier? According to the research, yes. Studies show that spiritual people are relatively happier;they’re more mentally and physically healthy, deal better with stress, have better marriages, and live longer.
    READ MEMOIRS OF CATASTROPHE.
    In AD 524, while in prison awaiting execution, the philosopher Boethius wrote, “Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things.” The challenges to my serenity were insignificant compared to execution, of course, but I wanted to cultivate the same sense of perspective so I could remain unruffled by petty annoyances and setbacks. I wanted to strengthen myself so I’d have the fortitude to face the worst, if (i.e., when) I had to. To achieve this, the great religious and philosophic minds urge us to think about death. As the Buddha counseled, “Of all mindfulness meditations, that on death is supreme.”
    But I wasn’t sure how to go about meditating on death.
    Medieval monks kept images of skeletons in their cells as memento mori. Sixteenth-century vanitas artists painted still lifes that included symbols of the brevity of life and the certainty of death, like guttering candles, hourglasses, rotten fruit, and bubbles. What could I do to achieve the heightened awareness that death and catastrophe bring—without putting that skull on the coffee table?
    I hit on a memento mori that suited me: I’d read memoirs by people facing death.
    I went to the library and checked out an enormous stack of books. I started by collecting accounts by people grappling with serious illness and death, but then I broadened my search to include any kind of catastrophe: divorce, paralysis, addiction, and all the rest. I hoped that it would be possible for me to benefit from the knowledge that these people had won with so much pain, without undergoing the same ordeals. There are some kinds of profound wisdom that I hope never to gain from my own experience.
    August was a month of sunshine and vacation, which, because it madesuch a stark contrast to the dark confidences of these books, was probably the best backdrop. The reassurance of being with my family made it easier to experience vicariously so much unhappiness and loss.
    As we were packing for a trip to the beach, Jamie glanced at a few of the books I’d stuffed into our battered duffel bag.
    “Is this really what you want to be reading while we’re away?” he said doubtfully as he scanned the book jackets. “Stan Mack on cancer, Gene O’Kelly on brain tumors, and Martha Beck on having a baby with Down syndrome?”
    “I know, it seems like it would be incredibly depressing to read these books, but it’s not. It’s sad, but it’s also—well, I hate to say ‘uplifting,’ but they are uplifting.”
    “Okay,” he shrugged, “whatever. I’m taking A Bright Shining Lie and Middlemarch. ”
    By the end of our trip, I’d finished every book I’d packed. I didn’t agree with Tolstoy’s observation that “Happy families are all alike,” but perhaps it was true that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Although many of these memoirs described a similar circumstance—grappling with a life-threatening condition—each was memorable for its story of unique suffering.
    As a consequence of reading these accounts, I found myself with a greatly heightened appreciation for my ordinary existence. Everyday life seems so permanent and unshakable—but, as I was reminded by these writers, it can be destroyed by a single phone call. One memoir after another started with a recitation of the specific moment when a person’s familiar life ended forever. Gilda Radner wrote, “On October 21, 1986, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.” “The call comes at 7:00 P.M . The tumor is malignant and inoperable.” Cornelius Ryan recalled July 23, 1970: “On this soft morning I think I must begin to acknowledge the distinct possibility that I am dying…. The diagnosis changes