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

everything.”
    Reading these accounts also gave me a new and intense appreciation for my obedient body—for the simple ability to eat or walk or even pee inthe usual fashion. Being on vacation pulled me off my usual eating routine, and I found myself indulging in potato chips, milk shakes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and other treats that I wouldn’t ordinarily eat. One morning I felt dejected because I’d gained a few pounds. But having just finished an account by a prostate cancer survivor made me feel far more kindly to my own body. Instead of feeling perpetually dissatisfied with my weight, I should delight in feeling vital, healthy, pain-free, fear-free.
    A common theme in religion and philosophy, as well as in catastrophe memoirs, is the admonition to live fully and thankfully in the present. So often, it’s only after some calamity strikes that we appreciate what we had. “There are times in the lives of most of us,” observed William Edward Hartpole Lecky, “when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.”
    As I became more aware of the preciousness of ordinary life, I was overwhelmed by the desire to capture the floods of moments that passed practically unnoticed. I never used to think much about the past, but having children has made me much more wistful about the passage of time. Today I’m pushing Eleanor in a stroller; one day she’ll be pushing me in a wheelchair. Will I then remember my present life? I couldn’t get a line from Horace out of my head: “The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.”
    I decided to start a one-sentence journal. I knew I couldn’t write lyrical prose for forty-five minutes each morning in a beautiful notebook (and my handwriting is so bad that I wouldn’t be able to read it afterward if I did), but I could manage to type one or two sentences into my computer each night.
    This journal became a place to record the fleeting moments that make life sweet but that so easily vanish from memory. It also helped me amplify the effect of happy experiences by giving me an opportunity to observe the third and fourth prongs of the Four Stages of Happiness, by expressing and recalling my feelings. Even after this summer had faded into the past,I’d have a way to remind myself of unmemorable but lovely moments—the night Jamie invented a new kind of pie or Eliza’s first trip alone to the grocery store. I can’t imagine forgetting the time when Eleanor pointed to her spaghetti and said politely, “Mo’ pajamas, please,” when she meant “Parmesan,” but I will.
    On our last day at the beach, when we were packed up and ready to leave, Jamie and I sat reading the newspaper as we all waited for the ferry. Eleanor wandered off to practice her stair climbing on a short set of three stairs, so I went to help her climb up and down, up and down. I considered going to get a section of the paper to read as I stood with her—and then I realized, this is it.
    This was my precious, fleeting time with Eleanor as a little girl, so adorable and cheery and persistent, as she went up and down those wooden stairs. The sun was shining, the flowers were blooming, she looked so darling in her pink summer dress; why would I want to distract myself from the moment by reading the paper? She’d already grown so much; we’d never have a tiny baby again.
    I’d had this thought before—but suddenly I grasped that this was my Third Splendid Truth: The days are long, but the years are short. It sounds like something from a fortune cookie, but it’s true. Each day, each phase of life seems long, but the years pass so quickly; I wanted to appreciate the present time, the seasons, this time of life. With Eliza, so much had already passed away—the Wiggles, Pat the Bunny, the make-believe games we used to play. One day—and that day wasn’t too far away—I’d think back on Eleanor’s babyhood with longing. This moment of preemptive nostalgia was intense and bittersweet; from that moment of illumination, I’ve had a heightened awareness of the inevitability of loss and death that has never left me.
    I made a note of this moment in my one-sentence journal, and now I can hang on to it forever. “All packed up to go home—waiting for the ferry—Eleanor had as much fun climbing the beach stairs as anything we did all summer: up and down, up and down. Heartbreakingly adorable in