Are you happy? I occasionally ask people this, and the ones who most emphatically say “yes” often strike me more as pleased, rather than what I’d call “happy”. Pleased with their accomplishments, pleased with their possessions, pleased with their social standing. Is that happiness?  I’ve spent much of my life trying to be happy. I don’t know why it’s been such a struggle. I mean, it’s an “Inalienable Right” written into our constitution (“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”), isn’t it? Sometimes I feel the country I live in should actually be called Anhedonia. We talk about happiness all the time, but rarely seem to be experiencing it. Which is why I’m glad that science finally has it figured out. There’s even a How To Be Happy Wiki. I jest a bit (because I’m happy!) but I was recently inspired (ironically, while I was feeling a bit down) by an interview in the Sun Magazine with Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologist in the relatively new field of  Positive Psychology. Fredrickson’s research suggests that, as she puts it, “…positive emotions are by nature subtle and fleeting; the secret is not to deny their transience but to find ways to increase their quantity…”, adding that one of the challenges of being happy is to understand that it simply is not a stable, long-lasting state of being. I’m somehow not surprised that science is also proving that giving makes you happy (someone should tell JournalWatch about this, then they’d let us read this article for free!), and I personally try to remember this when I’m in a rut. It works. Which is why I’m also including the little “donate” button below. Trust me, it’ll make you feel better. By the way, are you happy? I’d love to know, and I’d love to know why.

Donate to the “Giving To Dissociated Press Makes You Happy” fund.
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