I have been thinking about happiness lately. Actually I have been thinking about it for 20 years in relation to my private counseling/ coaching practice. I have noticed that the people with the most peace of mind aren’t the ones who judge their days based on a 1-10 scale of whether they are happy. That said there has been a plethora of recent clinical psych research on the subject of happiness, which supports the idea that there is a thirst for what the majority of us believe is possible.

Personally I have come at this topic from the other side:

“Am I unhappy? Really? Right now, what is so terrible that I can conclude I am unhappy?”

Right now is the key to getting clear on this – it narrows my opinion and forces me to be honest.

Below is Darrin McMahon’s 2008 talk on the history of happiness and his perspective. The talk took place at the Happiness and Its Causes Conference in San Francisco – co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. McMahon is a professor of history from Florida State and authored the book Happiness, a History.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did. Have a great week and we will “talk” soon!

Thanks for reading TalkingBitterSweet.com.

When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free. ~ Barack Obama

Kyle Korver is a professional NBA basketball player for the Utah Jazz. He recently wrote a very good article on how he processed the NYC police assault and arrest of his fellow teammate, Thabo, in 2015.

Kyle is white.

As I typed the previous sentence, I stopped. The world “white” seems glaring when it stands alone. It’s short, simple and clean, isn’t it? As opposed to yellow, red, brown or black.

The dictionary defines white as “being free of color, free from blemish and moral impurity.” “Free of” sounds like “freedom” to me.   

White is also defined as “being of good character as in, ‘that’s mighty white of you.’”

Another definition of white is “innocent, favorable, and fortunate.”

Isn’t it interesting that it seems difficult to metaphorically hang anything on “white” except maybe bigotry. 

So… what about this post qualifies as “bittersweet?”

While it is deeply troubling to have denied minorities the same level of education and opportunity we provide the majority, the sweet side of the coin is that we have a choice. We can admit our bias and commit to correcting it – keeping in mind we will not see the result of our efforts for several generations.

Jean Vanier died in May of this year – a sad day for those who have followed his work and the creation of L’Arche residences for the mentally handicapped.

Krista Tippett interviewed Vanier in 2007 for her On Being broadcast. After hearing of his death, she wrote a commentary on her experience when visiting a L’Arche residence in Iowa. I have excerpted both her introduction to the interview reissue and the transcript of the 2007 interview.

Excerpt from May 2019 OnBeing post

In the early days of my radio adventure, I made a pilgrimage to L’Arche for myself. I traveled to the sleepy town of Clinton, Iowa, on a gorgeous stretch of the Mississippi. There, a revolutionary community shelters among pastel-painted houses on a residential street. It took my eyes and my introverted spirit a little while to adjust to this unfamiliar cross-section of humanity testing the most paradoxical of spiritual teachings – that there is light in darkness, strength in weakness, and beauty in the brokenness of human existence. But their dare does not proceed through theologizing; it proceeds through exuberantly inhabiting the given, imperfect raw materials of the everyday. I’ve rarely been in a place where there is so much laughter and where the rhythm of life includes a real joy in that deceptive phrase, “the simple things of life:” cooking, eating together, washing up; the rituals of leaving for work in the morning and coming home at night; walks around the neighborhood and trips to the library; goofing off and making music and playing. I’ve rarely been hugged so fervently by strangers and enjoyed it. At the same time and not in contradiction to all of that but making it more real, I’ve rarely been in a place where the grief and imperfection and struggle of being human were more honestly faced moment to moment. L’Arche is like family at its best. And it’s a chosen family that then touches the strangers who cross its path. As I moved through the ordinary encounters of ordinary days with L’Arche’s core members, I watched how they unsettled everyone they met, at least a little, and left them more joyful and more graceful: bus drivers, librarians, supervisors at work. And me. It’s a joy and grace transmitted by bodies, and it settled in my bones and is still with me these many years later

“We don’t know what to do with our own weakness except to hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomes our own weakness?”

~ Jean Vanier

If any of you have been reading my blog for a while you know how much I love Alain de Botton’s work. He started The School of Life in 2008. The following is an excerpt on “small pleasures” from the ever-evolving book, The Book of Life. 

I found myself saying “Yes! I need to remember this!”  I suspect you will as well.

Getting More Serious about Pleasure

from The Book of Life

When it comes to work, we tend to be – almost universally – highly strategic and thorough in our approach. We think extensively about where our talents and opportunities may lie, we spend years (and a fortune) on training, we devote extraordinary energy (and our most vigorous decades) to progressing up the ladder and keep a vigilant and jealous eye on the progress of our rivals.