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 first released in 2009, but I spotted a copy of the much loved book on a trip to Half-Price Books yesterday. While I never read the book when it was first popular, all of Gretchen Rubin’s books catch my eye because I’m addicted to what I call self-analysis and forming habits that improve quality of life — something I believe Rubin has become an expert of.
And in a year when there’s so much unhappiness, and life seems to be passing by in a blur of unfortunate and devastating events, The Happiness Project jumped out at me.
Here’s a quote from the book that I found online:
“When I find myself focusing overmuch on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal, I remind myself to ‘Enjoy now’. If I can enjoy the present, I don’t need to count on the happiness that is (or isn’t) waiting for me in the future”.” — Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project
I’m not going to lie. That quote is a difficult one to digest in February 2021 while living and working in a house with three other people, two of whom are in different stages of preparing to enter the world of adulthood at a time when they can’t really travel easily, get together with large groups of friends (something 18- to 22-year-olds do), or find jobs easily. Sometimes it’s easy for me to “Enjoy now” — and to be grateful for the fact that my two adult children are safe and healthy. But then I get to wondering (usually during a bout of insomnia at 3 a.m.): what has the past year cost them?
However, I am going to read The Happiness Project twelve years after it was first published through the eyes of a woman (and mother of two young adults) who is surviving a pandemic.
I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.
If you want to join me, purchase The Happiness Project on: