In the last few years, psychologists and researchers have been digging up hard data on a question previously left to philosophers: What makes us happy? Researchers like the father-son team Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener, Stanford psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, and ethicist Stephen Post have studied people all over the world…
When my daughter was very young, I overheard her praying for the rain to stop and for the next day to be nice. I said, “Honey, I don’t think the Lord minds us asking Him to stop the rain. He wants us to make our wants and wishes known to…
In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), Will Smith’s character makes the observation that the United States Declaration of Independence includes in its short list of “unalienable rights” the right to the pursuitof happiness—not the right to be happy, but the right to pursue happiness. Why, he questions, was…
Twenty-five years ago I came across a gem of wisdom that was to save my sanity. The thing that amazes me now is how easily I could have missed it. I was feeling happy and fulfilled at the time, satisfied with my life and where it seemed to be taking…
In his article “Temple Time,” David Brandt Berg describes a vision he had of a group of people in a spacious glass-domed room, like the central rotunda of a large public building. The people were standing quietly and looking up through the dome at the star-studded sky, taking deep breaths…