Reading the news — the real, not fake news — and watching it on TV can make many of us unhappy. Famine, wars, innocent children separated from their parents, global warming with its worsening effects on the rise, people hurling insults at one another on a daily basis, a lack of respect toward respectable people; sadly, the list goes on and on and on.
Thus, it is no wonder that many of the most popular books today are on finding happiness, on learning how to be happy. Specifically, there are 209 books on happiness reviewed on Goodreads.com, with "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama XIV ranked No. 1 and "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin ranked No. 2.
When I first read in New York Magazine this spring that the most popular course at Yale — indeed the most talked-about college course in America — is called "Psychology and the Good Life" and is simply about being happy, I knew this was no joke.
Not only are college students not happy, but "neither is anyone else," according to Adam Sternbergh, who wrote and researched the article, titled: The Cure for New York Face.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. ranks 18th in a recent U.N. World Happiness Report, behind Finland (No. 1), Canada (No. 7) and Australia (No. 10).
Many people have always believed, myself included, that success — usually professional — equals happiness. Sadly, however, over several days in June, we discovered that two highly successful people, famous designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, had committed suicide.
Spade was 55; Bourdain, 61. The average life span in the U.S. is now in the 80s; if they had lived, both could have made many more contributions to society.