The Unhappiness Gap

Karen Maezen Miller has noticed the flourishing happiness industry in America. She googled "ways to be happy" and found 129 of them on just the first page of returns. But ask people about happiness, and they will most likely they will talk about how difficult it is to hold things together in these hard times. Miller points to the novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) and her grandmother's struggle during the Depression as truly hard times. She wonders whether much of the unhappiness lies in the mind's ability to come up with judgments, fear, and darkness when asked about happiness.

August is "Happiness Happens" month and on Twitter Frederic Brussat is presenting a quotation each day, which he's calling A Mini-Course on Happiness. Follow him at www.Twitter.com/FredericBrussat or read his feed here.