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You might be interested in this article by Wilfred M. McClay from The Trinity Forum's online journal PROVOCATIONS. The opening text is below; see this link for the rest: http://www.ttf.org/index/journal/detail/short-history-of-happiness/ ---------- A Short History of Happiness: Fragile, but not Illusory We want happiness, but the harder we chase it, the further off it seems. How can we talk about it without sounding cynical or trite? Senior Fellow Bill McClay, in a cheerful but deeply realistic piece, looks to history and human nature—and some Russian literature—to help us understand it and to bring our expectations about happiness into line. In approaching the subject of happiness, I’m almost always reminded at the start of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, and his famous words at the start of Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I know what he means. The annals of human disappointment and misery seem endless, and we always seem more fascinated by tales of woe than by tales of joy. This is why we prefer Dante’s Inferno to his Paradiso, and why tabloid newspapers will never want for juicy copy. Even the most superlative novelist finds that words fail him when the story line runs to “And they lived happily ever after.” That tends to be where the story changes course, or ends. But I think Tolstoy was deeply mistaken. In fact, it is human happiness that is various, fertile, and mysterious, that comes in many sizes and colors and shapes—reflecting the wondrous variety of the human condition, and the infinitely diverse ways God has gifted us, and has worked in our lives. Looking at the matter from the high standpoint of joy, it’s unhappiness that seems ploddingly uniform and grindingly predictable. ---------- The entry has 4692 more words. http://www.ttf.org/index/journal/detail/short-history-of-happiness/