I recently read “What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness” in The Atlantic. Research has found that having children reduces the quality of life but the full truth about parenthood, happiness, and meaning in life is more complicated. Continue reading Children and Happiness →

I recently saw the new movie, Some Kind of Heaven, which was an Official Selection of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It is about the Florida retirement community known as The Villages. Here is the official trailer: Continue reading Some Kind of Heaven →

Happiness and meaning while connected, don’t seem to be the same thing. We can imagine a paradigmatic meaningful life that is unhappy and vice versa. For example, one might seek truth, do good things, or produce beauty—paradigms of meaningful lives—and still be unhappy. Or one might have health, wealth, friends, and knowledge—things associated with happy lives—and yet live a meaningless life, Continue reading Happiness and the Meaning of Life →

A Harvard study followed 268 undergraduates from the classes of 1938-1940 for 75 years, regularly collecting data on various aspects of their lives. The findings were reported in a recent book by the Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant: Continue reading Summary of the Harvard Grant Study: Triumphs of Experience →