The Secrets of Happiness

Picked up an interesting book at the library the other day: The Secrets of Happiness: Three Thousand Years of Searching for the Good Life, by Richard Schoch. Never could resist a book that might shine some light on the happiness question. From the Introduction:

"Unhappy is the story of happiness. More than two thousand years ago, when the ancient Greeks first thought about what constitutes "the good life," happiness was a civic virtue that demanded a lifetime's cultivation. Now, it's everybody's birthright: swallow a pill, get happy; do yoga, find your bliss; hire a life coach, regain your self-esteem. We have lost contact with the old and rich traditions of happiness, and we have lost the ability to understand their essentially moral nature. Deaf to the conversation of the ages, we deny ourselves the chance of finding a happiness that is meaningful. We've settled, nowadays, for a much weaker, much thinner happiness: mere enjoyment of pleasure, mere avoidance of pain and suffering. The so-called new science of happiness perpetuates this impoverished notion of the good life. Somewhere between Plato and Prozac, happiness stopped being a lofty achievement and became an entitlement.

"We can reject this modern enfeeblement of happiness. We can recover its ancient traditions, the traditions that began in the West with the philosophers of Athens and in the East with the anonymous Hindu sages of the Axial Age. We can, with no exaggeration, call these traditions a secret, so unpracticed, if not obscured, have they become. Yet the secret will not resist our attempt to find it."

I personally found these opening lines rather eye-opening. (No pun intended) It never occurred to me that happiness was a "civic virtue" requiring "a lifetime's cultivation." Nor did I realize it was a "lofty achievement" or that it had a "moral nature."

The book goes on to explore several traditions of happiness to be found in various religions and philosophies. If I were to actually finish reading this book, who know?, I may even discover "The Secrets of Happiness." Wouldn't that be wonderful?!