"Field Trip" Next Week

Don't forget about where we are meeting on Monday and Wednesday, this place:

We will meet in the lobby at 10:00 am, and I will collect your polished drafts of the Survival Guide there on Monday, and your final drafts of the research paper/annotated bibliography on Wednesday. Please do not be late, or else you will miss the lessons completely.

Remember that I am asking you to come to these classes with some form of writing prepared. What you choose to put on your cup is incredibly important, so pick your words carefully. Here is an article I found which might help you develop your own phrase to write:

Happiness: Summing Up a Big Idea in a Short Sentence

Posted Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:09 AM | By Gretchen Rubin

Although it may seem reductive, I think people grasp and remember great truths better when they’re snappily summed up. I love epigrams, aperçus, apothegms, and aphorisms of all sorts, and I try to to sum up my happiness conclusions in catchy, yet of course profound, axioms.

My greatest success so far: The days are long, but the years are short. That short sentence says it all.

I was thinking about my Second Splendid Truth. Just getting it down to these two statements took enormous effort on my part. It sounds so simple, but there is a circularity to these ideas that confused me for a long time:
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make someone else happy;
One of the best ways to make someone else happy is to be happy yourself.

So true, so true. But not very snappy.

But yesterday I hit on this!
Happy people make people happy.
This simple language almost makes this point sound trivial, but the epigram actually conveys what I think is one of the most important arguments about happiness.

Also ...
Making people happy makes people happy.
Again, the language is simple, but the argument is one made throughout the ages by great philosophers, religious readers, and scientists.

See you on Monday.