MSI Press Blog

  excerpt from  How to Get Happy and Stay That Way  (Romer) - What Makes You Happy? I guess every generation thinks it’s pretty special, but there’s no doubt that mine, the so-called “Woodstock generation,” was unique. In fact, for a long time it seemed that my happiness had to relate back to the 1960s and 70s, as if then and not now I was the real  me . But over the last few years, I’ve realized there are other ways of being happy, ways that build on all the things I learned as a free-spirited flower child (and later, a fun-living feminist)—yet add new ingredients, a certain type of self-awareness combined with gratitude, that really bring contentment. “Follow your bliss,” advised mythologist Joseph Campbell. I didn’t hear him say that on TV till the mid-1980s, well into my second marriage and light years away from my former hippie happiness. Yet the words struck a chord because by that time I knew I loved to write— had  to write, in fact, although I’d only pub...

  excerpt from  How to Get Happy and Stay That Way  (Romer) - What Makes You Happy? I guess every generation thinks it’s pretty special, but there’s no doubt that mine, the so-called “Woodstock generation,” was unique. In fact, for a long time it seemed that my happiness had to relate back to the 1960s and 70s, as if then and not now I was the real me . But over the last few years, I’ve realized there are other ways of being happy, ways that build on all the things I learned as a free-spirited flower child (and later, a fun-living feminist)—yet add new ingredients, a certain type of self-awareness combined with gratitude, that really bring contentment. “Follow your bliss,” advised mythologist Joseph Campbell. I didn’t hear him say that on TV till the mid-1980s, well into my second marriage and light years away from my former hippie happiness. Yet the words struck a chord because by that time I knew I loved to write— had to write, in fact, although I’d only published a fe...

  Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie. -12-   We don’t live for happiness; we live for holiness. Day to day, we seek out pleasure, but deep down, human beings are endowed with moral imagination. All human beings seek to lead lives, not just of pleasure, but of purpose, righteousness, and virtue. As John Stuart Mill put it, people have a responsibility to become more moral over time. The best life is oriented around the increasing excellence of the soul and is nourished by moral joy, the quiet sense of gratitude and tranquility that comes as a byproduct of successful moral struggle.   David Brooks   Michael Kent grew up among the few white people in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he was bullied by black children and his mother was assaulted by a black man. He became increasingly hateful of black people and eventually found ...