THE HAPPINESS PROJECT
Experimenting with Greater Happiness
Setting out on a journey toward our own happiness and learning about how happiness works for us all
A year ago, I moved. I like moving. It reminds me of happy times during my childhood.
I want to keep my Japanese man statue, but we can give my baseball and bat to Pancho ’cause he doesn’t have his own. I’ll miss Pancho, but there will be kids at our new place. Mama, I’ll put your candlesticks in the kitchen box, okay? Can I pack the books? Will there be a swimming pool near our new house?
As a military family, we had to pack up and drive across the country every few years. Every time, my Mama was optimistic about what might be in our future in a new place. She was happy to move, so I was happy to move.
After my last move, in what may be my last home, my carved ivory Japanese statuette, acquired by my father after World War II during the occupation and reconstruction of Japan by the U.S. military, sits under a glass dome on my bookshelf. He is exquisitely carved, but what I notice most often when I glance up at him from my writing desk is his angelic smile. Whoever the sculptor was, he knew happiness.
