The Road to Happiness

As I begin working toward my goals for 2009, I'm trying, as always, to stay clear about what's important and what's not in the large scheme of things.

Greg Hicks, a happiness researcher who "studies people and communities that thrive," travels around the world asking people who is the happiest person they know. He then interviews that individual. As he tells NY Times journalist Joan Raymond, “It’s a cliché, but what I’ve learned is the happiest people don’t necessarily have the most stuff."


Hicks goes on to say...

When I was in Vietnam, I asked a villager who was the happiest person around. He directed me to a home for elderly people and told me to ask for a very special woman. I got to the home and met this tiny, fragile person. This woman was brutalized during the Vietnam War and lost all of her family. She suffered countless indignities. Yet she told me she had people who care for her, she had food to eat and a place to sleep. And she could look out of her window and see the birds. She didn’t need anything else.

To read Raymond's full interview with Hicks (“Happiness Has No Itinerary”), click here. To learn more about Hicks' research, go to www.choosetobehappy.com.

Speaking of folks caring for each other, here's a video someone sent me this morning that I just love--a soulful medley of all sorts of people singing Bill Wither's classic "Stand By Me."