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A favorite Zen Buddhist story of mine—such a favorite, I confess, that I mentioned it once before—tells of a novice monk who, on his first day at the monastery, stands before the head monk to receive his work assignment. “Before you reach enlightenment,” the master, or jikijitsu, says, “you will chop wood and carry water.
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Unless you inhabit a hermit cave with no internet access, you’ll know that we live in the Age of Offense. With high levels of polarization and innumerable ways to broadcast one’s every thought to strangers far and wide, it is easier than ever to lob insults and to denigrate ideological foes.
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My preoccupation with writing about meaning, love, and happiness derives from my desire to understand these parts of life more deeply, and impart to others whatever understanding I can glean. I will confess that this can be a frustrating task at times because I feel as though I can never get to the essence of these sublimities; words always feel inadequate.
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Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest and Franciscan friar who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 for hiding Jews and publishing anti-Nazi tracts, then sent to Auschwitz. He might have survived the camp and the war had he looked out for himself. Instead, he volunteered to take the place of a man randomly selected to be starved to death in retribution for another prisoner’s escape.
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We live in an age of loud egos. Scholars have documented a large increase since the late 1970s in the percentage of people with a narcissistic personality, a trend that is especially clear among young adults.
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I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish I knew no astronomy
when stars appear
Yes! I thought, as I read these lines from the Russian American poet Joseph Brodsky in a 1989 love poem, “A Song.” There’s something about the ineffable beauty of life that formal knowledge misses. So it seemed to the 25-year-old me, a bohemian musician and hopeless romantic.
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Know thyself is the most famous maxim of Greek philosophy, carved into stone on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Why? you might ask. The greatest philosophers and writers throughout history are more likely to tell you why not, so foundational is the idea of self-knowledge to a meaningful existence.
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In 1924, a German professor named Eugen Herrigel set out to learn about Zen Buddhism, which was starting to penetrate the West. He found a teaching position in Japan, where he hoped to locate someone who could instruct him in the philosophy.
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As a younger man, I had an elderly family member who was, on the face of it, extremely kind and generous. Whenever she visited, she brought a thoughtful gift; she was always eager to have you over for your favorite meal; if you were sick, she would be at your bedside with chicken soup. But she had the strange habit of never accepting any favors from others.
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Some years ago, I had a friend who got into trouble on the internet. He was writing a book that took a strong stance on a controversial topic and had been talking about it on social media. He didn’t have a large following, but activists who opposed his view of the issue began to notice and decided that he needed punishing for wrongthink.
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Has anyone described the fear of dying more vividly than the 19th-century Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy in The Death of Ivan Ilyich? In that novella, published in 1886, the protagonist lives the conventional, prosperous life of a Russian bourgeois.
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According to a 2023 YouGov poll, each year, about a third of American adults—and more than half of 18-to-29-year-olds—start the new year with at least one resolution. One of the most common resolutions, at 22 percent of all adults, is “being happy.” Another common one is “improving physical health.
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“The art of life lies in taking pleasures as they pass,” said the ancient Greek philosopher Aristippus, “and the keenest pleasures are not intellectual, nor are they always moral.” In other words: If it feels good, do it.
Aristippus was a student of Socrates who founded a minor school of philosophy called Cyrenaicism. As Cyrenaic thinking evolved, it centered on two ideas.
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My father-in-law, with whom I was very close, spent most of his life on the same working-class street in Barcelona’s El Clot neighborhood. Born in 1929, he saw Spain’s bloody civil war taking place literally in front of his house. His family experienced a lot of suffering. Some died; others spent years in jail or were forced into exile.
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By the time I was 19 years old, I had quit college and was working a job thousands of miles from my family. With no money, my first Thanksgiving away from home promised to be a lonely one—until a local couple invited me to spend the holiday at their house with their extended family. They warned me, however, that this gathering would also include a ne’er-do-well cousin named Jeffrey.
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Growing up, my older brother was a good student, interested in science. We shared a bedroom, so I benefited from his knowledge at night as we lay in our beds and he regaled me with facts of all kinds, with specializations on such topics as the behavior of dinosaurs and the age of volcanoes.
Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.Next to one’s birthday, the passing of the calendar year induces us to reflect on the march of time in our life. This is not a welcome subject for many—which is perhaps why a lot of people simply redefine old age virtually out of existence. When Americans were asked in 2009 what “being old” means, the most popular response was turning 85.
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.You wanted it and you worked for it, but all your effort was for naught.Maybe your relationship collapsed, your company went under, or you got fired.
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his new podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.The end of the year isn’t just the holiday season; it’s also charity season. Estimates of charitable giving indicate that at least 20 percent of all gifts are made in December, when our holiday love for humankind conveniently converges with the end of the tax year.
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.During the Vietnam War, a U.S. Navy vice admiral who was held for more than seven years in a North Vietnamese prison noticed a surprising trend among his fellow inmates. Some of them survived the appalling conditions; others didn’t. Those who didn’t tended to be the most optimistic of the group.
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.Everyone knows where the happiest people in the world live—the United Nations tells us every single year. For the past several years, Finland has been ranked No. 1, sitting atop the pack of Nordic countries, which are all considered very happy.
“How to Build a Life” is a biweekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.“I don’t feel like getting out of bed,” a friend texted me the morning after the 2016 election, so bereft was she at the outcome. Her disbelief was mixed with sadness, anger, and fear.She had plentiful company in her misery. “‘Post-election Stress Disorder’ Sweeps the Nation,” PBS NewsHour reported.