The Quickest Path to Happiness
A clickbait headline for a heartfelt post.
My goal with this newsletter is to brighten your day, and if you’re reading this, you have already brightened mine. Thank you, and if you liked this, please feel free to share!
I’m lucky to have a lot of writer friends. Whenever I come across their words and am wowed or moved by their work, I drop a note to let them know. It only takes up a few minutes of my day, and I don’t think much more about it once I’ve clicked send.
Then, a few hours before I began writing this post, I noticed I was in usually high spirits for no particular reason. And I could trace it to the fact that ninety percent of my email correspondence that day started as a way to let friends know how much I enjoyed their writing.
I’m not in the habit of been tossing out praise willy-nilly like an overeager flower girl hurling petals at a wedding. But I can go through my inbox and social media and see that I’ve sent an “I enjoyed your work” message about once a week or so.
If reading good work makes me happy, then that feeling is magnified when I let the writer know. And if publishing can be a roller coaster with screaming highs and lows, then showing appreciation is a constancy of quiet pleasure.
Texting and Substack and social media — and now even Gmail! — lets us take the quick and easy route of communication via likes and emojis. To sit down and write a letter helps me understand why something impacted me enough to share that with the person who created it. And doing so is like sharing a blanket with someone: we both get to experience the warmth that this gesture offers.
When I think about receiving praise, it reminds me of the bite of a candy bar: a huge spike of endorphins, sweet and stimulating. But it also can go by fleetingly too.
But expressing appreciation for someone else feels more enduring. The best way for me to describe the feeling is “Islands in the Sun” by Weezer.
As a sunshiney, feel-good song, it encapsulates the mellow glow that lasted hours after my last emails were sent. Also, the music video is Free Happiness personified in terms of its menagerie of adorable animals cavorting with the members of Weezer, so there’s that too. 1
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Pop culture recs
Starting with two fantastic cover songs:
The Shirelles’ “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” performed by Rufus Wainwright. I discovered this as part of an email exchange about Rufus with Jennifer Armstrong, who writes the super-smart Culture Trip newsletter. I’ve had it on repeat all week.
The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” performed by Elliott Smith. Discovered when seen on someone’s Instagram Stories, I wish I could remember who’s. Also, this song was performed as on the pilot of the never-produced The Jon Brion Show, a wonderfully bittersweet snapshot of the 90s LA indie scene. I had it on repeat all last week.
And two of my most recent audiobook reads:
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’m trying to read more books this year but have been wary of novels in audiobook form, fearing my attention would wander and I wouldn’t keep track of the plot. So I chose to read a book narrated by Julia Whelan, whom The New Yorker dubbed “the Adele of audiobooks.” And I was absolutely riveted by Reid’s story and Whelan’s narration. The experiment worked, and I look forward to reading more novels this way.
They Called Us Exceptional by Prachi Gupta. While listening to Gupta’s narration I had two recurring thoughts: “I wish everyone I know would read this,” and then, “I wish this was required reading in high schools.” It’s a courageous memoir about growing up in an Indian American family whose facade of perfection and achievement hides a tremendous amount of dysfunction and pain. If you’re reading this newsletter, I hope you read this book one day too.
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This week’s fun fact
As all our camera rolls can attest, we recently experienced a solar eclipse! Which is why this week’s fun fact is centered on this rare celestial phenomenon (which incidentally we won’t experience in the contiguous U.S. again until August 2044).
A total solar eclipse in 6th century BCE brought about the end of a war.
The war in question was “a 15-year war between the Lydians of modern-day Turkey and the Medes of modern-day Iran. On May 28th, 585 BCE, the two armies were engaged in a battle…when a total solar eclipse darkened the skies. Interpreting the event as a warning from their gods, the combatants laid down their weapons as their kings declared a ceasefire and negotiated a treaty.” Of course: eclipses are pacifists.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and have a wonderful week.
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I go back and forth a lot about how much to acknowledge current events in these newsletters. I had always envisioned these posts as a quick pick-me-up or a respite from what else is happening in the world. But that can often also feel like putting one’s head in the sand too. If you like to read this newsletter and if you have a preference, I’d love to hear it.
But in the meantime, I’ve been awed by what is happening on college campuses this week, especially as that expression of free speech is being challenged—often brutally—in the very spaces that are supposed to champion it. If you feel similarly, you can donate in support of bail funds for campus encampments here.
Thank you for writing and publishing this newsletter! Your words always spark joy.
Love! (And thanks for the shoutout!)