“Receiving is much harder than giving, but this fact is seldom recognized in mainstream American society. Dependent people are often deprived of chances to give, finding that they must endure a state of almost constant relinquishment and passivity. Consequently, the person receiving help accumulates a debt to the other and must bear the weight of feeling beholden day in and day out. There are few means through which the person can pay back a caregiver for rides to the doctor, help with medical bill paperwork, handling loads of laundry, and check-up telephone calls—the list of favors owed can be immense. The dependent person may yearn for something useful to do, only to be admonished, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything.'” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 188)
“Fulfillment need not be what’s just around the corner. In the end, wisdom lies in finding it in the imperfect now.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 178)
“Too often we think that if only we undo the impediments to our happiness, we can be truly happy. But there are always more impediments, more reasons not to be happy now. Helen chose instead to embrace the life she had. She didn’t resent her daughter’s meddling or feel sorry for herself because she wasn’t getting married; she didn’t magnify her unmet desires by treating them as a punishment. They were life, her life. Impediments are the circumstances in which we find happiness.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 178)
“To accept death was to accept life, and to accept life was to live in joy, however dire the circumstances around you.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 163)
“What I came to realize with John was that accepting death—wishing for it, even—didn’t devalue the days he had left, but made each count more because they were so few. It freed him to live in the things he liked, not agonizing over what he would do if he could. This was why talking about wanting to die could cheer him up. Death gave everything its value. The number of times he would see this or that friend was limited, so each time was precious. The moments were supersaturated, not fleeting as they are in youth.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 151)
“‘Happy in spite of’ entails a choice to be happy; it acknowledges problems but doesn’t put them in the way of contentment. ‘Happy if only’ pins happiness on outside circumstances: if only I had more money, less pain, a nicer spouse or house, I’d be happy as a clam. ‘Happy if only’ feeds millions of dollars into lotteries or impulse purchases, which provide nothing of the sort. Ping, by contrast, didn’t expect her hardships to pass, so didn’t pin her happiness on their doing so. When she was younger, she said, she thought moving to America would solve her problems; she found that it just replaced them with others. The lesson was to find happiness not in the absence of pain and loss, but in their acceptance.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 135)
“Troubles are always with us, and getting rid of this one or that won’t make us happy; it’ll just move another hardship to the head of the class.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 134)
“Fred, who had more hardships than most people but was highly grateful, wanted to live to 110; my mother, who had more advantages than most people, saw no point in living. Advantages alone—even awareness of them—weren’t enough, perhaps because they can be lost. Gratitude, on the other hand, was an affirmation that the world gave you things, and might continue to do so.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 122)
“Thanks are the highest form of thought, and… gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” ~ G. K. Chesterton, via Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 118)
“If you believe you are in control of your life, steering it in a course of your choosing, then old age is an affront, because it is a destination you didn’t choose. But if you think of life instead as an improvisation in response to the stream of events coming at you—that is, a response to the world as it is—then old age is more another chapter in a long-running story. The events are different, but they’re always different, and always some seem too much to bear.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 114)
“Problems [are] only problems if you [think] about them that way. Otherwise they [are] life—and yours for the living.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 113)
“We’re made better by loving unconditionally: embracing the perfections in our imperfect mate, accepting that they’ll never change, growing into our own perfections by loving them.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 84)
“Maybe it is a liberty of younger people to think that the best mate is the one you don’t have: a stranger you haven’t met yet or an improved version of your current partner. It favors the future over the present and past—natural when the future looks long and full of potential, less so when you know what’s coming. But it also obscures or diminishes the partner you really have.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 84)
“The drive for trading up, wanting the new and improved, may fuel humanity’s progress, but it also creates a lot of dissatisfaction and anxiety.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 84)
“I have no feeling of an afterlife at all. As a matter of fact, I hope not. I can’t imagine anything going on forever. I miss Walter and I wish I could meet him in another life, but I know I won’t. Actually, it’s rather soothing. It is all going to end; I don’t see anything wrong with that.” ~ John Sorensen, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 83)
“In life one’s parter is often boring or mundane, but in memory he never is.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 81)
“Bad relationships may be more harmful than good relationships are beneficial.” ~ Laura Carstensen, via Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 68)
“How to be happy? Here was a start. Accept whatever kindnesses people offer you, and repay with what you can. Let a friend buy you lunch, then do her a solid in return. You’ll benefit from the favors you receive, but even more from the ones you perform. Don’t begrudge the people who need you; thank them for letting you help them. Give up the obsession with self-reliance; it’s a myth, anyway. None of these comes naturally to me, and even as I write them now, they seem too pat. But in Helen and Howie I saw them in action, again and again, and here is what I saw: they worked. They weren’t genius; they were wisdom.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 62)
“In a relationship, sometimes taking—allowing the other person to do something for you, rather than insisting on doing it yourself—is also a kind of giving. The same applies in friendships or business relationships. True generosity includes enabling others to be generous.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 60)
“I often feel that death is not the enemy of life, but its friend, for it is the knowledge that our years are limited which makes them so precious.” ~ Rabbi Joshua L. Leibman, via Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 46)