Happiness

We recieved a new shipment of books, and while I was putting them on the shelf I got distracted by Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, one of my favorite books ever, which I hadn’t read since Jeanne and I went to Kelea Surf spa for women in Costa Rica (one of my best vacations ever). Read this quote from page 260, which I loved so much I have to post:

“People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”