"I've been thinking about disowning some of my genes lately. I have a few healthy, happy, long-living optimists in my family tree - most of them fans of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, a major champion of positive thinking. But I've got plenty of ancestors who played out more tortured hands."
"When we strike a balance between the challenge of an activity and our skill at performing it, when the rhythm of the work itself feels in sync with our pulse, when we know that what we're doing matters, we can get totally absorbed in our task. That is happiness."
11 likes
Source: Ariel Gore (2010). “Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness”, p.123, Macmillan
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Ariel Gore
"The first person who ever told me that happiness was work was this manic-depressive artist I knew when I was in my 20s. I was like, 'What are you talking about? Happiness just happens. That's even the root of that word. How could it be work?"
"I think there are different kinds of happiness. We know when we're happy a lot of the time, but then there are those moments that have more of an afterglow, when the happiness has more depth."
"The last introvert in a world of extroverts. Silence: my response to both emptiness and saturation. But silence frightens people. I had to learn how to talk. Out of politeness."
"I don't know if my mother was a narcissist - or bi-polar or borderline. Those were words she tossed around over the years."
"A lot of women make choices based on how they saw their mother's choices working out, how they saw the choices of the women elders in their lives working out. There's some rebellion in that, but there's also some deep reflection."