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	Jim Palmer ⁦‪@jimpalmer‬⁩ There is a fundamental misknowledge about true happiness and how one finds it. apnews.com/0f6b9be04fa0d3…   6/18/20, 6:29 AM

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Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Anne Frank's "best remedy"

On this day in 1942, about a month before she and her family went into hiding, 13-year-old Anne Frank (books by this author) began to keep her diary. The family was betrayed by Dutch informants and taken away to the concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1944; Anne and her sister Margot were later transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where they died of typhus. Friends retrieved the diary after the Frank family's capture, and they gave it to Otto Frank, Anne's father and the only surviving member of the family, on his release in 1945. At first, Anne had kept the diary for herself alone, but later decided it was important as an eyewitness account, and she planned to publish it after the war. Since she didn't survive, her father published it for her in 1947, calling it The Diary of a Young Girl; it's been translated into more than 65 languages, and it made Anne one of the best-known victims of the Holocaust.

She wrote: "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles."

And, "I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments."

And, "How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway. ... And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!"

And, "It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." WA

Tweet from Brain Pickings (@brainpickings)

Brain Pickings (@brainpickings) tweeted at 9:45 PM on Mon, Jun 08, 2020: Frankenstein author Mary Shelley on nature and the meaning of happiness https://t.co/kXi3kOtvF3 https://t.co/7wHFv9sxaf (https://twitter.com/brainpickings/status/1270185100538449920?s=02) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download?s=13

Tweet from TPM Philosophy Quote (@tpmquote)

TPM Philosophy Quote (@tpmquote) tweeted at 6:00 PM on Wed, Jun 10, 2020: Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.--George Santayana (https://twitter.com/tpmquote/status/1270853260795092992?s=02) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download?s=13

We Need a Trick to Feel Our Joys as Deep as Our Griefs

From The New York Times:

We Need a Trick to Feel Our Joys as Deep as Our Griefs

A true story.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/opinion/pets-death-grief.html?smid=em-share

Read Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson on GoComics.com | June 07, 2020

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2020/06/07

Weathered happiness

Fleur Adcock's poetic tribute to the comfortable self-acceptance that maturity can bring includes lines I'll be sure to share, next time Happiness class convenes.

"...now that I am in love with a place/which doesn’t care how I look, or if I’m happy,/happy is how I look, and that’s all..."

A place can be geographic, like her and Wordsworth's beloved English Lake District, and it can also be a graceful arrival in the autumn of life. It's so good, having weathered many storms, finally to be "indifferent to mirrors." You get what you see, and you see it's good enough.

Thanks to David Whyte, again, for mentioning the "erotic librarian" from New Zealand.

Maria Popova has a nice appreciation, and the poet's rendition, here.

Ernest Hemingway’s Grandson on an Unpublished Story from the Author’s Archive

... "Pursuit as Happiness" was the last and climactic section of the book. Hemingway adapted his fourth section title from a famous phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence: "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I think it is a very apt title for this unpublished story, because it is not just about catching and losing a large marlin—in the same way that "The Old Man and the Sea" is not just about catching and losing a large marlin to sharks. It is about the joy of fishing and the happiness that it brings.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/ernest-hemingway-06-08-20?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker