Happy New Year, and welcome to the new St. Richard?s website and my blog. A while ago I mentioned to Sheryl Rose the possibility of starting a blog, but I never pursued it very seriously. In December, with the expected launch of the new St. Richard's website, Sheryl called and asked if I was serious about writing something, and, in the category of "be careful what you ask for," I said yes.
Having agreed to start a blog, I quickly began to wonder what I might write about. As fate would have it, a couple of days later on December 15, 2013, there was a column in The New York Times by Arthur Brooks entitled "A Formula For Happiness" which caught my eye.
In the column Mr. Brooks reported on research into why some people are happy and others are not. Not surprisingly, a good part of the explanation for why people are, or are not, happy relates to aspects of their lives over which they have not control. Heredity makes a big difference, as do things outside our control such as sickness or the death or those close to us.
But, according to Mr. Brooks and the research from the University of Chicago that he quoted, four basic values in our lives- -which we can choose to pursue or not--make a significant difference in whether or not we are happy. The four values are: faith, family, friends and work. People who place importance on those values and make them important in their lives find greater happiness, greater joy, in their days than those who do not.
It is my hope that this blog will be a reflection on those values from a Catholic perspective, recognizing that the Gospel-- the source of our faith--is truly a message of great joy (as Pope Francis just wrote so eloquently), and recognizing as well that the values Mr. Brooks names--faith, family, friends and work--are not separate compartments of our lives but rather strands of meaning that are interwoven like fibres of muscle or cords of a rope to support us in living a life filled with the deep joy God wants us to experience.
Perhaps we can jointly reflect on how to live with those values in mind and in action, and so truly have a Happy New Year.