PDF Pursuits of Happiness: On Being Interested

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Pursuits
of
Happiness
On
Being
Interested
Description
Brann is a person of many strong interests The
central chapter
of
this book On Being Interested offers a road map
to staying happy cultivate real interestsFor John
Locke and his disciple Thomas Jefferson happiness
is not pleasure Like those precursors Brann
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teaches Americans to free themselves from
attachment to superficial gratifications and to
pursue a higherquality contentment with life She
locates this contentment in our interestednessAs
an American my encounter with Branns work calls
me back to a sense of my own good fortune Against
a keening background noise of lamentover the
economy the climate the pandemic the predations
of technology crimeEva Branns bright witness
lifts me up and outPeggy Ellsberg Los Angeles
Review of BooksBrann holds us steady in a world
that sometimes seems chaoticAt this time the
loudest voices among us are dystopian and spoken
language is losing all civility If you want
a change from this Pursuits of Happiness is a
good place to start Heres a fascinating
independentminded writer whose words connect us
to living more fully toward a more beneficial
lifethoughtforms as catalystsWashington
Independent Review of BooksThe essays of Pursuits
of Happiness are articulations of Eva Branns
vocational happiness of thinking things through
To Ms Brann our inalienable right to the pursuit
of happiness is the right not to an endless chase
but rather the right to the actual practice of
happiness as in the pursuit of a vocation With
essays like Tips on Reading Homer and The
Greatness of Great Books she keeps at her calling
to understand the world around us and between us
to listen to our inner selftalk and to consider
what comes perhaps from beyond us