Uncle Bob’s Big Book of Happy
I should make this clear from the start. None of this is easy. The first chapter of this book starts out saying exactly that:
This will not be easy.
I tell some hard truths. Don’t be misled by the mirthful lilt of my title. Uncle Bob here will do his best to help you be happy, but none of this means diddly-squat if you if you can’t face harsher aspects of our everyday journey.
Happy and easy—I don’t think so. Not in the world I tell. Matters profound, intimate; cosmic and common; cruel and blissful; deeply mundane and sweetly eternal…are seldom honestly confronted without a great deal of effort.
Happiness is an art, and art is never easy.
But, oh…if you ever want to take a joyful breath of the life you are living—forget the mortgage, the fools who run things, the pain in your get-along—realize by proof of the people who love you, the taste of a good meal, the bird-sound, wind-stirred, sky-vast wonder of a world just beyond the clasp of drudgery: nobody owns your soul.
Nobody.
