On the Way to the Courthouse Wisdom

On the Way to the Courthouse Wisdom

As most of you reading this know, I write a regular piece I call “What I’ve Learned about Life on the Way to the Courthouse”.  I send it to several   hundred friends and clients.  It is also published in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, and I record them for WFDD FM radio station, Wake Forest University’s local National Public Radio affiliate.

I have been encouraged to send a weekly message, so here goes.

The question of what it is, exactly, that makes people happy has been around since Man first told a story on the wall of a cave.  But science itself has learned to define it more precisely now.

Here is a brief conclusion of empirical data about an important moving part of this mystical thing we call happiness.  Hopefully, it will provide another sight line to this place where happiness resides.

Laughing all the way.  Hundreds of adults interviewed in a number of studies show that happiness is related to humor.  The ability to laugh is a great source of life satisfaction, whether you laugh at a good joke, at yourself, or at life itself.   Solomon, J. 1996. American Behavior Scientist 39:249.

So let’s  try to laugh more.  Humor is all around us if we are on the lookout for it.  It sure lightens the load.

Mike Wells