I’m preparing for my writing class….looking over interviews with writers I’ve saved but not managed to read. Toni Morrison‘s words in a summer O Magazine stop me in my tracks….
I gave a commencement address at Princeton where I told the graduates that I wished them happiness but they shouldn’t settle for that–it wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t important enough.
Her words take the pursuit of happiness and somehow put it in another place, give the headlong rush of all of us toward it another tone.
What do you think?
Karleen Koen — writing life 
I guess it depends on what makes you happy. If you are happy doing things to make the world a better place then maybe that is enough.. If you are happy when everything is all about you all of the time then maybe that shouldn’t be enough.
I wonder what she meant…..
sheer joy/happiness is (fleeting?) . . . I can count on one hand the moments of joy, the latest being when my husband was home (for good) standing in our kitchen, from 4 yrs in Iraq and Afghanistan. I really believe that ‘contentment’ is “important enough” . . . joy/happiness is like the cherry on top of a sundae, special and occasional . . . to remember and trip over with sheer surprise . . . Important ? very . . .