I’m teaching a class on happiness tomorrow and the thought of it is telling my brain that it’s 3PM instead of the 3AM that it really is. I’m awake. I’m very much awake, and I’m trembling all over. My couch is covered in books, my notepad is full of scribbles, and up until I sat down to write this post, I couldn’t stop pacing around the apartment. My cats got tired of watching me and fell asleep.

I don’t know if happiness is something one can teach and, even if it is, whether I can teach it. I don’t know whether this class will have any impact on anyone or anything aside from my sleep cycle, but it seems that there’s a possibility that it may, and so long as that possibility exists I need to take it very seriously.

Why? What’s the point of this class? What’s the point of happiness?

The simplest answer is that it feels good. In the book A Primer in Positive Psychology (the best textbook ever written), Chris Peterson points out that happiness has also been shown to predict things like long lasting relationships, financial success, and physical health. But what makes it so God damn important in my eyes is the realization that you can either live a life bursting with joy and radiance or you can live your life as though it’s a homework assignment. An entire life cherished, or an entire life simply, spent. You only have one teeny life, and how you live it depends entirely on your perspective.

When I think of the point of happiness, I also think of the point at which my own perspective shifted forever. It was in high school, and I had been depressed for over a year, maybe a lot longer. Then in one instant, I suddenly snapped out of it. I don’t know exactly what did it (though I’m sure the antidepressants helped), but suddenly I was exuberant, and I’ll never forget the contrast between those two mental states: like lying under a pile of bricks one moment and then floating up on a cloud of balloons in the next. Being mentally present for that transition taught me how to recreate that feeling voluntarily, but more importantly, it taught me that life can feel terrible, it can feel like nothing much, or it can feel wonderful. And if it can be wonderful, why not work to make it wonderful?

Feeling wonderful makes us want to do wonderful things – to create, to build, to nurture, to solve, to take risks, and to make others feel wonderful. And that’s the point; isn’t it?