In recent years, psychologists have published some interesting research on the science of happiness, which percolated down to popular books and blogs and became part of a cult of narcissism. The Times has an article on the latest pop book on happiness. The article is entitled "On Top of the Happiness Racket," and a racket it is.

Over the past few months, I've rearranged my life completely. After I get the kids on the school bus, I go to the gym and run two miles. Then I come home and plan out the day on the calendar. I use iCal and port everything to the iPhone. I shower and put on nice clothes. I do household chores and write. I'm going to sleep earlier and cooking more food. I drastically changed my life goals and lifestyle. I am probably doing a lot of the things that Rubin describes in her book.

There's also other stuff that Rubin prescribes in her book that would make me distinctly unhappy. She wants us all to do scrap booking. Scrap booking does not make me happy. I don't want to glue pictures of kitties in books. I do want to see Jeff Koons' new exhibit. That would make me happy. So, notions of happiness vary from person to person.

I do think that a lot of the happiness books and other lifestyle books about zen living and all that come out of our fucked up lifestyles, especially here in the New York city area.

This TED talk described certain cultures that produced people who live to an especially long age. The guy talked about people who lived simple lives, but did them well. They took pride in fishing or in raising children. They had lives full of movement and exercise. They had circles of family and friends that they saw regularly. They took time to eat well.

These people didn't need books on happiness. Their culture guided them to lives that not only kept them happy, but kept them healthy for a very long time.

Here, we work too many hours and are consumed with career success. We don't socialize enough. We don't spend enough time with our kids. We survive just by putting out one fire after another.

A friend just told me about a woman that she knew, an important professor at an Ivy League college, who chose to work through Thanksgiving, rather than eating turkey with her kids, because she couldn't spare the day off.

We also sit in front of a computer for too long. The TED guy talked about the importance of daily exercise. He doesn't mean the two-mile sprints at the gym followed by hours of sedentary computer time, which is what I do. He said that constant movement of gardening, walking to the supermarket, hauling laundry baskets up the stairs is what the healthy 100-year olds did. We're getting farther and farther away from that.

People need more than scrapbooking to keep them happy. They need jobs that really end at 5:00, so they can have time to glue kitties or whatever. They need low stress, flexible jobs that will pay them enough to afford housing and receive proper medical care. Quality education must exist in all towns regardless of the price of the homes.

Steve and I are back to fantasizing about getting a farm in upstate New York.