So let's get into it then.

Your book is a fascinating study and happiness and its place in our lives.

And this is a subject that I'm really interested in and some of my writing and my work in religion and literature.

And there are a lot of places that we could begin and go into discussion, but I was interested in a

stat of a survey that came out recently where survey said that 69% of people in 42 countries stated that happiness is extremely

important to them.

But it seems like there's been a lot of pushback in recent years

against the idea that we should view happiness

as an important part of our lives.

The different influencers have been talking

about how happiness is not really something

that we should be pursuing, or we'd be better off if we didn't make it such a goal in our lives or there are other people

out there influencers and scholars alike have been talking about how maybe we should strive for other things except for happiness and do you my question is do you view yourself in your book as maybe part of a pushback against this pushback, if you will?

And if so, why do you think it's important to oppose this anti-appiness narrative?

Well, I'm, yes, thank you for that question. I'm, it wasn't written as a, I wasn't even aware of the original pushback in order to push back against that.

I think it's the people who say, oh, you know, you shouldn't pursue happiness or there's there's a deleterious element to pursuing happiness.

I think are missing a key element to happiness which is that you shouldn't be willfully pursuing happiness. So in the last chapter of my book I have a

quote from Victor Frankel where he's basically saying I'm paraphrasing his words I don't have

the exact quote in front of me but he's basically saying as relating to success

willfully success is something that comes as a result of you you doing the right things.

Well, the exact same quote applies

simply replace the word success by the word happiness.

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