Check out Stephanie West Allen's Idealawg post on the Secret Society of Happy Lawyers.

I searched for an image this morning to accompany the post by typing "happy lawyers" into the google image search engine and found -- a single unhappy emoticon! 

I found the image to the right by typing, simply, "happiness," for which there are about 334,000 images.  334,000 to 1.

Clearly, happy lawyers (see Lawyers with a Life) is an idea whose time is still to come.

But that's no reason not to make it happen!  For the seventh generation.

For more on this topic click here (Idealawg) here (Evan Shaeffer's Legal Underground) here (Settle It Now Blogspot) here (Melissa Kluger's Precedent, the New Rules of Law and Style) here (Lawyer, Woman, Mother) here(Women's Law Network) here (Settle It Now Negotiation Blog) here (Wired GC) here (Stay of Execution) here (Basquette Case) and here (the Chicago Sun Times). 

In this week's Harper's, however, Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed, On Not Getting By in America) reminds us that "positivity" has its dark side.  Says she,

[W]hat is truly sinister about the positivity cult is that it seems to reduce our tolerance of other people's suffering.  Far from being a "culture of complaint" that upholds "victims," ours has become "less and less tolerant of people having a bad day or a bad year," according to Barbara Held, professor of psychology at Bowdoin College and a leading critic of positive psychology.  If no one will listen to my problems, I won't listen to theirs:  "no whining," as the popular bumper stickers and wall plaques warn.  Thus the cult acquires a viral-like reproductive energy, creating an empathy deficit that pushes ever more people into a harsh insistence on positivity in others. . . 

"To be hope free," she concludes, "is to acknowledge the lion in the tall grass, the tumor in the CAT scan, and to plan one's moves accordingly."

We can, I believe, harmonize these two strands of thought --  balance the pessimism of the mind with an optimism of the heart; let our own hope and happiness give us the strength and courage to change the things we can rather than accepting as they are the things that might well be changed if only we would rouse ourselves from slumber to do so.     

Because it's Sunday, however, and I was raised  Protestant (Presbyterian) I give you the words of my favorite Christian prayer -- one I do believe holds the "secret to finding eternal happiness" and by the by makes improving the lot of others central to our own well-being.  

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.