The Art of a Happy Life: 52 Lessons from Life Travel, Triumph, and Everyday Wisdom

The Art of a Happy Life is not a formula for happiness. It is a collection of fifty-two reflections drawn from a life lived across continents, careers, classrooms, families, friendships, setbacks, and unexpected moments of grace.Dr. Jerry Yonga begins with a deceptively simple question: What has life been trying to teach us?The answers emerge in places where wisdom is easy to overlook: a power outage in Cameroon, an older nun on an airplane in Thailand, a traffic light, a soccer field, a failed plan, a conversation with an old friend, an emoji from a grandchild, and a long drive across San Diego in search of the right pizza.Along the way, Yonga challenges familiar assumptions about success, ambition, health, aging, work, family, and even happiness itself. He asks whether we sometimes become more technologically sophisticated without becoming wiser, whether achievement and happiness always belong together, and whether the pursuit of a longer life can sometimes distract us from creating a larger one.Each reflection closes with three invitations: Carry This, Wise Thought, and A Question Worth Keeping-giving readers an opportunity not simply to read the author's story, but to examine their own.Warm, humorous, candid, and deeply reflective, The Art of a Happy Life is ultimately about noticing what matters while life is still happening.Because happiness may not be waiting at the destination.Perhaps it has been scattered along the road all along.That description is fully aligned with the manuscript's recurring themes of reflection, everyday wisdom, happiness, mortality, family connection, and "enlarging life."