Therese J. Borchard

According to renowned psychiatrist Peter Kramer, happiness isn’t the opposite of depression. Resilience is. I’ve always loved that reminder because the word “happiness” makes me uneasy. It’s not that I want to be unhappy, or I don’t want to be happy. It’s that every time I make happiness my goal, I become very unhappy. Like that famous study about suppressing thoughts of white polar bears. When everyone was instructed to think about anything but a white polar bear, they all thought about a white polar bear.