I've been at my new living quarters just over two months, and I'm still struggling to adjust, meet people, and learn to be happy in these new surroundings. At a recent writing group, we wrote to a quote from the novel, Anna Karenina, about happiness: Happy families are all alike. An unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I decided to expand on that a bit. Here's what I wrote: With due respect to Anna Karenina, I think unhappy people are unhappy in their own way as well. Except that we create our own unhappiness. We cannot blame others for how we feel. "Only if we accept what is, can we be happy" – according to the est training book of aphorisms. So I get up every morning now thinking this day will be better, this day I’ll feel happy, and for sure by the end of the day, I’m disappointed. It was a day like all the rest. Lonesome, uninteresting, unexciting. Maybe it’s because the place where I now live has shut all group activities down. People can’t eat together, have group … [Read more...]