Researchers who study happiness across decades keep arriving at the same uncomfortable finding: income, relationships, and health matter less than whether a person can sit inside an ordinary moment without mentally reaching for a better one.

The uncomfortable part of happiness research is not that money fails to matter, or that relationships fail to matter, or that health fails to matter. All three matter. The uncomfortable part is that none of them fully protects a person from the habit of being elsewhere. A person can be sitting in a safe home, … Read more