[Copy of Facebook Status Update]

Friends, if you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll see a note from friend Kristin Vala Ragnarsdottir saying she missed seeing me at the High-Level Meeting on Happiness hosted by the Prime Minister of Bhutan at UN headquarters in NY. This is a very significant meeting, and I was pleased and honored to be invited. (They even said, “and please bring your guitar” … along with our recent Life Beyond Growth report.) I really hope you all take note of this meeting, the declaration they will issue, the World Happiness Report released there, and more.

So, why didn’t I go?

Simple: it would have meant missing important events with my children … adding stress to my wife’s work schedule … well, several other kinds of stress. Ultimately, a light dawned, and I decided to stay home. It did not make sense to sacrifice my own family’s happiness, in order to attend a meeting on happiness, no matter how important that meeting turns out to be.

But let me voice my strong support for the meeting’s them of “sustainable happiness” from here in Stockholm. We, and the planet, really need it.