Prakriti Tandon

Within the first five minutes of walking into graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister’s exhibit, “The Happy Show,” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, I found myself being instructed to drop a quarter into a machine whose destination seemed to be smack in the middle of the sidewalk outside (and conferred no immediate gratification to …

My mother was the victim of an armed robbery. Revisiting this trauma reminds her (in her words) “to hold them in the light.” How is my mother able not just to allay her anger and to practice forgiveness, but actually to desire the elevation of her aggressors?

As I pondered the topic for this article, I intended to focus on the purely euphoric experience of surfing, and the myriad ways in which it fulfilled a Positive Psychology purpose for me: flow, positive affect, flourishing through physical activity, and more. Just as positive psychology seeks not to reject the notion that life has …