Being miserable (re-posted from 2010)

E. Stanley Jones writes:

"The most miserable people in this world are the people who are self-centered, who don't do anything for anyone except themselves. They are centers of misery with no exception...on the contrary, the happiest people are those that deliberately take on sorrows and troubles of others. Their hearts sing with a strange, wild joy, automatically and with no exceptions" (Disciplines of the Holy Spirit, p. 117).

Shane Claiborne writes:

"There are times I have been very frustrated with wealthy folks for hoarding their stuff. But now I know enough rich folks to know the loneliness that is all too familiar to many of them. I read a study comparing the health of a society with its economics, and one of the things it revealed is that wealthy countries like ours have the highest rates of depression, suicide, and loneliness. We are the richest and most miserable people in the world" (The Irresistible Revolution, p. 56).