This is an excellent, well written by Francisco Ugarte and very readable book.
We all want to be happy, but many times look for happiness in the wrong places. Hence, it is not enough to want to be happy; we have to learn how to be so.
This book will encourage you to avoid obstacles to happiness, such as resentment and envy, and to develop attitudes that promote happiness, such as gratitude and optimism.
Therefore, as the book points out, happiness is a choice that we make in the course of our ordinary life and not just in extraordinary moments, and is compatible with pain and suffering.
The last chapter of the book (Chapter 5) is especially compelling. It begins with the question: Can suffering bring happiness? The author recognizes that pain and suffering are related to evil (an absence of a good that we expect to possess). He also points out that the evil from which pain derives can give rise to two types of suffering: physical and moral. Although pain is not something good because it derives from evil, it can be transformed into an important value if it is channeled adequately and assigned meaning. It then ceases to be an obstacle to happiness. He explains that suffering is an inevitable reality of our human condition, but it possesses both a human and a spiritual value.
Finally, this book will motivate you to open yourself to God and to others.
