How to Escape the Happiness Guilt Trap

“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.

Browse your social media, scroll through your Netflix documentary queue, or turn on cable television, and you will be flooded with reasons to be worried and angry about issues large and small. There is plenty wrong in the world, lots of injustice, and too much suffering. The pandemic made that clear to even the most oblivious among us.

That suffering is not uniform, though. And for those who are better off, that might just provoke a bit of guilt. They might conclude that to project cheerfulness and life satisfaction is to be irresponsible and insensitive to the world’s problems. Some