Postpone Your Pleasures

My father-in-law, with whom I was very close, spent most of his life on the same working-class street in Barcelona’s El Clot neighborhood. Born in 1929, he saw Spain’s bloody civil war taking place literally in front of his house. His family experienced a lot of suffering. Some died; others spent years in jail or were forced into exile. He himself spent a year in a refugee camp, an experience that affected him for the rest of his life. Every time he wanted to make a point about society or culture, he always started with: “Well, during the civil war …”

Continue reading the entire piece here at The Atlantic (paywall)

Arthur C. Brooks is a distinguished fellow at the Civitas Institute. He is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership, happiness, and social entrepreneurship. He was president of the American Enterprise Institute from 2009 to 2019.