“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This is how Anna Karenina begins. I have been reading Anna Karenina all year, [Have you ever taken a full year to read a book? I think I am absolutely disgraceful!], and I am still not finished, so I have yet to judge how Tolstoy will prove this to be true. However, this declaration strikes me as false. Since every family, and every person, is touched by happiness, sadness, worry, sickness, pride, satisfaction, anger, delight, and, in short, every human emotion, the extent of happiness, I think, is how we make peace with the negatives and are able to focus on the positives. Some have more trouble making this peace than others, due to illnesses - mental and physical - and extreme hardship, but nonetheless the extent that one can do that goes far to determine one’s level of happiness. I would say happy families put up with, with good nature, the foibles of their relatives and do not bear grudges, and are helpful to one another. Unhappy families are stuck in a negativity of the past. So maybe now that I am thinking out loud, I am beginning to believe that perhaps Tolstoy is right. Happy families all have short memories; unhappy families dwell on their particular “slings and arrows” of the past.