When UA basketball officials were hustling to find a replacement for basketball coaching legend Lute Olson, Louisville men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino on their list. According to folks in the know, UA officials talked to Pitino at least once, but couldn’t ever shake him loose of Kentucky.

After yesterday’s revelations that the coach – reportedly a Roman Catholic father of five – had sex with a virtual stranger and than later gave her $3,000, which she used to get an abortion, UA athletic officials (not to mention President Robert N. Shelton) are probably breathing a huge sigh of relief that Pitino rebuffed their advances.

The story is sad, on so many levels, and can be found here.

Happy people in Manchester, England; Getty Images/Daylife

Welcome to the weekly Happiness Project meeting! Today I’d like to share some thoughts – and get your input – about definitions of happiness and why we avoid doing things that might make us happy. Both defining the word and knowing what keeps us stuck in our misery-pattern is key if the happiness is the goal.

My Webster’s dictionary defines the term “happy” in four ways:

• favored by circumstances; lucky; fortunate
• having, showing or causing a feeling of great pleasure, contentment, joy, etc; joyous, glad, pleased
• exactly appropriate to the occasion; suitable and clever; apt; felicitous
• intoxicated, or irresponsibly quick to act; see: slap-happy trigger-happy

I’m not sure any of those definitions fit what I consider to be happiness. I find it intriguing that one definition is acting as is exactly suitable for a circumstance. I mean, think about it: If I won the Pulitzer, I might act one way, while you might act another and who is to decide what is “exactly appropriate”? (more…)