Scripture says we were made for joy. It also commands joy, which can seem strange, since joy feels like something that either arrives or stays away on its own. The science of memory dissolves the strangeness. It locates much of our happiness in a place we can actually tend, and it turns out God planted his festivals in exactly that place.

Some of the most interesting work on happiness draws a line between two selves. Memory scientist Charan Ranganath builds on the psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his 2024 book Why We Remember to describe an experiencing self that lives through each moment and a remembering self that keeps the account. The surprising finding is that our lasting sense of how happy we are flows from the remembering self far more than from the moment-to-moment experiencing one. The satisfaction you take from a trip, a season, a whole stretch of life comes mostly from what you remember of it. And memory tilts toward the good: people recall pleasant experiences more readily than hard ones, and that tilt grows stronger with age. Returning to happy memories has been shown to lift mood, brighten our outlook on the future, and even make us kinder to the people around us.

Joy, it turns out, largely lives in memory. Tend your remembering, and you tend your gladness.

This puts a tool in your hands. The happiness of a season is settled partly while you live it and partly afterward, in how you remember it. Two people can walk through the same year and end it in different places, one rehearsing its griefs, the other its gifts. The raw material was the same. The remembering made the difference.