Sometimes we have to go to the ends of the earth to find happiness, but the effort is always worth it. At 10 Wednesday morning I headed down the hill to San Diego, boarded AMTRAK at noon, arrived in LA at 3 and LAX just after 4. My plane to New Zealand was leaving just before midnight, but I have a thing about being late. While waiting, I started reading Martin Seligman’s “Authentic Happiness.”

Dr Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania is the founder of “positive psychology.” Basically, psychology and psychiatry focus on all that is wrong with us. But until Dr Seligman and others came along, very few researchers and clinicians were paying attention to what we did right. Dr Seligman’s book is both provocative and enlightening, and I will have a lot more to say about it in a future post.

Thirteen hours after boarding my flight, I touched down in Auckland. It was eight on a Friday morning. I lost a day crossing the International Date Line. Three hours later, I arrived in Wellington. My daughter was there, holding my eight-month-old grandson, Little Teddy. Then I was holding Little Teddy.

Happiness - sometimes words can’t express it.

This is John McManamy, extremely jet-lagged and exhausted, reporting live - and happy - from New Zealand.