Two of our stories today prompt a question: What is the true substance of happiness? For nearly five decades, Marci Carpenter has found an answer among the stacks at the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library in Seattle, a public institution now threatened by  budget cuts. That’s where she first encountered the poetry of Robert Frost. “It was this really liberating experience,” she recalls. That kind of freedom resonates with Miia Huitti, too. As a new mother, the career-driven Finn found her way through an emotional crisis by practicing gratitude. “It’s not that you have to be joyful all the time,” she says. “You can’t see the stars if it’s light all the time. It’s an inner sense that you can be happy no matter the circumstance.”