"No matter your economic circumstance, probably the most beneficial way to cope with the current situation is to maintain a habit of personal generosity,"says Stephen Post, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics in the School of Medicine at Stony Brook University and co-author of the book Why Good Things Happen to Good People. "There's no way in the world bureaucracies and government requirements can substitute for the authentic actions of giving. It's in these small details that people become fully human."
Post will discuss the "science of goodness" next Wednesday during his keynote address at "Religious Practice and Health: What the Research Says," a one-day conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by The Heritage Foundation. "It's good to be good," he says. "People who live generously are, on the whole, happier and healthier, and they live a little longer than those who aren't generosity-oriented."