Judith Woods
Happiness is... not being surrounded by happy people
David Cameron’s halfforgotten but oddly persistent national wellbeing programme simply refuses to win the Eurolottery and retire to a gîte in Aix-en-Provence. It has been snooping about again, its findings distilled into a list of the “happiest places” in the UK.
Are we? Aren’t we? If not, why the devil not? It’s a terribly un-British approach to gauging our mood – but, then again, it’s been weeks since the Queen bested Victoria, and months since the birth of a princess, so meddling questions about how happy we are feeling will have to do.
Being from Northern Ireland, just down the road from Omagh – which is, apparently, the happiest town in these isles – I am theoretically an expert in these matters. Although in practice, having moved away and being unlikely to return any time soon, my idea of happiness clearly isn’t living in a rural idyll full of happy people.
Because, weirdly, all that extravagant happiness makes it sound like joining a cult, and therein lies the nub of the issue.
Before we drill down any deeper, it might be useful to actually pinpoint what is happiness. (One handy definition might be “no split infinitives in my newspaper”, but let us move swiftly on.)
I have no idea what precisely constitutes happiness, because the parameters keep shifting. None. In my childhood it used to be A Cigar Called Hamlet. Now it appears to be A Benedict Cumberbatch Called Hamlet.
Coca-Cola annexed the concept in 2009 with its “Open Happiness” slogan, only to have it wrested back by Disneyland’s “The happiest place on earth”. In the battle of the brands, though, McDonald’s Happy Meal has pretty much nailed the emotional eating market.
Children, of course, are preprogrammed to be happy with a gusto that borders on the unseemly. They laugh on average 400 times a day, while the rest of humanity can barely reach 17. Is it any wonder that, from Bangkok to Belize, a scoopful of goujons and a fiddly plastic toy puts a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming smile of bliss on kids’ naïve little faces? Why? Because they have no idea what real life is like.
There’s good reason why someone has created a best-selling range of greeting cards reading “Don’t Grow Up. It’s A Trap” – because unless you’re American with a firearms licence, the pursuit of happiness is not an inalienable right.
In fact, here in Britain, it’s a bit vulgar. I recall hearing the hilariously desiccated satirist David Sedaris, USborn but now living in this country, describing the difference between Americans and the British. “In America, if your neighbour gets a Rolls-Royce, you want to get one, too,” he observed. “In Britain, if your neighbour gets a Rolls-Royce, you want him to die in a fiery accident.”
Ouch. But he’s right, though. Rather than defining happiness, perhaps it would be easier to identify the prime causes of unhappiness: envy and competitiveness.
Every guru from Harvard Business School experts to the Dalai Lama has been urging us for years to stop making invidious comparisons. Study after study has shown that comparing ourselves unfavourably with peers or neighbours or family erodes satisfaction, corrodes self-esteem and leaches away happiness.
Gratitude, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness are the basis for happiness, which makes me wonder why the Church of England ever went out of fashion (those who believe in a religion are happier than average).
Throw in spiritually fortifying green spaces – the top five happiest places in the UK include the Ribble Valley, West Somerset and the Orkney Islands – and enough money to be comfortable (itself a sliding scale, but in February of this year, a study claimed it was a perky £80,840 per annum) and you are far more likely to be content with your lot.
Incidentally, the top three most miserable places were deemed Bolsover in Derbyshire, Cannock Chase in Staffordshire and Dundee city, leading many locals to protest that they are perfectly happy. They probably are, because, without wishing to sound like an Athena poster, happiness begins on the inside.
Some people are naturally glass-half-full-ers; others are not. But unless they are clinically depressed, scientists insist, the half-empty brigade can acquire the tendency to look on the bright side by practising mindfulness, changing their thought patterns and deciding to be happy.
The search for contentment can lead us anywhere – particularly Fermanagh – but the reassuring truth is that happiness is a psychological direction, not a geographical place.
Scientists insist that the half-empty brigade can acquire the tendency to look on the bright side