Our processed food habit is killing us

What is happiness? I think, by now, most of us – apart, perhaps, from Nigel Farage – have concluded that it’s not a cigar called Hamlet. In my house, it all depends on whom you ask: fresh bedsheets (me), single malt and a documentary on the Austrohungarian Empire (my husband); tickets to Reading Festival (the teenager); a new and more explosive chemistry set (the nine-year-old); and cockroaches (the chameleon).

That’s because happiness isn’t the same as contentment, although it sounds more fun. And it is more fun, but that’s because it comes and goes.

A Gallup poll of 1.7million people in 164 countries showed that, after economic adjustments, peak happiness comes with an individual income of between £43,478 and £54,347. But the US researchers who analysed the results described happy people as those who “dealt best with day-to-day emotions”, rather than Truman Show parodies of delight.

I’d call that contentment, as it’s rooted in resilience rather than rapture. It also dovetails with previous findings about comparison anxiety; unhappiness results when we feel our peers are doing better than us. If we feel we are on a par or slightly ahead on our £50k a year, we are satisfied.

Does that equate with happiness? There’s a whole industry devoted to it, so it’s by no means a straightforward concept. I see happiness as synonymous with a philosophical acceptance. A glass that’s half- empty is also half-full. It’s also refillable. The only difference is perspective.

Money matters, of course it does, and not just because it’s marginally nicer being sad in a cab than on a bus. But as we grow older and wiser, we recognise that more money does not necessarily guarantee more happiness; it’s what we do with it that counts.

In the words of Mr Micawber: “Annual income £20, annual expenditure £19, 19 and six, result happiness.

“Annual income £20, annual expenditure £20, nought and six, result misery.”