Are we too distracted to be happy?

IS EVERYBODY happy? Chances are the query is met with a gusty reply of ”Naw!” With one wee voice at the back squeaking “Yay!”

We don’t know what it means to be happy. Or at least I don’t. I confuse it with distraction. Thus I look forward every evening to closing the curtains, watching a DVD boxed set (currently Person of Interest) and eating three squares of dark chocolate.

I consider it a good experience if I forget time, my surroundings and my problems, comparatively few though these may be (a stray hair is tickling the inside of my right ear; that’s about it really). So happiness, as I see it (doubtless mistakenly), is to escape from reality, which I experience as disappointing, stupid and pointless.

But if reality weren’t there I’d have nothing to escape from. It’s that old, disturbing yin and yang thing. Can’t know good without knowing bad. Can’t have beauty without ugliness.

I witter thus after reading about the new film Hector and the Search for Happiness, based on the novel by French psychiatrist Francois Lelord, and starring the estimable Simon Pegg.

The book is billed as “uplifting” and, while I’m far too busy watching DVD boxes sets to read it, summaries say it advocates that you value your friends and take holidays in the sun. Naught for your comfort there, if you were looking for something you didn’t know already. It sounds disappointingly incremental rather than fundamental.

But it was something Pegg himself said, in an interview with the

Happiness, as I see it, (doubtless mistakenly), is to escape from reality, which I experience as disappointing and stupid

BBC, that reminded me of the yin-yangery mentioned above. He said: “You have to know unhappiness to be happy.”

Can I be the only one who finds that profoundly depressing? On a more uplifting note, there are signs, Simon says, that we’re becoming happier over time, particularly since the 1950s, which can probably be attributed to inside lavatories.

The problem is that, while we have more to be happy about, we don’t actually notice that we’re happy – because we’re too distracted. “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.” Silence ensues.

I realise that you’re reading this on a Monday, the day that so many people dread.

But, hey, just look forward to Friday when you can tell yourself: “At least it isn’t Monday.”

And round and round we go. See? It’s a grand life – as long as we can keep escaping it.