Happiness is an inside job*

I’ve been wondering if happiness is an inside job. To find out, here’s three questions for you.  Do not over think them:

1. Are you happy?
2. How do you feel when you are happy?
3. What makes you happy?

Happiness is an odd concept.  It is an emotion or a state to be in.  Very clever people have spent hundreds of years trying to understand it and measure it. But no one (at least not according to Google) has worked out how you calculate just how happy you can be. The only answer I can find is that ‘happiness cannot be measured’.  I do suspect that there are some very rich Psychiatrists out there who are happy with the money that they have earned from trying unsuccessfully to find the solution to the happiness puzzle.

I’ve been thinking about being happy a lot recently.  I’ve been wondering why I do certain things, even though they make me miserable.  Why do I say ‘yes’ and commit myself to do particular tasks, when doing so puts me under pressure?  Why don’t I say no?  These things do not make me happy.  Yet I do them anyway.

Mostly, I’ve been listening to my daughter.  She is eleven but she is the most perceptive person I know.  She drives me mad because she asks endless questions.  I have of course bought this on myself. I’ve encouraged her to have an enquiring mind and I teach her to have curiosity about everything.  These days, the questions are mostly of the financial variety. For example, ‘can I have that very expensive pair of trainers?” Or can I just order this extortionately over-priced bit of tech off Amazon’?.  Every now and again though she says things that make me stop in my tracks.  Recently it was ‘Mummy, why are you doing this when it just makes you so angry?’.  Good point.  Why do I put myself through this stuff???

So how do you know when you are happy?  It’s ok wanting to be happy but surely you can’t go around all the time with an inner feeling of joy.  There are things we all have to do that maybe we don’t like but that we know will make life a little better or easier if we just get on with them.  

I get up early every Saturday morning and sort out the house (or at least I try). I make it cleaner, tidier, try to find the kitchen surfaces, that sort of thing.  Now, what would make me happy would be for me not to do this.  Happiness for me would be having a lie in. Then get up slowly, have a nice coffee and a pastry and watch the world go by for a bit.  Instead, I get up at the crack of dawn, go to the supermarket when its quiet, just so that I can park and avoid everyone. I then race back home to vacuum like a maniac.  

I suppose that the reason that I do this is, is in the hope of making every day life a bit simpler.  For me, it is always a bonus if you can actually find a pen that works or a matching pair of socks without having to turn our normally chaotic house upside down and make it twice as bad as it was before.

I’ve been realising for some time that (to use a good old cliché) life really is too short to be miserable.  I have also been realising just what the effect my being under stress and unhappy has on my family.  When I’m calm, things tend to run far more smoothly then if I’m sad and struggling.  The kids don’t argue as much.  We have a better routine.  We eat better.  There is a general feeling of peace and that we can cope with whatever life happens to be throwing at us.  The best feeling I have, which I think must be happiness, is last thing at night when I know that we are all in bed, fed, safe and warm and everything is quiet and still.

I am learning about happiness is that it isn’t about having lots stuff and things.  It’s actually about having the basics. I put this knowledge down to getting old (I am not telling you how old).  However, the more stuff I have, the more I realise that what I have is just becoming clutter and then all I do is worry about how I’m going to recycle it.  I actually don’t need it.  Let’s look at life at the moment. It cannot be any coincidence that collectively, as a country, we are all unhappy knowing that our food prices are going up and we are worried about putting the heating on.  

We need to be warm, with enough food and people we love to be happy.  Another pair of shoes or a fancy phone isn’t going to change the state you are in or magically improve it.  I often think this must go back to our times thousands of years ago in caves.  I’m now willing to bet that, if I had been alive then, as long as I had a fairly clean animal skin (unbranded would do), could get the fire going, were able to put something to cook on the spit to eat, all with the knowledge that the sabre toothed tiger would never find me,  I could have been pretty content.  

I’ve been reading that one way to measure happiness is to get to the end of every day and see if you can name three things that have been good about it.  I’ve done this exercise and have found that what makes me happy seem to have three things in common. They normally involve having more time to spend with the people I want to be with, being able to eat so I’m not hungry (food does seem to play a disproportionately large part in my life) and me achieving something I’ve been wanting to do.   The one theme that runs through all of the things that make me happy is how simple they are.  They don’t cost a lot.  With a bit of effort, I can manage them.

So, if you can’t buy happiness (though money undoubtedly helps) does that mean that happiness is actually a state of mind?  Can you choose to be happy?  Is it possible to decide that, not matter what the challenges of each day are, that you are going to be happy, no matter what?  Is being happy actually a skill to be learned?  I’m going to try and see.

*As well said by William Arthur Ward

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