What is it to be happy? A friend of mine back-ended a car in traffic. A rather dwarfish bloke with a white beard got out and angrily approached. “I’m not happy!” he said, rather threateningly. “Oh?” my friend replied, “Which one are you then?” All a matter of the way you see things.

Is laughing a sign of happiness? Claudette Colbert once said, “If I couldn’t laugh, I’d rather die.” One bloke had that cake and ate it. A scene from The Goodies had him cachinnating for 35 minutes. Then he carked it. Died laughing. Did he die happy?

What do we make of people who cause laughter? You’d swear humour was no laughing matter. Lenny Bruce? Angry, bitter, dead by his own hand. Woody Allen? Existentially distressed. Betty Hutton? Tragic. Robin Williams? Compulsive and miserable. Sylvia Plath? Okay, she’s a ring-in – but some found her poetry hilarious. Anyway – self-deceased.

Can you find happiness in a book? If so, are there crib notes? What the hell is it? Come to think of it, where the hell is it? Happiness might be a state, but it doesn’t have its own area code – I’ve looked it up. Maybe I should have asked a Buddhist first. They know everything worth knowing. To them, happiness is a journey, not a destination. Self-help gurus say so too, and why wouldn’t they, when that endless trip’s dotted with stalls flogging their CDs, books, courses and seminars?

SHAM on you!

Self-actualisation sages from Marianne Williamson to the authors of The Secret all preach an ontology in which positive thought possesses mystical power, and attracts stuff that makes you happy. Like money. This stuff is conferred by an abstract entity referred to as “The Universe.” Substitute The Holy Spirit, and you have the prosperity gospel at the centre of many a theological dispute.

Author Steve Salerno gives this movement an acronym: SHAM (Self Help and Actualisation Movement). Salerno believes that, like advertisers, self-helpers contribute to our growing sense of inadequacy, and he has a point. The crux of their message is that we should avoid unhappiness, yet people I know have followed similar patterns after an Anthony Robbins-type weekend: They get home and the Other Half looks right through them in mute incomprehension when asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” They get back to the office to find the snoopervisor perched over their timesheet. Adrian Adenoid in Records stares blankly at his screen in the same lilac polyester shirt he had on last Friday. Sixty-five e-mails await, not a happy thought among them. Euphoria, scrambled by cognitive dissonance because the world isn’t the place everyone said it was last weekend, becomes cynicism and bitterness. And the only way they can overcome this self-help syndrome is to help themselves – to more McHappiness.

But the SHAM also, rightly, preach that happiness is entirely subjective and therefore a matter of choice. If life consists of events that remain neutral until we come along and attach meaning to them, then a cognitive tweak might be the answer. Anyway, it’s cheaper than a decade of therapy. Visualisation, self-talk, anchoring positive experiences, cognitive gymnastics, all put control in our hands. Easy easy, NLPeasy! It’s said that Mozart was almost pathologically positive, despite the deaths of four children and his own illness. But his joyfulness animated the most dazzling music ever conceived. Can’t argue with that.

Our propensity to “misperceive” events is discussed at length by theorists from Kant to Bourdieu. It makes us happy, and helps us make sense. Psychology calls it refraction, among other things. Still, as Daniel Gilbert points out in Stumbling on Happiness, you can have too much “self-delusion”, or too little. What you need is enough to function. Frankly, I reckon it’s just as well we don’t all choose to be happy with everything external reality presents us! Nothing would get done!

People ask the obvious question of the self-help movement: what do they do for work? How does making a living by telling people how you became successful at telling other people how to make a living relate to the bloke on the assembly line putting caps on radiators? Well, he could make ten thousand dollars a week in passive income by writing a book titled, “How To Make Ten Thousand Dollars a Week In Passive Income.” If that title’s taken, he could maybe go for, say, thirty thousand. The important thing is that it’s indexed.

Where? What? Who? And why?

Happiness isn’t a place, but it has a location, and science – which will find anything if you ask it nicely and give it money – reckons we stash happiness just behind our foreheads, in our pre-frontal lobe. The trick is learning how to get our mitts on it.

Someone at the Happiness Institute should be able to steer you in the right direction. Yes, Virginia, happiness has an Institute, located in Sydney, founded by “Dr Happy”, Timothy Sharp, who offers all sorts of cognitive solutions. Regular meditation, Sharp explains, helps us to be present “in the moment”, rather than constantly striving, or always being present in some other moment, which makes it hard to get your trousers fitted. Which means, I guess, that happiness is not so much a journey as a series of “moments”, each a destination in itself, linked by a highway, which is a metaphor for the journey. I can cope with that – as long as there’s an emergency phone every few kilometres.

Anyway, if you can’t find Happiness the Institute, but still want to know where Happiness the State is, ask that Buddhist for directions. Apparently, the happiness part of a Buddhist’s brain goes gangbusters compared to that of the average stress head. If you haven’t the patience to do those western Buddhist things, like meditate or develop a superior attitude, there’s always chemicals. In the absence of Prozac or Pixil, find some way to increase the happiness chemical in your brain. It’s called dopamine.

Dopamine levels increase as we anticipate a reward, or desire something. Levels in lab chimps go nuts when they see a banana, and decrease the moment they get one. So, increase your store of dopamine – or bananas. But keep your bananas under glass, because getting what you want doesn’t make you as happy as desiring it – which is why a lot of people believe there’s no God, or if there is, Samuel Beckett’s got his ear.

Is it necessary to have whole institutes devoted to happiness? Apparently. The quest for happiness – or the avoidance of unhappiness – has preoccupied us for decades. Unlike that sturdy, thrifty generation who experienced world wars, a serious crooner outbreak and a depression, the Boomers and beyond have enjoyed a hassle hiatus, although crooners seem to be on the increase again. They just don’t appreciate a good disaster; they have an aversion to harsh realities. Some call it denial, and cite this as a reason why they’ve failed to learn from history. That, and a flaky education system. Ernest Becker felt it necessary to write his brilliantly insightful The Denial of Death in 1973 because he believed our refusal to recognise “negative” experience as part of life is at the bottom of our anxiety and sadness.

According to the World Happiness Database (Virginia – shut up!) website, the world currently has 8,124 “Happiness Investigators” crawling over it –  serious researchers, armed with some kind of happyometer that enables them to produce an impressive array of indecipherable graphs. Someone’s run a few over Australia. One found that we’re happier than other western nations, but well behind some “poor” countries. Another discovered our happiness levels have remained the same for six decades.

These Investigators have given happiness a makeover, and changed its name to Subjective Well-Being (SWB), and it’s a lot more approachable. Remember what “happiness” was like before? Skipping though a thicket in slow-motion, picking daisies with a look of distant, simpering abstraction you actually found nowhere in the real world, but might have recognised if you’d ever been to an Amway meeting?

The trouble is, Subjective Well-Being (let’s call it happiness for the sake of the exercise) is, well, subjective. There’s no getting away from it. Is happiness the same as fulfilment? Maybe they are the same thing – after all, they’re not often seen together in the same place. One old bloke was only going to be fulfilled if he lived to a hundred and got a letter from Her Majesty. In order to make it, he gave up everything that made him happy. This Bradman of the befuddled nearly got there, too, until the ol’ Reaper – a renowned bowler – served up his terminal googly, disguised as Eric Hollies. Ninety nine. Not a bad innings, if a little dour.

Getting what you want is a bloody lottery. Even if you win a lottery, it’s no guarantee of fulfilment, or contentment. Having got everything he wished for, one New York Lottery winner jumped for joy – off the Chrysler building. Such stories of disastrous prosperity abound.

Daniel Gilbert, in Stumbling on Happiness, makes the point that happiness is, and is not, about fulfilment. It depends on what we’re trying to attain. American psychologist, and one of the current generation of “ego psychologists”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, believes the ultimate goal is a “zone” of deep satisfaction, in which happiness is “optimised.” This varies from experience to experience. The problem is, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to stop over permanently. Of course, that’s impossible, because then something unexpected happens, unless you’ve read Jung. Happiness tips over into its opposite.

A common thread throughout most studies is that happiness cannot be attained until we stop wanting. Unhappy people tend to be in a constant state of want – not anticipation, like the chimps, but longing. You’d think getting what they want would make them happy then. But no. Theorists conclude that the happiest people are not those who have their wants fulfilled, but who lack want in the first place.

Now there’s a popular theory. Try that one on the kids, starting with a Bertrand Russell quote: “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” Guess what? Mine don’t believe it! Delaying gratification is only for neeks who are too unco for words. But one day they’ll grow up, get wise, see that getting what you want has nothing to do with happiness, and stop asking me for money.

Don’t get me started!

Why does the subject of happiness attract cranks who generalise, quantify everything, or both? Tony Juniper (Vice Chairman of Friends of the Earth International, and author of How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take to Change a Planet?) citing “important studies”, wrote that our shameless consumerism is not only destroying the planet, but eroding our emotional well-being. I don’t disagree. Neither do I mind that some of our “greener” friends find happiness in a life of nakedness, cavorting in groves and grottoes – which are hard to find these days, unless you risk trespassing on someone’s hobby farm. What I hate is being accused of mistaking contentment for cash, and causing greenhouse emissions while I’m at it. I nearly choked on my Fruity Gordo (5 litres, $9.95 at Safeway Liquor! Not bad!).So owning a washing machine is shameless consumerism? Well, a rock might be inexpensive, but have you ever priced a house with river frontage?

Avner Offer, in The Challenge of Affluence, asserts that we’re all fooled into workaholism and shopaholism, destined to scuttle away on some ever-accelerating “hedonic treadmill.” I’m here to inform Avner that I’m addicted to neither workahol nor shopahol. He sees me as an inveterate consumer? Well, society sees me as a life-support system for a wallet! Reconcile those! But at least Avner mostly blames forces bigger than the individual.

“Studies” increasingly depict “middle class battlers” as whingers whose lifestyles have outgrown their incomes. They feel it necessary to enlighten us that GDP doesn’t relate to emotional well-being. No kidding? So everyone doesn’t hold a street party every time Telstra or Which Bank announce a scudillion dollar profit? I need a hug.

Maybe I just don’t hang around the same circles as the authors, but a lot of my friends – none of whom, I can assure you, are addicted to workahol – have what they own, because they believed a silly myth that the most basic measure of success is owning a home that doesn’t have wheels.

Does my two-job household really make me some spoiled “aspirational?” Three incomes must be the height of gluttony, then. Oh please! Save me from myself! Get me off this hedonic treadmill! I’m too bloody rich! “Bloated” is the word used by Sydney planning and architecture journalist Elizabeth Farrelly, whom we also need to thank for suggesting a fantastic solution to our corpulent unhappiness: capital gains tax on family homes! Someone’s got to be happy with that suggestion – if their initials are ATO. Yeah! Let’s place the levers of our contentment in the hands of economists. They’ll fix it – with the all the compassion of a bloody praying mantis! While we’re at it, let’s get right into dependency mode and ask politicians to make us happy. That’d work for me, as long as they suit up in full Crazy John’s outfits for Parliament, then tax the extremely wealthy a lot more and me a little less. Failing these, they could just go away – I’d be happy with that.

Declaring that increased consumption has little to do with happiness is like telling us daylight saving doesn’t fade the curtains: we know it now, even though some of us might have been dumb enough to think it once. But I’ve tried poverty. That doesn’t work, either. I wish someone would commission me for a study that proves conclusively that money can’t buy happiness – beginning with a large deposit in my trust account.

Oh well. For every study, there exists an equal and opposite study, so there’s something to keep everyone happy.

Er, meaning?

It’s actually not money, but the equivalence of pleasure with happiness that causes problems. The World Values Survey links materialism (desire for possessions) with depression. The lack of correlation between wealth and happiness is no surprise to real scientists – you know, the ones in white coats. According to Tim Katelaar, biologist at New Mexico State Uni, wealth is a relatively recent phenomenon that humans are not genetically built to track. Researchers at Minnesota University believe we’re all born with a different “hedonic set-point”- the place where we cross the happiness/misery line.

Ultimately, it seems happiness has something to do with meaning, not money. According to Australia’s Bruce Headley and Alex Wearing, meaning, as in sense and connection, varies, but when it comes to SWB, it’s the vital ingredient. That’s why someone who lives on a pile of tyres in the Philippines, or next to a river in Brazil, can seem happier than us, with our compulsory cars, conditional relationships and “quality time”, which is actually no time at all. They know very well what they mean, and their relationships are informed by personal and collective meaning, not money.

Richard Eckersley, co-author of the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index, puts money in its proper perspective. It’s about “sufficiency”. We only need sufficient money to ensure health, a home and food. That’s why it ranks so low in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which corresponds to most people’s notion of happiness (see breakout).

So, then, our needs do have to be met before we’re happy? No! Dr Sonja Lyubomirszy from California University says that’s putting the barrow before the bloke in the Blundstones. She says we have to be happy first, then we’ll attain the things we need, like professional success, good relationships and health. Happiness drives them. They don’t drive happiness.

In our breakout, we summarise the consistent happiness factors. But feeling happy is one thing. What does a happy life look like? Some find happiness collecting the dust off moth wings, others stand armpit-deep in unrefrigerated tartare sauce (admittedly, the latter is rare).

What of the hypochondriac who’d be miserable if her misery was cured? Will she find ultimate happiness when a doctor tells her she’s really sick?  Or is this as happy as she gets? Her friends have bailed, but she seems content with the illusion of being the centre of their attention. Besides, her illness is her Invisible Friend.

Good long-term relationships seem essential. But even that gets weird. People find happiness in the sort of mutual dependency that ensures everyone stays dysfunctional. You know: he’s a pill. She’s a headache. Made in heaven. Stan and Mabel, 60 years married, share an interest in fretwork, stare into each other’s eyes like lovebirds on a perch to the exclusion of anyone else, and communicate telepathically to save on phone bills. Happy? Yes. Strange? Mmmmyep.

We share a world with people who seek happiness in the unhappiness of others. Consider Harold “Percy” Gledge, the Niddrie bookkeeper who dreamed of earning enough money to buy his own aeroplane. His dreams were shattered when some killjoy informed him that being a pilot entailed leaving the ground. And what about those people who are always Looking On The Bright Side. Maybe it’d make you happy to see one get hit by lightning.

It seems we feel happy if the things we do, think and feel fit our personal story – whatever that might be.

Britain’s Queen of Spleen, Julie Burchill, skewered public figures with her wickedly-honed pen for years before Sudden Onset Happiness. One day, the penny dropped. It was a penny from heaven, where the exchange rate’s pretty good, they tell me. She became a Christian -or something. And while she hadn’t yet learned to turn the other cheek, she did discover where to address her anthrax – at Muslims.

Anyway, her professional life aligned itself with her personal yearnings; plugged into her meaning, and presto! Happiness!  Now she spends her time visiting Israel, and has just completed a year-long sabbatical during which she studied more about God – or someone.

So, is religious belief self-delusion, or The Answer? Believers find happiness in the possibility of deliverance, salvation, transcendence. I’ve got to admit they’re better company than a room full of atheists, rationalists and humanists whose joy is “knowing” everyone else is a fool. Generally, the nurturing of the “spiritual self” is commensurate with another very important aspect of happiness: going outside of oneself, being “other-minded.” When someone like Burchill does it, you’ve got to take notice.

Martin Seligman, founder of “positive psychology” and self-confessed grouch, had his epiphany when his five year-old daughter saw through his grumpy façade to his grumpy interior. Although his profession espouses happiness, it’s always concentrated on dysfunction. Seligman believes that, unless the human sciences focus on restoring happiness, they might as well not exist. Experience has taught him that optimists outstrip pessimists in every conceivable measure of well-being, from physical health to success in relationships and work.

So, let’s assume Seligman gets what he wants. Will happiness make the world a better place? Or will it become the new opiate for the masses? Will we go down the cosmic gurgler anyway, only with smiles on our faces?

I’ll leave you with that happy thought, and summarise. Happiness: expect it, and you won’t get it. Despair of it, and you definitely won’t get it. Pursue it, by all means, but just don’t catch it, because you’ll cease to be happy – if you were to begin with. Be content with the chase, but be sure you don’t actually want what you’re chasing. Live in the “now”, otherwise it’s difficult to get takeaway – anyone taking notes? Aah, forget it. Go ask a Happiness Investigator. They get paid for it.

Published in Elevator magazine, September 2007