Happiness is.....

[alan refail]

I see Dave wants to spend two million to find out how happy we are.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11833241

What makes you happy and how can statistics measure it?

[Primrose]

Most of the things which make me happy don't cost much money:

1. Having my husband around, whose company I still enjoy after 40+ years (despite his addiction to the "footie"!)
2. Growing and harvesting my vegetables and pottering in the garden.
3. Having a friendly local butcher who regularly gives us huge bags of free bones for making delicious Scotch Broth and stock for winter soups.(You don't get this kind of service in Tesco !)
4. Settling in a comfortable chair with a good book.
5. Enjoying nature and the countryside in (nearly) all its aspects,
6. Living in a community where I feel I belong.
7. Having a lie-in on cold frosty mornings and listening to the neighbours scraping the frost off their windscreens because they have to drive to work.
8. Listening to our classical music collection.


And lots of other things which don't cost much. You can forget the luxury yachts, penthouse suites, private planes and expensive nights out in nightclubs. If the recession and the cutbacks help us as a nation to re-discover the things which really matter in life, perhaps it may have been a blessing in disguise.

[Nature's Babe]

Happiness is like a butterfly, chase it and it flies off, its delicate, easily crushed if we try to grasp it too tight. I do think happiness is a choice I make, and like Primrose it is the little things that count not the material things. I have a choice I could bemoan what happened, long for what I don't have, or I can appreciate the little things, and count my blessings. Yes life has its ups and downs, and its OK and natural to grieve, but i can choose to bounce back instead of wallow, and remember with pleasure the good times with a departed loved one. At an age when many are lonely, I have so much to be grateful for, and though tied to home as a full time carer, there is so much I enjoy, its beautiful where i live, I have a younger partner, family, grandchildren and pets that I love, friends, a productive and fertile garden. What more could I wish for?

[Primrose]

It would be interesting to see a national survey of "the Happiness Factor" across the age spectrum. I suspect it might turn out to prove that true contentment tends to come with age. Many young people are unwittingly drawn into the career or materials possessions race where they feel they can never be happy until they've achieved the next step on their achievement ladder. I think that as you grow older and experience the ups and downs of life, you develop a much greater wisdom about whether all the struggling for advancement has actually delivered in terms of emotional wellbeing.

Of course on this forum, we're an easy lot to please. The plucking of the summer's first ripe tomato scores the Happiness Bull's Eye every time

[Monika]

Primrose, you have captured my happiness points to a T, not necessarily in exactly the same order but certainly the same points. It must be very sad for people who have to have lots of "props" to make them happy.

[Nature's Babe]

Looking at the last part of your question Alan, how can we measure it?
Well its not easy if you try to measure happiness which is quite subjective, but it becomes a bit easier if we look at what David is trying to measure, sort of beyond happiness, to a more sustainable general wellbeing and contentment. A few suggestions towards that might be things like.
A just and fair society with truly equal opportunity.
A safe and clean, green environment, access to nature / countryside / parks, gardens, allotments.
affordable facilities for sports, creativity. theatre, the arts, museums.
For those that enjoy it, lifelong opportunities for learning creativity and personal fulfillment.
flexible work hours that allow time for family/ relationship commitments and leisure activities, perhaps a work charter that protects from exploitation and bullying
We have more money now than ever, but what does it purchase? Often, second rate shoddy goods with built in obsolescence which barely survive the guarantee if we are lucky - just so we can borrow to keep buying, keep producing and keep employment up. The food industry - mass produced food of poor nutritional balance and quality. Our trains, prohibitively expensive and as overcrowded as cattle trucks. Fashion which for average or low budgets is often poor quality changes frequently to keep folk buying and more in work. In times of finite rescources we should be considering future generations and making quality goods to last that we can be proud of. When money devalues this much we tend to consider other options like trading skills, or barter, and communal ownership. Expansion should come from new knowledge and well researched safe new technology investment should be in new frontiers of science/ health/ space, not in the weapons industry, illness, and wars which no one wants wins or enjoys.

[Shallot Man]

Do you think the government has a special department that think up ways of wasting money, rather he spent the two million bring to court all those MP's that had their noses firmly in the trough.

[Primrose]

Thoughtful and comprehensive reply Nature's Babe.

I suspect that the answers that some people might give to this question as to how happiness or contentment might be defined might differ quite vastly.

For some people, happiness might simply be having enough money to spend down at the pub with their mates. For others their level of contentment might feel genuinely diminished if they had no access to art, music, literature or the delights of nature and the countryside.

In many ways I suspect our level of contentment is possibly defined and influenced by the values we acquired as children. Somebody who was brought up in the countryside might feel wretched and suffocated living in a big city surrounded by concrete, no matter how much money they had acquired in the process. A city lover might feel that being forced to live in a rural area without the "big town" facilities would be condemining them to a living hell. Those on lower incomes who can't afford their own homes may envy those who do, not realising that crippling mortgage debt may be making their lives unbearable.

We've heard so much in the media recently about creating a "Fair Society". I'm not sure that we can ever have a perfect balance here because what's fair for one person ends up creating a very unfair balance for somebody else. A perfect example of this is something we've seen in the press only this week in the case of the Philip Lawrence killer being allowed to remain in this country because to deport him would be against his human rights, whilst his victim's family feel "they have been hung out to dry". And every day we see other similar injustices where the rights of a single individual are deemed to be more over-riding than the rights of society as a whole. Such injustices don't create a society which makes people feel happy or content.

Sometimes when I'm feeling grumpy with the world I feel that the best way of ensuring my own contentment is to disappear into my own little environment and enjoy the happiness I create for myself because the big wide world just isn't ever going create the standards I would like us to have as a national benchmark.

So

[Tony Hague]

it would make me a bit happier if we could have a govenrment who would fund the important things properly - like university education - rather than finding new ways of p***ing taxpayer's money up the wall.

As mentioned above, what makes people happy is likely to be a very personal thing. What do they plan to do with these statistics when they have them, I wonder ? Most of the things that have a negative impact on my personal happiness at the moment are not things the government can, or should try to, put right.

Well thinking about it, not watering down the planning process so as to allow our allotments to become completely surrounded by houses rather than fields might have helped.

[Nature's Babe]

True Primrose, personal choice does come into it too, while hopefully not impinging on others choices. Did you actually complete the questions on Alan's link? At the end of the survey it had boxes that they wanted us to tick one box - and actually my job had involved all the boxes in some way or other, I had actually, taught, lectured, analysed, and done all those things, one box was student, and I still consider myself a student, hopefully I will never stop learning, so i wrote in other not wanting to be boxed in. Actually my partner grew up in the city of London, but having experienceof both city and rural, now his choice is rural, it might have stayed the same - so wider experience plus choice helps personal decision making, Sometimes injustice does impinge on our own little world and that is when we need to get off our backsides, get active and campaign for change to benefit everyone - it may take years but it is possible to influence things with persistence eventuially..

[Primrose]

Well, I just had am unexpected little moment of contentment this morning when my e-mail In-box pinged and I found somebody had sent me the attached link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

Does that press any buttons for anybody?

[Nature's Babe]

A beautiful sharing Primrose, beautifully done, it would be nice to see all religions do the same and share for better understanding of one another.

[alan refail]

For anyone interested, here is the consultation link Nature's Babe referred to:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7 ... pyqg%3d%3d

The whole thing is of course about measuring "well-being" rather than "happiness" as the media (and I) have preferred to say

I am not at all sure that "well-being" and "happiness" are one and the same thing. What do you think?

[Nature's Babe]

Probably not Alan, as Primrose pointed out

And every day we see other similar injustices where the rights of a single individual are deemed to be more over-riding than the rights of society as a whole. Such injustices don't create a society which makes people feel happy or content.

An alcoholic may be very happy to spend his or her wages in the pub but it may impinge on their families and societies wellbeing

[PLUMPUDDING]

What lovely thoughtful replies with which I mainly agree, but another thing is not to get into debt.

Older people have been brought up to save up until they have enough money to buy what they want and so have always lived within their means. The constant bombardment when my sons reached 18 to have instant credit in almost every shop they went in was unbelievable. Also it created the "I can have whatever I want now" society and to throw away perfectly good items because they are out of fashion or something new has come out. I'm glad my sons were sensible enough not to get into debt, but they were at the start of it all.

Now it seems to be the norm and with student loans and the increase of tuition fees young people are being forced into debt by the Government before they even get a career. Then if they want to buy a house goodness knows how they are going to be able to pay or even get a mortgage as well.

If people can't even afford the basics they are not going to feel any sense of well being or happiness, and a Government survey costing 2 million pounds is money that could be better used elsewhere.