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| Sunday, 21 July 2002 |
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It's somewhat like trying to define an intangible something to give it a concrete shape. A feeling, an emotion, a bounce in your steps, a walk in the clouds, a silly grin on your face.... Some call it a state of mind, some all it an absence of disaster, a sense of achievement, life itself. For want of a single word, many call it HAPPINESS. But what exactly is happiness. And more significantly who is happy. Are you? Really happy that is. Of course you may have happy moments: a pat on the back from your boss for a job well done; flowers from your husband for no apparent reason; a surprise phone call from a friend living abroad... These are little incidents that make a person happy. But would you describe your character as happy? Are you happier than your neighbour? Could you in all honesty be happier than you are? It is not an easy question to answer and, you may feel a rather silly one at that. After all comparing your level of happiness with that of other people is surely impossible. And you can't measure it, define it or make it happen. Or can you? Scientists have recently begun to study happiness, and their findings suggest that perhaps happiness isn't the mysterious, random state of mind many of us think it is. They have not only devised a new way of measuring how often people are happy, but also developed a precise theory of what makes us feel good. The bottom line of all this is that happiness if finally being taken seriously - and so it should be. Society after all has good reasons for wanting cheerful citizens. And researchers have found that happy people are more generous, healthy, creative and productive. So what makes us happy and exactly how does happiness feel? According to Experience Sampling - a measuring technique devised by Professor Mihaly Csikszentimhaly, an American psychologist- happiness is described the same way by everyone from teenagers in Tokyo to farmers in the Italian Alps, surgeons, factory workers and housewives. The measuring technique involved attaching buzzers to 100,000 volunteers which went off at random during the day, at which point the volunteers had to stop what they were doing and write down precisely what they were feeling. By the end, each person had produced what amounted to a record of his or her emotional life, made up of a selection of representative moments. The study, which used volunteers from all over the world and in all walks of life, discovered that the best moments in people's lives weren't the passive, receptive, relaxing times. It was those moments when they were absorbed in an activity that taxed their skills and abilities and made them concentrate so hard that nothing else mattered, but the moment. This experience, which Csikszentimhaly calls Flow in his book 'Flow: The Psychology of Happiness' might come from work, raising a family, a relationship or sport. And whether teaching a child to read or swimming the Channel, the feelings volunteers described at the peak of enjoyment was always the same - exhilarated, turned into the world and in control - masters of their own fate. The discovery has led Csikszentimhaly and many others like him to conclude that happiness isn't due to luck or chance or things we have or don't have. But that it is within everyone's grasp. |
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