HOWZAT

He attempts to answer the great philosophical question of whether people should make happiness their goal, or place a nobler emphasis on becoming worthy of happiness.

People with no coherent system of beliefs will shy away from the idea of “worth”, as from the suggestion that virtue (good deeds) can make you happy. Yet there is no survey of recent years, seeking to unpick the happiness factor, that does not discover what philosophers, and gurus have always known — that being good to your fellow human beings and giving love as well as being loved are two of the conditions for happiness. Schoch offers a concise examination of Utilitarianism and Epicurism (as you might expect) then opens the discussion to include Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, Jewish and Stoical traditions. This is invaluable. That the great Islamic philosopher and reformer Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) wrote a popular book called The Alchemy of Happiness is a salutary reminder of the longevity of the subject, and Schoch points out the urge towards good deeds that underpins the concept of happiness in many faiths: “.

. . unless we show compassion for the plight of others we have no hope of winning happiness for ourselves”. Karma yoga instructs “get busy with your works” and Schoch sums up one of the most important messages of Hinduism thus: “Any worthwhile activity, however ordinary — but done in the right spirit — takes us one step closer to happiness.”

This takes us galactic miles from the gratification-driven sub-celebrity who thinks she is happy because she can pay £250 for designer jeans to wear with the £3,000 handbag on an evening of coke-induced euphoria, culminating in meaningless sex. Yet it is not far from the light in a tough literary agent’s face, which prefigures any amount of loving sacrifice he would willingly make for a beloved daughter and grandchild.

When Times readers ask me (in my Wednesday column Life and Other Issues) any number of versions of “don’t I have the right to be happy?” it’s very often at somebody else’s expense — and the combined wisdom of the ages might respond: “No, you have to earn it, work towards it, be deserving, come across it in the course of your search for meaning.” Which is not what people want to hear.

Schoch invokes the idea of “stumbling” that Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, uses as this title. The epigraph from Willa Cather’s Le Lavandou encapsulates the idea of the accidental nature of true joy: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world’s end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.”

Yet Gilbert’s thesis is that happiness may yet be approached if only people could learn to think ahead, knowing themselves enough to divine which choices might make them happy. With scientific erudition enlivened by acerbic wit, he addresses the search for happiness more tangentially — using recent discoveries about the ways that the human brain imagines its own future to consider why we get so much wrong, causing ourselves so much dissatisfaction and pain. Does John think through the likely outcome of bedding his secretary? Does Mary calculate the likely satisfaction of a lucrative job offer that involves a long commute and resultant stress at home? Gilbert concludes: “Foresight is a fragile talent that often leaves us squinting, straining to see what it would be like to have this, go there, do that. There is no simple formula for finding happiness . . .” But at least we can develop the capacity to understand where we go wrong, and forestall it.

How? By thinking, for one thing — according to Edward de Bono, who chimes with Gilbert when he says: “You can analyse the past but you have to design the way forward.”

In fewer than 100 truly useful pages H+: A New Religion? advises “how to live your life positively though Happiness, Humour, Help, Hope and Health”. This is pithy self-help with quirky, memorable notions — such as calling a “positive action” (something altruistic) a “pon” and fulfilling your quota each day. Aquinas couldn’t quarrel with that; de Bono echoes the challenge that permeates the other three books, suggesting that inner happiness (harmony in the soul) and outer happiness (good health and wellbeing) are mutually dependent, and have little or nothing to do with the pursuit of pleasure. Personally, I have no doubt that to turn Hot Chocolate’s plaintive question on its head and ask instead: “What’s the matter with you?” is always a useful first step towards a happy life.

The keys to happiness

Benjamin Zephaniah
Deep breathing. Through meditation I've learned to breathe from the bottom of my stomach. It’s a moment when you can forget everything. I think it’s the way to God.

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