The reason we go to school is to learn and pass the test, the reason to pass the test (for many middle-class kids) is to give them the key to go to the grown-up school (university), to pass more tests, and to get the key, and the reason to get the next key is to get the job, or even better, the ‘career’, which gives you the money, and the reason to get the money is to get the happiness, and then that is the end of the story, allegedly.
But what if it's a trick?
What if it is sleight of hand by a magical magician?
What if it's the wrong way round?
In the recent World Happiness study, the United Kingdom is twenty-seventh, with five of the Nordic countries in the top ten.
Repeatedly, we fall down and down the scale here now, having been much higher up the scale many years before; the study's been running now for 75 years.
One of the purposes of the government seems to be to try to make us wealthier (or lately, less wealthy, it seems). Why is the purpose of the government not to make us happier?
Instinctively, all of us think that if we get more, we'll be happier, but we know from tonnes and tonnes of psychological research that beyond a certain level (which is relatively modest), all we wanted was safety and security and warmth and food, and then happiness came.
It takes such an extraordinary jump in wealth to change your baseline level of happiness that it's almost inconceivable for almost everyone, and so why do we keep chasing a little bit more and a little bit more at the expense of the happiness that we already found?
In my life, I have lived in houses that have one bedroom, I've lived in houses that have 3 bedrooms, and I've lived in houses that have 6 bedrooms. I was no more or less happy in any of those houses that I lived in; the number of bedrooms I had and the size of the garden or anything like that made no difference to my happiness.
What if we were happy first? And then everything else came after that.
When I speak to young dentists now all the time, I make a suggestion that if they try to be rich, then they'll probably never be good, but if they start out trying to be good, they'll probably be rich (what that means).
I understand that some people's happiness is inextricably linked to their status, and the status is inextricably linked to the stuff that they have, but that's a choice and a cycle that it's possible to break.
Happiness and money are a complicated relationship, but I would suggest that in the absence of any other map, happiness comes first.
Blog Post Number - 4497
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