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Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
- BM Hegde (23 December 2005)
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Happiness, a mental attribute
- Harjeet Singh Gandhi (26 December 2005)
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may all your dreams…
- nicholas D. Moore (28 December 2005)
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Happiness is a state of mind
- Mr. Sanchit Budhiraja (30 December 2005)
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The Healthy Resistance of Happiness
- Clinton E. Betts (1 January 2006)
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More tips for happiness
- Anuruddha M. Abeygunasekera (1 January 2006)
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easier said than done
- Sebastian Kraemer (1 January 2006)
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Happiness:What the ancient wisdom says about it!
- Mr KNR Srikanth (3 January 2006)
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Money, happiness and love
- Trevor Watts (3 January 2006)
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Happiness is being able to sleep soundly two days in one week
- Edi Nugroho (3 January 2006)
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We cannot help feeling happy
- Jeffrey M. Graham (4 January 2006)
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Happiness
- Ikechukwu O. Azuonye (5 January 2006)
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happiness in illness
- Frankie E Campling (6 January 2006)
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Happiness is health, money and love
- Sergio A Pérez Barrero (22 January 2006)
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Happiness is also genetic
- Jonathan Benjamin (29 March 2006)
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There isn't enough for our greed
- Nagabhushana TK (26 May 2007)
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Unhappiness in the NHS
- Rod Storring (28 May 2007)
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Happiness and mind: self contradictory words
- Dr.Anan Jaiswal (28 September 2008)
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BM Hegde, Retd. Vice Chancellor Mangalore 575004, India
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Dear Editor, Tony’s editorial is very timely, indeed! "Animals are happy as long as they have health and enough to eat" is the first sentence in Bertrand Russell’s book On Quest of Happiness. He goes on to add that "human beings, one feels, ought to be, but they are not, at least in great majority of cases." So unhappiness is more commonly seen than happiness. Indian ancient wisdom has a solution. "Thena Thyakthena bunjithaaha" says the Ishopanishad, which could be translated as "rejoice in giving". It is in giving that you get (happiness) was the rule of Jesus Christ. Jealousy is at the root of all unhappiness. The very thought of death brings on fear and unhappiness, but if one were told that all would perish in a catastrophe, people might not be as unhappy as when one is told that he/she has a fatal disease and he/she might not survive. The person concerned is worried that he/she alone has to go leaving the rest to enjoy life here. That makes him/her very sad. Moral of the story is that happiness is in the human mind. Problem with mankind is that they don't know where the mind is and how to keep it cleansed of all the negative thoughts to remain ever happy. The more you get more unhappy you are constantly wanting to get more. So material wealth might not bring lasting happiness. Thinkers over the years have had varying opinions. "It's pretty hard to say what brings happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed." feels Ken Hubbard. "Remember that happiness is a way of travel-not a destination." wrote Roy M. Goodman. "Happiness is light on water. The water is cold and dark and deep." feels William Maxwell. The best, though, is what Robert Frost had to say: "Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in strength." yours ever, bmhegde Competing interests: None declared |
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Harjeet Singh Gandhi, Orthopaedic Surgeon London, ON, Canada, N5X 2M5
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Good life is reflected in good living, which makes one truly different from an aniaml. Money is not for happiness. Every one has problems but those who do not have sufficient money, their problems are multiple. We equate quantity and quality of happiness with amount of wealth in possesion of a human being. Wealth is an external sign of success whereas happiness is a mental attribute. While an action is something a person does intentioanlly to achieve them. It is an art to earn money and learn to be happy. Good fortune is made by one's sincere actions and happiness through acquisition of good relationships to live a happy life. Both, sincerely earned wealth and good health carries one through to complete the process of successful aging happily. Competing interests: None declared |
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nicholas D. Moore, Professor of clinical pharmacology Université Victor Segalen, 33076 Bordeaux
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I am not sure I can recall where (and in this case google did not help), but I seem to remember that an old oriental blessing (strangely, they're always ancient and oriental, rarely new and occidental…) "may all your wishes come true, but one". Because when you no longer have any wishes or hopes comes despair, which is not a good thing. Of course another says: "may you live in interesting times" but that's a curse. So may all your wishes and dreams come true, but one, and may you have the time to enjoy them Competing interests: None declared |
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Mr. Sanchit Budhiraja, Student Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore
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Happiness it is said is a state of mind.It cannot be bought, it cannot be found and searching for it in the outside world is a futile effort. It comes from within. In today's materialistic world, we are always lost in searching for ephermal happiness in name and fame, money and power & wealth and affiliation. This is the root cause of all misery in our lives.When one is too much anxious about reaching the top of hill without realising the beauty that abounds in the vicinity, one is bound to be unhappy. The bottom line is to be happy one has to realise the hidden treasure of infinite potential within oneself. Only then can we reach a state of eternal bliss and sanctity. Competing interests: None declared |
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Clinton E. Betts, Assistant Professor Faculty of Health Sciences McMaster Univeristy, L8N 3Z5
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Dear Editor: I apologize for the length of this response to Happiness (BMJ, 2005, 331, 1489-1490), however I simply could not resist the urge to deal with some of the controversial issues of happiness and health which Dr. Delamothe’s brief Editorial does not even begin to address. Although I do not consider the following to be anywhere near comprehensive or completely argued, I have tried to present the more critically uncomfortable aspects of contemporary happiness and health which I believe are rarely addressed by scientists, researcher, teachers and practitioners engaged in the happiness and health of others. Truth, moral certitude, knowledge, the good and so on… and now happiness – another modern concept takes a postmodern turn of complexity? Imagine this, Delamothe (2005) seems to be suggesting that happiness is not just about getting more. That is more wealth, more status, more things, more comfort, or in the language of economics theory (or politics which seems to have become the same thing), more growth, more development, more improvement (though perhaps I could just sum it all up as more Modern Progress). Of course philosophers, artists and poets have been seriously concerned about happiness for most of civilization, or at any rate since the Greeks. However, whereas Aristotle thought that happiness was something one reasoned toward (and certainly by no means a simple given, perhaps we might even say that he though it took discipline and hard work), our modern notion of it is something which we can just possess by a rather routine feat of social engineering. Indeed, in the same manner as we suppose that we can engineer and possess health: Under [the] hypothesis of engineerability, “health as possession” has gained acceptance since the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In the course of the nineteenth century, it became commonsense to speak of “my body” and “my health.”… modern-day health is the fruit of possessive individualism. (Illich, 1990, p. 3) Perhaps we can simply add in – my happiness? How else do we explain Layard’s (2005) vision of social engineering in Happiness: Lessons from a new science, in which he claims, based on the enlightenment thought of Bentham (which if I am not mistaken was at the very epicentre of the modern world), that the explicit purpose of public policy and hence socio- political organization ought to be the maximization of collective happiness using good science. To be sure, what could be more conducive to health than happiness (and vice versa). Moreover, what could be more effective for achieving it than science? Surely it is at least problematic to contend that happiness is simply a matter of public policy? Regarding our engineering ethos, one might suggest that it appears, in a progressive sense, that we have historically made our way through the various forms of human psycho-social species, from Homo religiosus and Homo faber through Homo economicus, Homo sociologicus, Homo civicus and Homo politicus to what we have now – Homo engineericus, no doubt a close relation to what Grassie (1996), referring to the work of Donna Haraway, calls Homo cyborg. (p. 290). That animal, who researches, designs and implements the want of its will. As Mitcham (1998) put it “engineers are… the unacknowledged philosophers of the postmodern world.” ( 3). That is to say that we can simply get what we want by designing the conditions for it. “We live in the present, imagining that we can create our own rules of the game, borrowing from the past as we see fit.” (Woolfolk, 2003). After all aren’t we moderns, particularly those of us who do health and happiness for others, the very action of Progress in motion? “‘Formerly, all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink… 'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink." (Nietzsche, 1982, p. 130). To be sure, the last man was Nietzsche’s condescending reference to the modern human being who believes that his (or her) own will to knowledge, reason and progress was all that was necessary for the engineering of what is wanted. As Latour (1999) puts it “What is at stake is mastery. In making the world the product of individuals’ thoughts and fancies and in talking about construction as though it involved the free play of fancy, modernists believe they make the world in their image…” (p. 282). Yet when it comes to happiness, what is it that stands between us and (the having of) it. As Kierkegaard (1965) once observed; “the truth is a snare: you cannot have it without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.” (p. 133). Perhaps the same can be said for happiness – that is – you can’t have it, it has to have you somehow. Indeed, we could sum up Modern Progress in so many ways, though perhaps the simplest and most notable is that what (we think) we are progressing toward is happiness, what else could be the end goal of our efforts? Moreover, this edict seems to be ineluctably associated, for at least a few centuries now, with an increase in comfort, ease, and effortlessness and we invariably see this as a good. Yet despite a few centuries of Progress our happiness seems to be declining, perhaps even as a result, and maybe even our health as well. Indeed, Choi, Hunter, Tsou and Sainbury (2005) have recently coined the phrase diseases of comfort “… the human race will be pushed toward a primary cause of death from ‘diseases of comfort’ (such as those chronic diseases caused by obesity and physical inactivity), due to technological advance.” (p. 1030), while Schwartz (2004) has called attention to the the paradox of choice “…the goal of maximizing is a source of great dissatisfaction, that can make people miserable…” (p. 78). Furedi (2004a) refers to a therapy culture that “[cultivates] a powerful sense of vulnerability… undermines subjectivity and the sense of human agency.” (p. 414). As well as a Culture of Fear (Furedi, 1997) that sees everything as risk(y). For some strange reason I was reminded of Stocker’s (1976) Moral Schizophrenia while reading Delamothe’s commentary. According to Stocker’s famous thesis: One mark of the good like is a harmony between one’s motives and one’s reasons, values and justifications. Not to be moved by what one values – what one believes good, nice, right, beautiful, and so on – bespeaks a malady of the spirit. Such a malady, or such maladies, can properly be called moral schizophrenia… (p. 453-54). If we take something of the reverse to be valid, that is, when one’s (or even an entire cultures) motives are not actually valued (or even values at all), yet still aggressively pursued (wealth, status, things, comfort, growth, development, improvement and so forth), perhaps we end up with a cultural schizophrenia of the kind Tarnas (1991) characterizes in The Passion of The Western Mind. At any rate we are certainly witness to a fundamental change in all things cultural. As Phillip Rieff (1987) put it in The Triumph of the Therapeutic: That a sense of well-being has become an end, rather than a by- product of striving after some superior communal end, announces a fundamental change of focus in the entire cast of our culture – toward a human condition about which there will be nothing further to say in terms of the old style of despair and hope. (p. 261) The key word in Rieff’s claim seems to me to be striving. Thus it is understandable that the banal striving for nothing more than – more, more, more – does not seem to make us happy, but who among us can avoid the compulsion of consumptive progress? So what do we do when we are not happy, for what ever reason, despite our best social engineering efforts? Well clearly we need therapy “The vocabulary of therapeutics no longer refers to unusual problems or exotic states of mind. Terms like stress, anxiety, addiction compulsion, trauma, negative emotions, healing, syndrome, mid-life crisis, or counselling refer to the normal episodes of daily life. They have become part of our cultural imagination.” (Furedi, 2004b, p. 1). When that therapy fails, or one fails to obtain it, or worst of all once the therapy is complete “For decades we have all been striving for the good life. Now that most of us have it, a large proportion of the population seems to be dependent on medications and other substances to avoid falling into a more or less permanent state of anxiety, depression and despair.” (Hamilton, 2003, p. 12). It would seem then that happiness and health are somewhat related concepts. In fact, aren’t the two grand meta-values of the postmodern era, which we seem to have inherited from the modern, health and happiness? Health certainly is: The valorization of health has been a feature of secularized societies for a long time, but has become especially evident in recent years. In the context of Western democracies, health today appears to be endorsed as a kind of meta-value, and speaking in the name of health is one of the most powerful rhetorical devices. (Greco, 2004, p. 1) As for happiness, Greaves (2000) once suggested, referring to Richard Bentall’s not so funny parody of psychiatry, a proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder, “He may have stumbled unwittingly, however, on a modern truth that the obsessive pursuit of happiness is a sort of madness to which our society is particularly prone.” (p. 1576). What is missing then, what is it that stands between us and happiness? What are we, or ought we to be, striving for that happiness is a part of the equation? Put differently what is necessary, or even essential, for the striving to involve happiness at some point along the way. Perhaps the answer was provided to us by Nietzsche over a century ago – resistance. By this I do not mean and certainly neither did Nietzsche, that in order to be happy one needs to remove any resistance to it, but rather the converse, we can only be happy when we are up against some worthy resistance: Man does not seek pleasure and does not avoid displeasure… Pleasure and displeasure are mere consequences, mere epiphenomena – what man wants, what every smallest part of a living organism wants, is an increase of power… driven by that will it seeks resistance, it needs something that opposes it – Displeasure, as an obstacle to its will to power, is therefore a normal fact… man does not avoid it, he is rather in continual need of it… (Nietzsche, 1968, p. 373) I certainly realize that Nietzsche is a controversial figure, especially among us non-philosophers (scientists, researchers and practitioners of health and happiness). In particular The Will To Power, that Nietzsche spoke so much of, sounds today very much like something that we should have nothing to do with and perhaps for some very good reasons. I do not suggest though that Nietzsche provides many answers for us (perhaps none in fact). However, as an invaluable iconoclast, ironically against the iconoclasm of modernism, what he and those of his ilk did was to ask serious questions, think serious thoughts and develop a serious critique of the human aspiration to utopia (which if we remember More, means No-Place, or No-Where). Such thoughts, in my view, are essential for us to once again take up. By us, I refer to those of us who claim to be researchers, teachers, practitioners or what not of health and happiness. As Grant (2001), who was certainly no Nietzschean, put it “… Nietzsche thinks what it is to be a modern man more comprehensively, more deeply, than any other thinker… Therefore the first task of somebody trying to think… is not to inoculate, but to think his thoughts.” (p. 64), or at any rate a similar line of reflection. I mean to suggest a serious critique of modernist assumptions, particularly in the health and happiness industry where we simply forge ahead with the same old engineering agenda. And certainly something other than a progress to pathological unhappiness, or what Allen (2002) referred to as a Banal Utopia or Tragic Recompense “modern technoscience is certainly taking us somewhere, but it is more likely over a cliff than into Bentham’s promise land.” (p. 36). As Latour (2003) cogently notes, “… the life of the moderns should become miserable, brutal and short… [yet] the moderns are simply falling back on ‘business’… as usual’.” (p. 40). Seems about right eh? Although we often refer to the current age as the postmodern, it is doubtful that we are even in a postmodern phase of history. I find Ulrich Beck (Beck & Lau, 2005) compelling in his explication of what he refers to as second, or reflective, modernity, however there are certainly other possibilities, for example; hypermodernity (Virilio, 1986), another modernity (Lash, 1999), high modernity (Giddens, 1993), late capitalism (Jameson, 1984), or Latour’s (1993) audacious contention that we have never been modern. In any case, we are probably still in the modern world and although this may not be the enlightenment, we are still firmly commanded by modern assumptions (epistemology, materialism, truth, moral and otherwise, and to be sure Progress). And of course, perhaps the flashing beacon of the modern world (en-lighten-ment) was above all freedom. Yet as Latour (1999) recently pointed out, it might well be a destructive freedom at that. “No one ever had so much freedom. Freedom is precisely what permits and justifies the iconoclast’s strokes. But freedom from what? Freedom from caution and care…” (p. 276). Add to this Heller’s (2005) contention that freedom is indeed a paradox, perhaps the same kind that Schwatz alludes to regarding choice. Yet we are all likely a little guilty of a lack of attentiveness to “caution and care” and it now seems as though we are riding our modern successes into a new postmodern pathology, what Kaufman (1989) called galloping consumption on virtually every front. The question is why, which few are asking, certainly those of the happiness and health industry are not. For most of them it is (modern) business as usual, that is – solve a problem with a problem and this despite Agnes Heller’s (2005) admonition that, “For we are far from dealing here with problems that can be solved: we are dealing with social actors caught in the double bind, and modern life – any more than life in general – is not a problem to be solved.” (p. 74). And yet, I suspect that we are becoming addicted to the solving of problems as a way of Progress, as a means to happiness and indeed a way of life. Since medicalization metaphors are all the rage these days, I offer one of my own here. We are addicted to an ill-conceived, erroneous assumption – the modern good life of tranquility and repose, pleasure and satisfaction, acquisition and accumulation – bad values as it were, two in particular – health and happiness. Indeed, we are given to speak of health and happiness as universal rights, often without much needed qualification, that we are somehow bequeathed by virtue of being born human. Moreover, we don’t seem to realize that our methodology and procedure for accomplishing health and happiness for all is simply no longer working (if indeed it ever was) and may in fact be causing some of the problems that we have as side effects of the solutions to other problems (Beck & Lau, 2005; Latour, 2003)). And like all addictions (and those who are addicted) there is no “caution and care” when the habit takes precedence. I do not mean to suggest that there is a single, universal set of good values with which to combat the bad (such would simply be another unwarranted modern assertion), certainly the postmoderns, if they have accomplished anything, have at least shown this to be fallacious. However, it seems to me to be a sobering assertion that to be happy, whatever that means, we must we working against something, work for something more than more, more, more and certainly for more than less, that is less resistance, less travail, less effort, less discomfort and so on. As Bertrand Russell once said “to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” (p. 27). I am not suggesting some manner of unbridled iconoclasm regarding happiness and health, rather it is the opposite which I advocate. The continual, and to be sure critical, exercise of caution and care in the trajectory of whatever direction our culture is moving. As Nietzsche (1968) once remarked “How is truth proved? By the feeling of enhanced power – by utility – by indispensability – in short, by advantages… But that is a prejudice: a sign that truth is not involved at all.” (p. 249-250). Perhaps we might say something similar about health and happiness, if only to complicate the matter, which seems to me necessary – even urgent. Of course, I might be wrong. Thanks For Your Time C. E. Betts References Allen, B. (2002). Banal utopia or tragic recompense? Positivism, ecology, and the “problem of science” for Nietzsche. New Nietzsche Studies, 5(1&2), 26-41. Beck, U. & Lau, C. (2005). Second modernity as a research agenda: Theoretical and empirical explorations in the ‘meta-change’ of modern society. British Journal of Sociology, 56(4), 525-557. Chio, B. C. K., Hunter, D. J., Tsou, W. & Sainsbury, P. (2005). Diseases of comfort: Primary cause of death in the 22nd century. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 59, 1030-1034. Delamothe, T. (2005). Happiness. British Medical Journal, 331, 1489- 1490. Furedi, F. (1997). Culture of fear: Risk-taking and the morality of low expectation, 2nd edn, London: Continuum Press. Furedi, F. (2004a). Reflections on the medicalization of social experience. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 32(3), 413-415. Furedi, F. (2004b). Therapy culture cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age. New York: Routledge. Giddens, A. (1993) Modernity and Self-Identity. Polity Press: Cambridge. Grant, G. (2001). Time as history. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Grassie, W. (1996). Donna Haraway’s metatheory of science and religion: Cyborgs, trickster, and Hermes. Zygon, 31(2), 285-304. Greaves, D. (2000). The obsessive pursuit of happiness. British Medical Journal, 321, 1576. Greco, M. (2004). The politics of indeterminacy and the right to health. Theory, Culture & Society, 21(6), 1-22. Hamilton, C. (2003). Comfortable, relaxed and drugged to the eye- balls. The Australian Institute, 35, 1-2,12. Heller, A. (2005). The three logics of modernity and the double bind of the modern imagination. Thesis Eleven, 81,63–79. Illich, I. (1990). "Health as one's own responsibility: No, thank you!." Based on a speech given in Hannover, Germany, September 14, 1990. Retrieved January, 3, 2004 from, http://homepage.mac.com/tinapple/illich/1990_health_responsibility.PDF Jameson, F. (1984) Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism, New Left Review, 146, 53-93. Kaufmann, W. (1989). Editor’s introduction. In W. Kaufmann (Ed.), On the genealogy of morals (pp. 1-12). New York: Vintage. Kierkegaard, S. (1965). The last years. (translated by R.G. Smith). New York: Harper and Row. Lash. S. (1999). Another modernity a different rationality. Blackwell: Oxford. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. (translated by C. Porter). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2003). Is re-modernization occurring – And if so, how to prove it? Theory, Culture & Society, 20(2), 35-48. Layard, R. (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a new science. New York: Penguin Press. Nietzsche, F. (1968). The will to power. (translated by W. Kaufman). New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, F. (1968). Thus spoke Zarathustra. In W. Kaufmann (Tr.), The portable Nietzsche (pp. 103-343). NewYork:Viking Press. Mitcham, C. (1998). The importance of philosophy to engineering. Tecnos, XVII(3), Retrieved March, 8, 2004 from, http://www.campus- oei.org/salactsi/teorema02.htm Rieff, P. (1987). The Triumph of the therapeutic: Uses of faith after Freud. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Russell, B. (1996). The conquest of happiness. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Schwatz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. New York: Harper Collins. Stocker, M. (1976). The schizophrenia of modern ethical theories. The Journal of Philosophy, 73(14), 453-466. Tarnas, R. (1991). The passion of the western mind. Ballantine: New York. Virilio, Paul (1986) Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology. (translated by M. Polizzotti). New York: Semiotext(e). Woolfolk, A. (2003). The therapeutic ideology of moral freedom. Journal of Classical Sociology, 3(3), 247-262. Competing interests: None declared |
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Anuruddha M. Abeygunasekera, Urological Surgeon Karapitiya Teaching Hospital, Galle, Sri Lanka.
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Although spending time with your family increases happiness, it is not a linear relationship. If you try to spend the whole week continously with the family that might even disrupt your happiness. It is clear that one should have a break staying away from your family or the loved ones for few days of the week followed by joining them to spend the time together increase the happiness and the bond among the family members. Another iimportant factor that increases happiness is the ability to think in absolute terms devoid of comparisons. Then one can assess and try to fulfil his/her own needs rather than attempting to get what others have. People who see what others have and try to possess those irrespective of their true needs tend to be unhappy. Competing interests: None declared |
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Sebastian Kraemer, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Whittington Hospital, London N19 5NF
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Happiness is associated with secure social relationships, but these are not just there for the choosing, as Tony Delamothe seems to imply. Our capacity to enjoy relationships is dependent on the quality of care given to us in childhood (see for example Rubin et al, 2004). With help, and luck, we can almost always improve on past hurts and deprivations, but not by ignoring their scars. Happiness means little without intermittent episodes of sadness and regret. Even in a Christmas edition, editorials should acknowledge the science that we have. Rubin KH, Dwyer KM, Booth-LaForce C, Kim, AH, Burgess KB, Rose-Krasnor, L Attachment, Friendship, and Psychosocial Functioning in Early Adolescence. Journal of Early Adolescence 2004: 24; 326-356. Competing interests: None declared |
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Mr KNR Srikanth, Registrar,Orthopaedics and Trauma Altnagelvin Hospital,Londonderry,BT 47 6SB
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I thank Mr Tony Delamothe for his article on happiness which is one of the fundamental aspects of all our life.A succesful nation is a nation who's citizens are the happiest. I wish to share some ancient eastern wisdom about Happiness.We all agree that Happiness is a state of mind and doesnt reside in material wealth alone.The richest man has the greatest misery is an eastern proverb.The Bible says 'A camel may pass through the eye of the needle but a rich man will never pass through the door of heaven'. The easteren wisdom recognises that it's the birth right of all living beings to be Blissful.It talks of 'SAT' 'CHIT' and 'ANANDA',eternal knowledge,eternal conciousness and Bliss.Again it talks of duality.Heat and cold,pain and pleasure.Some philosophers and great Masters of the past and present have described this state of duality to be an unreal state and the goal being to transend this duality of happiness and suffering to the state of Bliss which is a state of being and not a state of mind like happiness! So a knowledge of the self is the first step in the path to real happiness as the old saying goes'know thy self'.This should be coupled with living in the Present than past or future for the past is dead,the future is a mystery and so today is the gift and enjoy today by not comparing oneself to a man who may have more than you but comparing to a man who has less than you and be thankful for what is given. I hope the new year brings Real happiness(Bliss)in all our lives! Competing interests: A Meditation instructor for SRCM,UK |
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Trevor Watts, Senior Lecturer and Consultant in Periodontology, King's College London Dental Institute at Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Hospitals, SE1 9RT, UK.
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Tony Delamothe has certainly performed a service by starting discussion on the subject of happiness. There is a role for money in happiness, and it is what Charles Dickens wisely put into the mouth of Mr Micawber in his novel David Copperfield. “Income twenty pounds and expenditure nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence: result happiness. Income twenty pounds, and expenditure twenty pounds and sixpence: result misery.” In other words, control of debt is an important part of personal contentment in the world we live in. I am also reminded, by Tony Delamothe’s reference to “a loving relationship”, of the time some 20 years ago when my wife and I ran the marriage preparation classes in our church. Over a 5 session course, we discussed the subjects of similar beliefs, loving commitment to each other, sexual aspects of the relationship, children, and money management. These are all areas where many marriages have foundered. Similarly, they are all areas which affect personal contentment. The apostle Paul said in his letter to the Philippians, when he was facing death for his beliefs, that he had learned to be content whatever the circumstances. He knew what it was to be in need, and to have plenty. He had learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, and whether living in plenty or in want. Jeremiah Burroughs, one of the great Puritans, wrote “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment” in which he expounded the theme further for his readers. Contentment and happiness go to the heart of our basic beliefs. The whole of life is involved. If life is centred on the self, and personal feelings, there is little chance of happiness. Self-giving love (Greek: agape) is what the first Christians promoted, on the basis of Christ’s example, and lasting contentment is unlikely to come in its absence. Competing interests: As a Christian, I am reasonably content! |
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Edi Nugroho, General practitioner Batam, Indonesia, 29432
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One of my patients says that happiness is being able to sleep soundly two days in one week. This patient has chronic insomnia and truly is happy when the above comes true. Some chronic diseases, not all diseases, tend to make people unhappy. We will make people happier if we could find ways to treat those conditions effectively. Competing interests: None declared |
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Jeffrey M. Graham, London Specialised Commissioning Group London, W1T 7HA
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Dear Editor, As Delamothe points out, humans everywhere are about equally happy: rich or poor, First World or Third World, healthy or disabled. We evolved this way - as social animals who cannot cooperate for long with anyone who is annoyingly cheerful or depressingly sad. Our brains are designed to make us feel good when things help our survival, and to feel bad when events damage our longer term interests. However, after our dose of reward or punishment we quickly get back on an even keel, so we can restore effective social relationships. Competing interests: None declared |
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Ikechukwu O. Azuonye, Consultant Psychiatrist 10 Harley Street, London, W1G 9PF
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I am glad that Tony Delamothe's editorial about Happiness has generated so much discussion. I am happy about this because I believe that the attainment of Happiness is THE purpose of human life. The state of well-being and contentment which we know as Happiness is expressed in degrees of manifestation depending on the character of our personal development, from the brief periods of joy that we experience to the permanent state of 'cosmic consciousness' and beyond. The key to our understanding of Happiness lies in the word 'contentment'. We know this from our individual, even if short-lived, experiences of periods of contentment. Tony Delamothe's editorial cites what have been found to be associated with Happiness, such as family life, social connections, employment, choice, leisure, human relationships and the belief that one's political participation counts. However, it is evident that these, in themselves, could not produce contentment: they must be of a certain character and content to do so. Family life that is marked by hostility and abuse could not possibly make one happy. The editorial appears to imply that having money does not make a significant contribution to a person's happiness in the long term. Spiritual balance is a state of invulnerability, moral as well as material. Being unable to pay one's way through life is not a desirable state of being; so having money - or equivalent media of exchange - does make a significant contribution to our happiness. Solving our personal problems (and thus improving our personal circumstances) whilst rendering constructive service to humankind is the balanced expression of spirituality that makes us increasingly happy. Happiness is a continually-evolving state of spiritual balance, the principal manifestation of the balanced development of the spiritual, mental and physical sides of our being. May we all achieve ever greater degrees of Happiness. Competing interests: None declared |
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Frankie E Campling, medical author home
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I have been reading the editorial on Happiness and the responses with deep interest. Having just finished writing a book for OUP on long-term illness in general, I am now starting work on a book about happiness (or unhappiness) in illness. I want to explore the factors that make it easier or more difficult to experience happiness if one has to cope with a long- term illness. Most readers will accept that they know some people with such an illness who seem to be happy a good deal of the time and some who are fairly miserable. What is the difference? Any suggestions or contibutions would be very much appreciated. Frankie Campling frankie@campling.force9.co.uk Competing interests: None declared |
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Sergio A Pérez Barrero, Founder of the World Suicidology Net Founder of WPA Suicidology Section
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Dear colleagues:
Competing interests: None declared |
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Jonathan Benjamin, Director, Department A4 Shaar Menashe Mental Health Center, Mobile Post Hefer, 38814, Israel
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I couldn't access the responses so I'm not sure if this point has already been raised: Not only can happiness not be bought with money, it is unclear how much we can acquire it by following the author's suggestions, because happiness is also inherited. In the Minnesota study of twins reared together and apart, Lykken D and Tellegen A (Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological Science 1996; 7: 186-189) found that the best predictor of one's self-reported happiness at a given time is one's own report on the same measure ten years previously, and that the happiness of one's identical twin at the first time point does almost as well (80% of the correlation achieved by two self-report measures). Competing interests: None declared |
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Nagabhushana TK, Rtired Professor of Medicine Bangalore
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Dear Editor (Deputy) BMJ, I do not know the context for your philosophical article about happiness. Is it connected with the recent allegations against NHS doctors that they have become greedy, too well paid but lazy and somewhat disloyal to to the profession? If so I have some things to share with you. Mahathma Gandhi once said that there is enough for every ones needs, but the whole world is not enough for one man's greed. About greed being at the root of all unhappiness it has been preached well by Lord Buddha thousands of years ago. The very first stanza of Ishaavaasyopanishad says that every thing in the universe belongs to the Lord (Isha, Isa) and is god's own manifestation and the man is supposed to enjoy what is given to him with out jealousy, greed,or discontentment and should not resort to stealing some one else's share. In fact this kind of Philosophy has made Indians never go for aggression in thousands of years, many Indians shun fame and riches and forgo prizes like Nobel Prize, do not resort to patenting some of the epoch making concepts and treasures like ancient medicine or traditional wisdom. The richest man in the world also is contented only when he sees his toddlers enjoying a nice siesta. The quality of this happiness is no different from a the happiness derived by a man living by roadside in a Metro city. But who is going to tell the doctors in the corporate-health -care industry that they should tighten their belt a little. They need to be less greedy and derive happiness with out causing misery to the needy. The needy patients, rich or poor, insured or uninsured,in the East or West, to day are feeling that they are an exploited lot, and only the Almighty can redeem them from the skilled healers. Thanks for opening up this philosophical angle in this gadget-oriented health care delivery system sans mercy. Dr. T. K. Nagabhushana Novi. MI. E-mail: drtknag@yahoo.com Competing interests: None declared |
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Rod Storring, Consultant Physician 42 Felstead Rd London E11 2QJ
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Staff satisfaction surveys are carried out annually in all NHS Trusts in the Uk.Little notice appears to be taken of the unhappiness revealed in many of these surveys.May I suggest how a use of these surveys could result in a marked improvement in an NHS which is manifestly dysfunctional It seems obvious that people working in an organisation within which it is possible to do their jobs well, will be satisfied in their work. In the light of this,I would like to suggest a single target for the NHS,and that is that each Trust achieve an adequate staff satisfaction score. The result of this is that notice would have to be taken of those working at the patient end of the service, It would be more than suprisung if a better NHS did not result Competing interests: None declared |
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Dr.Anan Jaiswal, General Physician NIZAM'S INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL SCIENCES,HYDERABAD , INDIA , 500082
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Respected sir, I have read many responses mentioning such as happiness as the state of mind ,happiness as mental attribute. I don’t want to offend the writers but I totally disagree with all this. I strongly believe that happiness and mind cannot go together. They are absolutely two opposite poles of the magnet and cannot come together and I will try to prove my belief with the hard facts which I, you and everyone see in daily life. Has anyone seen any cow or dog eating (SSRTIs), or mood elevators or for the fact any bird getting insomnia? Have we ever asked why? Any cat requiring to watch movie or for the sake of information a donkey or a mule requiring a break to refresh its mind? The answers for all this question everyone knows. Very obvious no. then as we ourselves so called intellectuals ever asked why? We don’t bother this trivial things? Have we ever noticed that when we are watching a suspense thriller we are totally engrossed and that time the mind does not think. All the major senses are engrossed in movie so mind is not there so we are happy or momentarily happy. While playing video games same phenomenon occurs so mind is missing. If any of the readers have doubt they can check themselves. Do we ever noticed that in sleep mind is not working except in dreams so we feel happy after getting sound sleep for the proof don’t sleep for 2 nights. Mind can live only in two states brooding over the past so guilt and anticipating about future so anxiety. when we are in present there is no mind, as in watching movies or while playing videogame. So destruction of the mind, total annihilation nothing less than that can give pure happiness other wise whole life will pass looking for it and will never achieve true happiness. Mind should come into play when it is needed not when it is not needed. “ So for the conclusion – Today is gift from God that is why it is called PRESENT” Live in present. Competing interests: None declared |
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