Because I’m happy...

Community means everything when it comes to mental health and happiness. (Representational image: Phil Nguyen via Pexels)

What we think will make us happy:

Money, fame, more money, more fame…

What makes us happy:

A toddler niece calling our name. Strong Wi-Fi. Humming a song…

What we think will make us happy versus what currently gives us a buzz are stored in two very separate files. Which is why the seemingly simplistic findings of one of the longest studies undertaken by Harvard – that it is relationships that delight us most of all – carries a ring of home truth. This is what ‘The Study of Adult Development’ found after its long research over 80 years: happiness lies in relationships.

‘When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships,’ says George Vaillant, one of the psychiatrists who led the study during an earlier period. The repeat of the word ‘relationships’ three times over perhaps reflects his – and our – surprise at what really matters at the end of it all. Community means everything when it comes to mental health, to pleasant and lasting ties.

Happiness has to be plotted, strategised, researched and perfected. Which is why a liberal arts university in New Jersey has announced a master's degree in Happiness Studies, focusing on ‘human flourishing’. This is the world’s first such degree, and points to the fact that happiness is not an easily attained mood or frame of mind. The academic world would thus seem to be in the process of recognising and prioritising good cheer over blind ambition and the chasing of worldly pleasures.

The history of human happiness has been an iffy thing, a touch and go affair. Usually someone’s sadness or defeat brings us our share of bliss. And we are aware that our tears mean rapture for another. Which means everyone being happy at all times is a physical impossibility. On a general scale, however, if we practise self-care and remember to smile at our neighbours, we are doing our bit.

Sometimes we try shortcuts to happiness: there’s Feng Shui and Vastu and reiki and wearing an emerald on the index finger. We pay astrologers to ward off Saturn and to woo Venus; planetary misalignments can bring on the blues and need horoscopic help to straighten out.

When it comes to combating melancholy, to each his own. Googling your ex or learning to cast a spell against your mother-in-law, we try everything we can to park the dark at the door. Elon Musk bought Twitter. Bureaucrats are leaving plum government posts for corporate positions or politics. Some gamble, some drink, some smoke, some break hearts. The routes are various, the destination same: to shoot happy like a drug directly into your veins.

We are over the moon, in seventh heaven, on cloud nine only when we are in healthy, loving bonds with fellow human beings. From ‘if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands’ to ‘clap along if you know what happiness is to you’, it takes us roughly the same number of years as it did the Harvard researchers to understand this basic mantra.