In pursuit of happiness

They say the reason time flies as you age is that each year becomes a smaller percentage of your life. I remember those 10 per cent days well, when a year was a like a mini-lifetime. The summer holidays alone felt like about two years of my current ‘three per cent' time perception.

Back then, age was like a badge, something you wore with pride. Being a nine-year-old meant something very different from being eight. Milestones were breathlessly awaited from months earlier: notably when going into double digits and into the teens. You couldn't possibly forget how old you were it practically defined you.

Contrast this with the recent year I spent, thinking I was 33 when I was actually 32.

Many of us find that it's year-ends rather than birthdays that make us reflect on ageing and look back at the 365 days just spent. And this is probably why we have new year resolutions, but not birthday ones. And though resolutions refer to the future, they're actually all about the past.

Many resolutions stereotypically so are related to body weight. Since I'm about seven kilos above my ideal mass, I might well join the ranks. But after two years of intensive cycling, I've realised that I can't be at my ideal weight and love food the way I do. If the seven kilos have to go, a large part of what makes me happy must go too.

And so, the end of 2009 is a time I'm thinking again about happiness and exactly what this word at once simple and impossibly complex means. You see, I recently had a realisation, a small but important one, that real-world happiness isn't a goal and it certainly isn't a state of constant bliss.

Rather, it's the average of a spiky graph that changes constantly, even minute to minute. For example as I write, every full stop causes a small spike: "One more sentence written!" And if the word count is below my target, my heart sinks.

The problem

The problem for many of us, is that we focus on, or remember, only the troughs, dips and downward trends. Some of us do it all the time. All of us, I'm sure, do it some of the time. Having recently spent a few days with someone who is perpetually unhappy, I realised that looking back and averaging the graph of my emotions, I was actually happy. Not blissful I have too much of an anxious personality and perhaps a touch too much cynicism for that. But definitely happy.

And that was my earlier mistake, one that so many of us make. That "happy people" whoever they are, live a life of bliss, tripping gaily through their days, their laughter echoing off the walls. Make that a conscious thought and you can see how ridiculous it is. Even "happily ever afters" in fairy tales have some pretty awful years before getting there.

Most of us don't have that clear line in our lives. We don't have that one day when our prince will come (whatever form your prince takes whether a windfall investment or being set free from the basement) and everything will change permanently for the better. We forget that stock markets are like life; that you can have great depressions and dot.com booms, but can expect only a modest long-term gain of 10 per cent.

So my wish for this new year is that more of us in these stressful days accept that happiness isn't a goal and thereby realise what we already have is happiness. It may be rough and cracked and temperamental, but it's the real thing. Blemishes and all.

Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.