![]() "How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!" - William Shakespeare (1564-1616) "A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) "Happiness depends, as Nature shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose." - William Cowper (1731-1800) But the Good Book is not the only authority on the subject. The Bible, of course, drew the same conclusion in commenting on the value of giving over receiving. ![]() "What we saw over a long period of time is that if one spouse changed in terms of increasing happiness, the other spouse's happiness would go up," said Christiane Hoppmann, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.Ī report by researchers at Hofstra University to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies concluded that people who maintain an "attitude of gratitude" tend to be happier and healthier than those who don't. One survey of 6,000 people, published in the latest issue of the American Psychological Association's journal Developmental Psychology, found that happiness is hitched to one's spouse. Meanwhile, a number of separate studies have attempted to determine the best source of happiness. Researchers attributed the findings to that city's high cost of living, traffic and other challenges of big-city life. The Centre for the Study of Living Standards surveyed 70,000 Canadians and found that Torontonians are among the least happy in the country. Perhaps the British would be better off measuring unhappiness, as Canadians recently did. ![]() Faced with a whopping deficit equivalent to 11.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product and an unemployment rate of 7.7 percent, Parliament recently has had to cut the welfare budget and other government services.Īnd for weeks thousands of university students across the country have been staging increasingly violent protests against proposed tuition increases. Lord knows the English - often modified by "jolly old" yet famed for stiff upper lips - could stand some cheering up these days, even with a royal wedding in the offing. He added, "If I thought this was woolly and insubstantial, I wouldn't be bothering with it." "From April next year we will start measuring our progress as a country not just by how our economy is growing, but by how our lives are improving, not just by our standard of living, but by our quality of life," Prime Minister David Cameron explained. Now the British have decided to measure their national mood as determined by something called a Happiness Index. ![]() The pursuit of happiness is even one of the unalienable rights guaranteed by the American Declaration of Independence, right up there with life and liberty. We humans are way too consumed with happiness.Įvery time you turn around, some new product, service, book, diet, psychologist or spiritual adviser promises to help people achieve this elusive state of mind. ![]()
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