Ricky TomlinsonAn English actor best known for his roles in Brookside and The Royle Family. was singing in the bath: "Happiness, happiness, the greatest thing that I possess!" It was April 2020 and the world was reeling from the new pandemic, but some people were determined to accentuate the positiveEmphasise the good side of a situation rather than the bad side. and thank the NHSThe National Health Service, the publicly funded healthcare system in the UK. The NHS was founded in 1948.. Making a video of a classic song was their answer.

At the same time, The Atlantic¹ asked Arthur Brooks to become its happiness correspondent. Now he has boiled his articles down to produce three maxims Short statements of general truths..

The first is: "Mother Nature does not care if you are happy." It is a big mistake to think we can find happiness by following our instincts and pursuing money, pleasure, power and admiration. Thomas AquinasOne of the most important medieval thinkers. The Italian priest called Aristotle "the Philosopher" and worked to unite pagan Greek philosophy with Christian principles. called them "substitutes for God".

Instead, we should focus on things that really matter: family, friends, doing good and religion or philosophy.

Secondly, "lasting happiness comes from habits, not hacks". Instead of taking shortcuts to get the things we want, we need to make a real effort in our everyday life.  

The third maxim is "happiness is love". The most important thing in life is to build good, strong relationships - not just with friends and family but with the people you meet and work with.

But another journalist, Lowri Dowthwaite, says there cannot be rules about happiness that apply to everyone. Writing in The Conversation², she argues that chasing happiness often makes us unhappy.

Dowthwaite agrees that "happiness is not simply about a hedonisticHedonism was pioneered by Democritus (c 460 BC - 37BC), who argued that "joy and sorrow are the distinguishing marks of things that are beneficial and things that are harmful". pursuit of pleasure." But she believes that people are happy in different ways, according to their personalities - and that as we grow older our happiness depends less on what other people think of us.

The key to happiness, she suggests, "is truly getting to know yourself and having the guts to do what makes your life worth living at a certain point - regardless of what others say". 

Yes: We all know from experience that some things make us happy, while others make us unhappy. We recognise that some of them only bring us short-term pleasure, not lasting happiness.    

No: Happiness depends above all on your personality, and all of us are different. A cheerful person will make the best of difficult circumstances, while a gloomy one will never be satisfied.

Or... We cannot be sure of achieving happiness, but we know how to go about creating it - by showing love to other people. The more we do that, the more likely we are to receive it in return.