Happy Monday! Hope, holidays and hugs return

But wait! Is it wrong to be happy? This morning there is much grim news. But, if you look beneath the surface, there are also many reasons why this is a wonderful time to be alive. Imagine you are a baby. For your entire life, you have only been held by your closest family. Social distance advice in the UK has discouraged hugging to slow the spread of Covid-19. From today, those restrictions have been lifted in England and Scotland. People can hug again. Some, for the very first time. But should we celebrate Happy Monday? Over 4,000 people are still dying of the virus each day in India. New variants are emerging. The rest of the news is bleak: violence in Israel, civil war in Ethiopia, a military coup in Myanmar. The UN warns that climate change continues at a “relentless” pace. And yet behind the news lies a story of hope. That was the argument of the Swedish thinker Hans Rosling, who spent his career drawing attention to long-term global trends. He argued we have many reasons to be cheerful. We are richer. In the last 20 years, the number of people in extreme poverty has almost halved. Rosling called it “the greatest story of our time”. By 2040, poverty could be eradicated and another two billion lifted into the middle-class. Healthier. Two centuries ago, your chances of a long life were vanishingly small. Around 25% of children died in the first year, half before the end of puberty. Global life expectancy was only 28.5 years. Vaccines, improved sanitation and living standards have now extended global life expectancy to 71.7 years and child mortality is below 4%. Safer. News stories focus on conflict. But according to psychologist Steven Pinker, society is becoming less violent. Murder rates have fallen every decade since World War Two and wars are becoming less frequent and less deadly. Pinker says: “world peace is within view”. Smarter. In 1800, only 12% of the world could read and write. Now, less than 15% are illiterate and more children are in school for longer than ever. Since the IQ test was devised a century ago, average scores have also been rising, making this the brightest generation in history. More creative. Futurologist Harry Gatterer says periods of crisis, like the pandemic, set up the conditions for an explosion of creativity. Already the challenge of climate change is driving a revolution in green technology and bioengineering. More democratic. In 1893, New Zealand became the first country to achieve universal suffrage. At the end of World War Two, there were only 12 democracies, but by 2002 they had overtaken autocracies as the most common form of government. More connected. In 1837, the first electronic message was sent between two London railway stations. There are now 4.66 billion internet users – almost 60% of the world’s population – able to share knowledge and cooperate in ways impossible a generation ago. Pessimists warn that these trends were reversed during the world wars and we cannot know what the future holds. Norwegian psychologist Per Espen Stoknes says it is dangerous to think progress is inevitable. We must not be “addicted to optimism,” he says. “You can be pessimistic and yet full of hope.” So is happiness misguided? Go the whole hug Some say yes, the happy are blissfully ignorant. As the world burns, they focus on enjoying fleeting pleasures and fail to think seriously about the problems we face. Happiness makes us complacent. Intelligent people are restless and critical, unhappy with the state of the world and always thinking about how it can be improved. Others say no, it takes brains to be happy. Our instinct is to expect the worst, but if we reflect and consider the facts, we can reassure ourselves and make better decisions. There is also more to intelligence than facts and figures. Wisdom comes from knowing when our thoughts are making us unhappy and when the smart thing to do is to think less and enjoy life more. KeywordsCreativity - Using imagination or ideas to make something new.