HAPPY: Based on "The Conquest of Happiness‪"‬

I do not wish to proclaim myself an expert in this subject. Nor is this book meant to be a new-age "sure will do it" guide on becoming happy, or being happy for that matter. I cannot assure you that the reading of this book will make you any happier. This is not a prescriptive book about happiness, though it is however based on a book that is somewhat prescriptive. This book is my way of organizing the thoughts from Bertrand Russell's "The Conquest of Happiness", providing illustrative context in a format that will be convenient to a reader from 2012 onwards. 


The idea for this book came to me while I was sauntering in my garden, reading Happiness intermittently in the breeze while sipping an icy glass of isotonic drink. The experience was amazing, in the horizon there is the sun setting amidst the mountains and birds were flying about; some chirping merrily away, some bouncing about on fences. I was truly happy at that moment, on a holiday versus having to squeeze into a packed train of half depressed commuters going about with their business of tapping on glass screens.


Don't let the impression fool you, if you see me on the train on a business day I will probably be busy tapping away on the screen of my phone too. The danger of producing this kind of writing is how I might eventually be thought of as some kind of happiness guru that is happy all the time. The truth is, I am just a regular lad that works for a living and isn't fantastically on a high all the time nor really depressed or anything like that. In fact, I love to work even though it is usually a grinding day that only feels productive if a tough conundrum is there to be resolved by looking intensely on a screen and tapping on things, this time plastic keys. I have things that bring me down too, usually with the state of society and community (and how it affects me, obviously) but there are sufficient happiness in aspects of life that keeps me going.


The thing about these happy aspects of life though, is how the happy times are always precious. I don't think we derive enjoyment from these activities 100% of the time. We have to get into the mood sufficiently to begin to enjoy it and may get bored of it after a couple of hours. And of course, there are times when nothing works. All these makes the golden nuggets of happiness even more rare.


So back to that moment in my garden, an idea formed that a book might be able to help increase the sum of happy moments we get. The goal is to make those rare and precious golden nuggets more abundant. Intuitively, what we think about has an effect on our action, quoting from Rene Descartes, "I think, therefore I am". And what we think about can be influenced by the images and texts that we encounter, don't think I need to go too far to convince you on this.


In plain words, I think a book (or whatever represents a body of text nowadays) that we can carry around and read for a couple of minutes to start thinking explicitly about happiness comes to mind. This book is just that. It is based on my notes from reading "The Conquest of Happiness" with snippets of information or art that is meant to be some kind of a "Food For Thought" meets "Daily Bread" manuscript. Contextual information helps imagination and recollection. Art evokes feeling. It is my hope that you can read a section (which has been sized appropriately to be completed in a few minutes), appreciate the public domain art and start thinking about the idea in that section for the frame of activity that you were engaged in (train travel, lunch, etc.). Of course, you can read it as a book, or however you like as long as it triggers your thought. Hopefully, some of these thinking helps you condition and nurture what Russell calls a mental integration (harmonious engagement of conscious, subconscious and unconscious) to begin and continue the cycle of happiness.