Last week, BBC Radio 4’s Positive Thinking explored the question of ‘how to be happy’. The programme featured an interview with Mo Gawdat, a former Chief Business Officer for Google X. He accepts that he has struggled to work out what was really important in life, having enjoyed exceptional wealth and privilege. In the interview, he memorably describes purchasing not one but two Rolls Royces in just two clicks on Ebay, only to discover upon their arrival they left him with a lingering sense of dissatisfaction.
Now Gawdat claims to have put his life experience and technical expertise to good use by having produced what he describes as a ‘mathematical solution’ for happiness. He suggests that happiness is equal to or greater than difference between the events of your life plus your own expectations. I imagine many of us would consider the substance of this to be true, even obvious (at least to an extent); we have so much but have a tendency to focus on what we lack, leaving us discontented.
Sometimes it takes a shock to set us back on the right track. For Gawdat it was the death of his young son from a complication to routine surgery. We have now lived through the strangest twelve months any of us are likely to experience. Just over a year ago, if we had been told that for the next three weeks we could meet up with only one friend at a time in a park for a picnic or a coffee we would have been horrified. Now I imagine that I am not alone in looking forward immensely to the prospects that the remainder of March will bring.
Gawdat’s theory is predicated on his view that anyone can be content if they adjust their expectations enough. If that is true, should we all just lower our aspirations until they are zero? I don’t think so. If the last year has taught us anything it is not that we can learn to love the unbearable. What he is missing is any notion of gratitude; that those who are happiest are those who are the most grateful for those good things they have already received. This is a different way of considering happiness entirely.
Frances Stratton
