I didn’t think I was particularly unhappy. OK, so I don’t bound around with Labrador-like enthusiasm all day, but nor do I spend my free time in darkened rooms listening to Leonard Cohen.
The feel-good emotion appeared today in many forms: the yellow lilies I bought for my mum; the cats’ purred greetings when I arrived home; the golden-bodied, gauzy-winged dragonfly; the touch of the Grey Mare’s velvet muzzle and smell of her silken neck; the officer of the law, head back, mouth open, snoozing in his car where the dual carriageway of the A1 funnels into one. He made me laugh out loud: the ultimate sleeping policeman.
Admittedly, there were also annoyances: the persistent overnight rain that left pools on the road (dried up now); the person I had arranged to interview who put me off until tomorrow; the fact that god-awful Umbrella song is still No1. Minor irritations really; certainly insufficient to plunge me into a deep depression.
That’s what I thought anyway, at least until I took the Happy Planet Index test. Apparently, I am below the international, UK and female happiness average. I am on a par with people from Burkina Faso (I suppose I might be rather perturbed if I lived in a place where I couldn’t pronounce the capital city). My life expectancy is also below average. Is it because I live alone, in a shock, horror, terraced house? Perhaps I should have marked extra boxes for the cats.
Then I looked below the headlines and realised something didn’t quite add up. The results advised me to stop smoking (I’d ticked the box saying I was an ex-smoker) and take more exercise – I’d marked the ‘I take exercise five to seven times’ a week option, the maximum in the survey (horses don’t look after themselves, you know).
It would seem the little person sitting in cyberspace marking these surveys wasn’t reading the responses properly: either that or they were trying to turn their predictions of doom and gloom into self-fulfilling prophecies. Perhaps I won’t spend the evening sitting crying on the kitchen floor, after all.
The feel-good emotion appeared today in many forms: the yellow lilies I bought for my mum; the cats’ purred greetings when I arrived home; the golden-bodied, gauzy-winged dragonfly; the touch of the Grey Mare’s velvet muzzle and smell of her silken neck; the officer of the law, head back, mouth open, snoozing in his car where the dual carriageway of the A1 funnels into one. He made me laugh out loud: the ultimate sleeping policeman.
Admittedly, there were also annoyances: the persistent overnight rain that left pools on the road (dried up now); the person I had arranged to interview who put me off until tomorrow; the fact that god-awful Umbrella song is still No1. Minor irritations really; certainly insufficient to plunge me into a deep depression.
That’s what I thought anyway, at least until I took the Happy Planet Index test. Apparently, I am below the international, UK and female happiness average. I am on a par with people from Burkina Faso (I suppose I might be rather perturbed if I lived in a place where I couldn’t pronounce the capital city). My life expectancy is also below average. Is it because I live alone, in a shock, horror, terraced house? Perhaps I should have marked extra boxes for the cats.
Then I looked below the headlines and realised something didn’t quite add up. The results advised me to stop smoking (I’d ticked the box saying I was an ex-smoker) and take more exercise – I’d marked the ‘I take exercise five to seven times’ a week option, the maximum in the survey (horses don’t look after themselves, you know).
It would seem the little person sitting in cyberspace marking these surveys wasn’t reading the responses properly: either that or they were trying to turn their predictions of doom and gloom into self-fulfilling prophecies. Perhaps I won’t spend the evening sitting crying on the kitchen floor, after all.
