HEALTH AND WELLBEING.
On Happiness.Happiness, contentment and joyfulness are qualities that lighten our lives. As Maria Popova writes “happiness is a universally delicious necessity of life, which we crave from the day we are born until the day we die.” It is to live happily ever after that we are influenced to aspire to in our childhoods.
Yet to live amoungst the daily reality of our lives, is to confront its ups and downs, it's textures and its transience, abundant in struggle and beauty. Rarely does one quality endure, throughout a day, an hour or a moment. Happiness- defined as more than an emotion, encompassing joy, satisfaction, and purpose, central to our sense of wellbeing, can be fleeting. Thus is it something to aspire to, as we are urged to in our childhoods, is it something enduring as we hope in our innocence that it will be. Is it something that arises spontaneously or is it something that we can cultivate to bolster us in times of weathering, or storm?
Dr Laurie Santos a professor of psychology at Yale University who’s work is centered on happiness effuses that happiness and contentment is something that can be cultivated through intentional habits, in nurturing social connections, physical wellbeing, accepting negative emotions and mindfulness, amoungst others. This is affirmed in the words and work of Matteu Ricard an author and buddhist who writes happiness is a practice, and asks “What are the inner conditions that foster a genuine sense of flourishing, of fulfillment?”
Contrastingly the words and work of psychologist Carl Rogers echo the binaries that exist within the notion of happiness- and the paradox that we may find when we cease actively pursing it and accept life as it is,
“I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even though the person.. would experience each one of these at the appropriate times. But adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-fainthearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life..”
He reflects that life itself is textured illuminated by a spectrum of experiences. If we persue, or expect solely happiness do we miss the layers that enrich our lives, and yet if we are not cognisant of the circumstances in which happiness for us arises, or how we may create it- do we miss the opportunities for it?
By H Coutts.
5.March.2026
References and Further Reading.
Huberman A, Santos Laurie, How To Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols, Huberman Lab. Accessed online 4th March. https://podcastnotes.org/huberman-lab/dr-laurie-santos-how-to-achieve-true-happiness-using-science-based-protocols-huberman-lab/
Tippet Krista, Ricard Mattieu. May 27 2019, Happiness Is Practice, Not Pleasure, Onbeing Podcast. Accessed online 4th March 2026. https://onbeing.org/programs/happiness-is-practice-not-pleasure-matthieu-ricard/
Image via Lottie Hampson.