Number of words: 359

Here’s a lesson that our culture sorely needs to relearn. Ever since the Industrial Revolution we have tried to convince ourselves that science and technology, and then shopping and self-help, would create a magic portal through which we could step, leaving all our negatives behind. It hasn’t happened. We’re still the naked man trying to tear off his shirt. We’re lumbered with ourselves, with our griefs, anxieties, quibblings and sniping jealousies and all the other apparent negatives that make us who we are. Happiness is but one facet, and it remains fleeting and capricious It’s not to be found in McDonald’s Happy Meals™ or in reading happiness books or in fun-sized snacks or even by singing, ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ – no matter how much we clap our hands and stamp our feet.

And what would actually happen if joy could be lassoed and tamed? In Will Ferguson’s satirical novel Happiness, a self-help book is finally published that does the unthinkable: it works. Everyone becomes happy. As a result, the global economy collapses. People stop buying stuff that they previously thought would make them feel better. The book’s hero sees it coming: ‘Our entire economy is built on human weaknesses,’ he cautions. ‘Hair salons. Male mid-life crises. Shopping binges. Our entire way of life is built on self-doubt and dissatisfaction. If people were ever really, truly happy, truly satisfied with their lives, it would be cataclysmic.”

To sustain our individual, collective and earthly ecologies, we need precisely that sort of cataclysmic calming of our happiness-chasing busyness. Even if it won’t result from an epidemic of joy, we still might make it happen by achieving some measure of mere contentment. The next step in our species’ social evolution is to embrace the happiness paradox, to nurture our appreciation for the satisfactions that we have, rather than burning everything up in the all-consuming pursuit of the unattainable. Lasting happiness is not the destination. It’s the quest. And it would be easier for everyone if we stopped trying so damn hard.

Excerpted from pages 200 to 201 of Enough: breaking free from the world of excess by John Naish