The Happiness Formula

A Little Time And a Little Peace Can Go a Long Way

A friend of mine, a medical doctor who specialises in treating problem of the heart, recently asked me to produce for him a formula for happiness. Initially, I wasn’t inclined to do so, thinking about how disappointed would my doctoral supervisor be if he found out I took time off my research to work on happiness. However, because the cardiologist was so generous in his hospitality the last time I visited him in Italy, I eventually resolved to take some time to figure it out. In the off chance this might be useful to others, I have decided to publish it. It is tuned for people who have been admitted to an hospital, the totality of those my friend has to deal with daily, but it can be easily adapted to the general case (I leave this as an exercise for the reader).

To find the formula, I first meditated on the ingredients of happiness and found the following primary components: time, friendship, health, freedom and (internal) peace. What is left is to figure out how and in what measure these contribute to happiness. Let’s be clear, happiness is but the quality of life and a state of mind capable of appreciating said quality. Evidence of this fact is the multitude of the wretched that, whilst living a comfortable life, are unable to appreciate it, and the equally great multitude of the desperate that…