I was reading an article from Peter Singer on Gross National Happiness concept this morning and I found one part quite interesting – how to measure happiness? He came up with two reasonable alternatives – (1) Is Happiness a surplus of pleasure over pain experienced over the lifetime or (2) Is Happiness the degree to which we are satisfied with our lives?

It’s a very interesting question because whatever we pursue in life we tend to do with an overarching misconception that we are pursuing happiness and so our pursuit of greed, lust, success, power, more or less everything in life is somehow supposed to make us happy when the truth is that there is a general ignorance about how happiness could be achieved.

If we pursue the two definitions suggested by Mr. Singer, in the first approach he suggests add up positive moments and subtract negative ones and wow we know if one was happy or unhappy. That could be done quite objectively in this age of facebook when most moments of pleasure find their way to the status updates at alarming regularity. So if you had a great day at work, wonderful meal, superb trip, fantastic party, great get-together with friends or saw a nice movie or play it usually ends up on one’s facebook page The only moments of pleasure I haven’t seen on status updates are the likes of “Had great sex, look forward to do it again tonight!!!” but Mr. Zuckerberg will tell you that he is working on that and day is not far when that last wall will also crumble on Facebook. As for moments of sadness, a more ‘social’ creed is already letting us all know when they are sad or down but even without that, it’s not tough to document moments of sadness in a day and so at the end of day just do your maths and you could figure the great secret of life!!! But that’s where I start to differ on this first approach with Mr. Singer because it’s not the frequency but intensity of pain and pleasure that drives happiness and unhappiness. I could have an absolute wretched day at office but one great moment back home could wipe it all off or there may be just one bad incident in the morning which is so overpowering that all the moments of pleasure for rest of the day could never get better of it. So, could this ‘sum-up the pleasure and subtract the pain’ approach ever work for measuring one’s happiness. I don’t think so because while it’s an objective approach but it totally forgets the ‘ness’ bit of happiness.

That brings me to second approach, which involves as per Mr. Singer to ask people at different times in their life whether they are satisfied or not and then use that data to determine the happiness. I agree this is the closest man can come to figure other men’s happiness index but there is an elementary issue with this approach. Do we know are we satisfied with our life? There is an old saying in Sanskrit – “Santosh param Sukham” which means Satisfaction is greatest Happiness but remember the classic Pepsi ad of 90s “Yeh Dil Maange More!!!” (Heart Craves for More). And the two together explains the classic conundrum of human existence – The eternal truth and harsh reality. If we see Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs pyramid as a reference point then we could say that as a race we are so engrossed in fulfilling the bottom four layers of our ‘deficiency needs’ of material comfort, career, love, power etc. that self-actualization doesn’t even figure in our to-do list in one lifetime. Is that a step too high & too slippery for humanity in general to tread? In Hindu philosophy, human life is divided into four stages of life, last being ‘Sanyas’ or renunciation which includes a concept of ‘Vairagya’ or detachment – detachment not only from earthly pleasures of money and comfort but also family bonds and relationships. It’s a different discussion but key point is that do we in life need a slight detachment from its pleasure to achieve true happiness. Do we need that to take a step back from all that life offers to be able appreciate all that life offers in true sense. It’s just like being an art gallery where to get the true perspective of a piece of art you need to find the right spot at some distance. But getting back, I think measuring satisfaction is like finding Holy Grail of human existence. I think most of us would have know those days of absolute tranquility when life seems at peace, a state of mind that’s true bliss but transient –that’s what happiness is. I wish it could be measured, a formula could be found to attain it but I know equally well that it’s a futile exercise. It’s something within us which we could only feel when we are true and honest to ourselves and in peace with our reality and that’s where Mr. Singer will face his true challenge in this second approach – finding people who could really tell that they are satisfied or not with their life.

And that’s also where most of us will face the real challenge in our pursuit of happiness…