Research into happiness and emotional well-being during the covid lockdowns suggests that being outdoors with others is associated with increased emotional wellness and an easing of feelings of loneliness.
It occurred to me that this finding might tell us something interesting about the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps the word "pursuit" itself is unhelpful. After all, where do you start to look for it? One problem - at least when dealing with this last question - is that you might not recognise happiness even if you found it because ideas and definitions concerning values and emotions are not fixed. They change over time.
Additionally, books and ideas which promote the idea that one can unpack and examine a "happy mood" are doomed to an unfortunate end given that most moods are transient and mood-changers unreliable. Perhaps, a wider question could be asked: what is the good life? So - what is the good life? Maximising pleasure? Being at peace with yourself? The problem here is that every human life, even the most fortunate life, is filled with pain of some kind, and pain is hardly conducive to a good life or, indeed, to happiness.
It occurred to me, while walking on the hills today, that happiness is not something we can experience or obtain. Nor is it a mental state which can be permanent. We humans flourish when we exercise our ability to think, to reason and create. Thinking, reasoning and creating are both individual and social activities and we flourish when we think, reason and create either with or for others. So, it could be argued that happiness comes down to the quality of the relationships we cultivate with other people.
No wonder, then, that one survey into covid and its influence on happiness during lockdown suggested that:
Our results show robust evidence of a negative causal effect of lockdown regulations on happiness,
notwithstanding the countries included in our sample's diversity in characteristics and lockdown regulations.
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