When a friend of mine asked me recently when I was last truly happy, I was initially taken aback by the parsimony of my response. Over the past month, during which time I have not been feeling remotely discontent, I could offer only the most fleeting and feeble of exemplars: agreeing with my godson Fred that the party we were attending was too loud, cracking a perfect joke with my new friend Joan, waking up to a sea view.
Contentment, emotional equilibrium, I can track across the years. But happiness for me has never been about more than moments, and I don't think that makes me especially unusual.
So it concerns me to hear the word being utilised so thoughtlessly in the current debate on wellbeing. It seems to me to be a faux carrot. An examination of our nation's mental health, and in particular the pressing concern of the mental health of children and adolescents, should not translate into a belief that our lives ought to be continuously, blandly joyous; that this is somehow our right. We must be careful not to fetishise happiness, or turn it into a commodity. It is a privilege - even having the time and energy to contemplate its presence or otherwise in our lives is unique to our age. It is not a choice like any other, to be attained with sufficient acquisition, whether of goods, love or achievement.
It seems to me that our society is currently tyrannised by choice. Overweening options crush so much else that is fruitful in life - optimism, challenge, the knowledge of one's own limitations. In the context of wellbeing, it creates a sloppy instrumentalism - so mental malaise should be quickly fixed by a brief dose of CBT rather than any deeper examination of psychology or circumstance.
What is also vexing about the present terms of reference is the emphasis on relationships as the sole route to fulfilment. Of course, love and trust between individuals are essential to the human experience, particularly at a time when those less intimate, but similarly sustaining, bonds of neighbourliness and community are being eroded. But we do not define our existence only in relation to other selves. As the renowned psychiatrist Anthony Storr argued, intimate personal relationships are but one source of mental wellbeing. The capacity to be alone is also fundamental to development.
Storr observed that, aside from some work by Donald Winnicott, there has been a great deal of research into children's relationships with their parents and with other children, but there is virtually no discussion of whether it is valuable for them to be alone. "Yet if it is considered desirable to foster the growth of the child's imaginative capacity," Storr wrote, "we should ensure that our children, when they are old enough to enjoy it, are given time and opportunity for solitude."
But solitude not only fosters creativity. It relates to an individual's capacity to connect with, and make manifest, their own inner feelings. What is noxious about our modern climate is that we seem to be neither capable of solitude nor intimacy. In our timetabled lives, a plethora of technology offers a distortion of genuine closeness: so a text message or an email suffices for face-to-face contact. A missive sent from one individual in a particular state of mind reaches another individual in quite a different one. This we call keeping in touch.
Who we wish to connect with, when and how, is thus presented as choice. Meanwhile, our private endeavours are considered diminished unless they are sufficiently witnessed. The reality ethic demands that a personal event is only deemed authentic when it has been viewed by 10 other people on camera-phone.
These are dangerous times. That this discussion is going on alongside a recognition of the major role that deprivation plays in wellbeing does not make it self-regarding. But an understanding of what we expect from happiness, and where we locate it, is crucial.
