Desiderata, the 1927 prose poem by US writer Max Ehrmann that I stuck to my teenage bedroom wall back in the 1980s, ends with: "Be careful. Strive to be happy." My copy was a facsimile of an ancient-looking parchment. A note at the bottom claimed the text had been discovered in Old St Paul's Church, Baltimore, in 1692. This turns out not to be true. Even the instruction to "Be careful" was apparently a printer's misprint. It ought to have read "Be cheerful". But it seemed authentic enough to me, and it offered an appealingly simple recipe for a satisfying life.
A report published last week by the Office for National Statistics suggests that life satisfaction may comprise rather more prosaic ingredients. Owning your own home, being married, and having a stable, professional job all increase your chances of scoring highly on the satisfaction scale. There are age variations, too, with teenagers and those who have retired scoring particularly highly. Life satisfaction, the survey suggests, dips in middle age.
None of this seems particularly surprising, with the exception of teenagers, perhaps, who would seem to me to have plenty of reasons to feel extremely dissatisfied. As an unmarried middle-aged tenant living in an urban environment with an unstable job and long-term health problems, I'd be expected to score quite lowly. And guess what, I do!
Sometimes. At others I feel so pumped full of wellbeing I could practically take off and fly. And, just to be clear, I haven't got married or bought a house or retired in between. My circumstances haven't changed. Just how I feel about them.
I've always felt that my sense of wellbeing derives from internal factors far more than it does from external ones. While this may be true, there is little doubt that external factors can get in the way of inner content as surely as a sharp stone in the bottom of one's sandal. It's hard to feel a strong sense of life satisfaction with a neighbour's music thumping through the walls or when every knock at the door could herald a visit from the loan shark.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the survey reveals the highest levels of reported wellbeing among those best able to determine both their physical environment and how they spend their time. Professionals who own their homes are far better placed to arrange their lives to suit them than, say, a checkout worker living in a rented bedsit. So far, so obvious.
Less obvious, indeed quite mystifying, is just what the government intends to do with the information it's gathered. When David Cameron announced his £2m measuring national wellbeing project in 2010, he described it as an alternative way of determining the nation's progress. Presumably then, the plan is to repeat the survey in a year or two and discover that, thanks to coalition policies, our happiness scores have increased. Which is fine. Except that virtually everything this government has done since it came to power has seemed designed to reduce the scores of the least satisfied still further. Changes to housing and disability benefits, for example, cuts to mental health services, the drastic reduction in legal aid. The odds on an own goal seem overwhelming. Could it be that the government has failed to think this through?
Perhaps it's time some kindly soul had a private word in the prime ministerial ear. Dear Mr Cameron, thank you so much for the interest you've shown in my happiness. I really appreciate everything you're trying to do to help me, so please don't take offence if I tell you that, actually, you're making me quite unhappy. Perhaps we could meet for a cup of tea and I'll tell you a few simple things you could do that would make me a whole lot happier. I'd have told you before but I never knew you cared.
• Clare Allan is an author and writer on mental health issues
