The funny thing about happiness — says Stefan Klein, who is both a scientist as well as a journalist — is that though all of us desire it we know very little about it. In his introduction, the author quotes S Ramachandran — the man who advanced the theory of the ‘God module’ in the brain — as saying “And we don’t even know yet what happiness is!” On the other hand,we know a lot about unhappiness,and its many manifestations, such as chronic depression, and other psychological disorders. Indeed, as Klein points out, an entire industry has evolved around the feeling of unhappiness, including pharmacology of drugs and disciplines like psychiatry. As the author says, we are genetically programmed to tragedy.
Why? Because negative emotions,such as fear and anger,are better evolutionary aids to survival than are positive feelings, such as pleasure and contentment. When danger presents itself — in the form of a predator,or any other hazardous situation — our bodies react automatically through the flight-or-fight response caused by an adrenaline charge. If negative emotions are literally em-bodied within us, isn’t that equally true of positive emotions as well? Using this as his starting point, Klein undertakes a wideranging quest,covering fields as diverse as anthropology and biochemistry,to find out what exactly is this elusive will-’o-the-wisp that we call happiness, and how do we find it. Klein’s journey begins literally with a smile. He cites anthropology to say that the smile is a universal sign of pleasure, as is found even among the remotest of tribal people who have had no contact with the modern world. Reviewing clinical trials which analysed various kinds of smiles, Klein notes that there are 19 kinds of this facial expression, but only one of these — the so-called Duchenne smile, named after a 19th century French scientist who first identified it, and which involves the contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscle that crinkles the corners of the eyes — denotes genuine pleasure, all the others being merely expressions of polite sociability. Studies have shown that people can be trained to produce an authentic Duchenne smile, and by doing so experience true pleasure. So is the secret of happiness as simple as that: just keep smiling. Unfortunately not.
Klein’s thesis is that happiness is not a static state, or condition of being, but a dynamic. The pursuit of happiness is precisely that: a pursuit, a constant process and a full time occupation. He suggests simple ways of alleviating stressful situations, thereby enabling us to replace negative feelings with positive ones. For example, if you are required to commute during peak hours every day and suffer acute frustration by being stuck in gridlocked traffic, find ways to occupy yourself in a pleasurable pursuit, such as learning a foreign language,or listening to an audio book, on your earphones. The more we adapt to replacing unpleasant feelings with those of pleasure, we change our body’s chemistry and the brain’s neural circuitry.As Klein says in his Introduction:“After you have read this book, your brain will look different than when you started.” So if you want to be a happier person, by all means read this book.But,much more importantly, learn to practice it.Try to learn to make happiness a habit,something which you do without really thinking about it. Something that comes to you naturally. Like smiling.■
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