When I was six or seven, there was a song on the radio that went: “Happiness is/different things to different people/that’s what happiness is.” I recognised fatuousness long before I knew the word. David Cameron, when prime minister, tried to measure the happiness of the population without ever defining the concept: so much for the philosophical content of an Oxford PPE degree. It was the politics, stupid.
“I think we were happy then” is a phrase that catches the meaning for me, a moment outside time, recognised only in retrospect. Remember that the “pursuit of happiness” makes no mention of actually reaching the goal; only of keeping open the possibility.
Jacqueline Castles
London W2, UK
