As much as I love math, and har de har har, I'm not being sarcastic at all, I'm a little bit confused by the idea of indexing happiness. Running a regression on smiles and frowns. Calculating the confidence interval of the heart. I'm starting to see this idea pop up all over the place : The Happiness Index (published in The Atlantic, this one is based off of Facebook status posts; fortunately I'm enough of a jerk to say how dumb this sounds), the Happy Planet Index, a well-intentioned attempt at creating longer and happier lives while reducing human environmental impact, and Gross National Happiness, synonymous with GDP. The Happiness Index belongs to the United States, the Happy Planet Index to the Brits, and Bhutan currently has one of the highest GNH's. Ocean to ocean, this concept has found roots for itself.


I definitely encourage you to look some of these up - and there are more out there - because the original basis for the studies is so well-intentioned, it does give one sincere hope for humankind. I will give that one to happiness statistics. But if you asked me to take all my emotions, and make some kind of definitive, black-and-white logic out of them, I would tell you that you are crazy. I don't think most people even know when they are truly happy, or truly not. In hindsight, perhaps, but not at the time. I also don't think it would be even remotely possible to get people to accurately admit to their current state of mind. Even if we did come to some concise conclusions on happiness, would you really want to hear a rule and follow it? I don't think many people would benefit from someone else telling them what would make them happy and what wouldn't.


Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.


I do what I want.