It was a conference that offered "a smorgasbord of tools and techniques for a happier life", and when the social commentator and psychologist Hugh Mackay rose to his feet it was not to call for more happiness. Mr Mackay advocated more sadness, more grief, more failure and disappointment, because, he told the Happiness and its Causes conference in Sydney late last week, it was through those that people grew, not through happiness. Without sadness, he explains, we would never know happiness, and he is startlingly right.
I have never appreciated life, for example, as much as I have done since I faced the imminence of its loss six years ago. We need to experience the contrast to appreciate positive.
Mr Mackay links sadness and happiness as the contrasting conditions, but in my experience it has been anxiety and happiness. I see myself as happy, usually in hindsight, when I am free of anxiety, and I see myself, usually at the time, as unhappy when I am anxious.
What do you see as happiness? And do you agree that our culture places too much emphasis on happiness rather than, to use Mr Mackay's word, wholeness?
Email a friend