Happiness and changing clocks

 

At some point in the wee hours of the morning, I lost an hour as the clocks changed. Because of that hour my aspirations for the day, to get to Oxford for lunchtime, all flew out of the window.

Now I understand that farmers and the like might need to make the best use of the sunlight, and I recall the idea of British summertime was introduced to help the war effort (that’s WWI, and the Germans started it first)

But in a society where everybody (who wants one) has a watch, isn’t it about time that we started letting people make their own mind up about whether they want to sleep through sunny mornings, or get out there and fight the enemy.

So instead I headed to a South London boozer, and friends old and new, and got sucked into a conversation about happiness.

For whatever reasons for today I’m kind of happy with my life (female companionship aside). The world might be going to shit, but at least I have the opportunity to do something about it.

In the arena of the pub conversation I said as much, and it transpires that the denizen I was duelling with was far from happy with his life. Happiness is simply a matter of chemicals in your brain and due to a lack of serotonin in his he has to take complex drugs to boost the production of happiness.

So drugs to keep you happy, drugs to make you sad, or drugs to keep you stable? And who gets to determine how happy/sad we should be and how happy are they? and who determines that? and if such drugs are necessary how come so many are illegal?

Alternatively take your life in your hand and do something about what it is that creates that state that puts you in that mood you’d rather not be.

Or it could be the change in the sunlight hours?

[3010]