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Achieving happiness

By Russell Grenning - posted Wednesday, 6 July 2016


And I do worry about how national happiness is going to be gauged. The last election showed us that opinion polls can be very contrary and fickle so, presumably, public servants would have to fan out across the country armed with clipboards and questionnaires to ask folks about their current level of happiness or otherwise. How would such a public servant rate a person who snapped, “I’d be a lot bloody happier if you just sodded off”?

But one can be happy one moment and unhappy the next. News that dear old Great Aunt Ethel has been gathered could make someone happy when the inheritance is considered but, conversely, could make the same person unhappy because of the sad loss of a wonderful old lady.

Perhaps a happiness questionnaire could be attached to the national population census? Yes, the idea needs a bit of fine-tuning but I am convinced those who just reject it are deeply unhappy and in most need of help.

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The American author Ernest Hemingway once observed, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know”.

I doubt he would have said that if he had met me but, then again, I was only a kiddy when he committed suicide in 1961, proving that he was neither intelligent nor happy.

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About the Author

Russell Grenning is a retired political adviser and journalist who began his career at the ABC in 1968 and subsequently worked for the then Brisbane afternoon daily, The Telegraph and later as a columnist for The Courier Mail and The Australian.

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