That Ever-Elusive Emotion: Happiness

There's a great combo-review of some new happiness books on the market in today's Times. Lord knows I spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating, pursuing, evaluating happiness. In other words, I sit luxuriously atop Maslow's pyramid. Love this excerpt:
We could canvass Gore, Rubin, Gilbert, the Dalai Lama and the many authors on the happier.com Web site and produce the Fundamentally Sound, Sure-Fire Top Five Components of Happiness:

(1) Be in possession of the basics — food, shelter, good health, safety.
(2) Get enough sleep.
(3) Have relationships that matter to you.
(4) Take compassionate care of others and of yourself.
(5) Have work or an interest that engages you.

I don’t see how even the most high-minded, cynical or curmudgeonly person could argue with that.

The real problem with happiness is neither its pursuers nor their books; it’s happiness itself. Happiness is like beauty: part of its glory lies in its transience. It is deep but often brief (as Frost would have it), and much great prose and poetry make note of this. Frank Kermode wrote, “It seems there is a sort of calamity built into the texture of life.” To hold happiness is to hold the understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever.