Emma Soames Constantly worrying about our personal happiness is a new phenomenon, arising, perhaps, because so many people are not. Even less than a century ago, I don’t believe that the great majority of ordinary people had time to worry about their wellbeing when life was truly difficult: people worked long and hard to scrape a basic existence without domestic appliances, computers, phones and such innovations as online shopping.
But these advances seem to have achieved little. We are all busier than we have ever been and our stress levels have rocketed, but happier? I doubt it. Indeed, since 1950 there have been regular surveys of the happiness of the population in Britain and these show that we are no happier now, despite notable rises in our wealth and standard of living. But you can’t say that we don’t try: we spend huge sums on gadgets, exotic holidays and worldly clutter in the misplaced belief that they will make us happy.
I’ve always believed that happiness comes to you when you are busy doing other things, such as earning a living, looking after your family and trying (however unsuccessfully) to lead a good life. I am always deeply distrustful of people who say they "just want to be happy" and wish the same for their children. Like Lottery winners who give up their jobs, move away from their roots and then bitterly regret it, we are not good judges of what makes us happy and the pursuit of happiness in a material sense can cause us to make bad choices while the pursuit of pleasure is famously self-defeating – the more you get, the more you want.
It is the immaterial things such as companionship, mindfulness and looking out for the happiness of others that are more likely to make us happy. And those with a religious faith are happier than those who don’t have one. So it is rather a relief that there is a burgeoning movement that is seriously looking at happiness – which has in recent years become a science in itself, complete with professors and researchers – and how to implement it in our lives.
David Cameron has said that, along with economic indicators, a wellbeing index is to be included in the figures that measure the nation’s progress. The Government is unlikely to suggest we all adopt a religion, but work is one of the top-scoring wellbeing indicators and will certainly be included. The research will be published in April, as will the second Saga Quarterly Report, measuring the wellbeing of the over-50s.
Next month also sees the launch of an interesting movement, Action for Happiness. Run by a group that includes the daddy of happiness science, Richard Layard, Action for Happiness will nudge us towards thinking of ourselves as citizens rather than consumers, and encourage people to get out and do something for their communities, as helping others improves wellbeing. I have joined up and rashly promised to give a street party, which I suspect will do more for my stress levels rather than anything else.
Meanwhile, the best advice I’ve heard recently: to be happy for a year, get a pet; to be happy for a decade, get married; to be happy all your life, get a garden.
The reverse can so easily be the case for women, but it’s a fact that older men look better in their clothes than young men. I have always been mystified by the menswear collections that seem to bear zero relation to the clothes men choose or even want to wear.
The photographer Tommy Ton has captured the latest Milan menswear week in pictures and all his best shots are of older men. Those embarrassing pictures of vacuous looking, made-up male models looking inappropriate in old-men suits or ridiculous in shorts and long socks, are potently shown up by his brilliant pictures of the older men on the streets of Milan. They look super-confident and effortlessly dressed, mixing old clothes with the new, brightly coloured scarves with tweed waistcoats and finishing it all off with fedoras and aviator shades.
One of the young new designers in Milan, Umit Benan, used a group of ruffled, duffled older dandies in his winter menswear show and the clothes look much more convincing and stylish.
It seems that you need two things to become a convincing clotheshorse: a full face of white whiskers and a smattering of vintage clothes. So, gentlemen, is a new career beckoning?