Happiness: Experience Rich and Theory Poor?

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell promotes the idea that small actions can spark “social epidemics”, that are good for our well-being. I’ve been thinking about this in relation to happiness and other small social movements like the ones supported by UnLtd. We can get so caught up in the mechanics of delivering a project that is neither a full-time job nor an income source that we can overlook the need for the idea to be promoted to wider, less-involved groups (other than over dinner-tables). Apart from this blog and a few other efforts like the Fun Federation I’ve been concentrating on finding suitable groups and venues for delivering the Happystance workshops.

It has taken months for me to set up tomorrow’s taster workshop at a meeting of the people who are involved in local carers’ groups. It’s a good opportunity to give an interested audience an experience of Happystance but I know that I’ve been neglecting the wider promotion of what I’m working on. There is a quiet crisis of unhappiness in Britain. And it is so paralysing that even when there is an opportunity to discuss it (like my recent letter to my local newspapers), it excites no response. Either happiness is perceived as an issue that is too trivial to engage with or there is a failure of imagination when asked to imagine that things could be different.