I generally spend a lot of time thinking about happiness because it seems so ethereal yet it is of such incredibly vital importance to our well-being. Authors of self-help books peddle their pop-psychology wares, offering happiness at the turn of a page. As media consumers, you and I are constantly bombarded with people shouting at us that we can attain it if only we purchase this next gadget or this luxury car or become a Real Housewife of Your City Here. I think that such an important subject shouldn't be approached that way. You can't get to happiness--the real thing, anyway, the meaningful form of it--by slapping a band-aid on your life and calling it a day.

Here's a long but extremely illuminating video about the contrary nature of happiness by Alain de Botton. Its implications are many and profound.

Alain de Botton - On Pessimism from The School of Life on Vimeo.

To approach happiness on an above-the-individual level, though, you need suggestions about a public policy approach to it. For that I turn to the statistician Nic Marks, who has spent his adult life approaching human happiness from the broadest vista he can find.

Enjoy.