An Equation for Happiness
/The Boston Herald
Tsunamis. Earthquakes. Floods in California. Mud slides in Vancouver. A bird flu that could turn into a pandemic. Terrorism. War.
Feeling down in the dumps? Don't want to get out of bed in the morning? Eating too much and exercising too little? A British psychologist says this is typical January behavior and that our malaise is all about the cold and the sleet.
Clearly he hasn't watched the news in a while.
Dr. Cliff Arnalls believes that people are miserable in January and will be most miserable on Jan. 24, which is tomorrow, because the days are short, the weather is bad, money is tight, Christmas is over and our New Year's resolutions are kaput.
Arnalls, who is a part-time tutor at Cardiff University in Wales (Would a full-time professor have had time to come up with this?), devised a formula, which he says actually pinpoints the most miserable day of the year:
(W+(D-d)xTQ MxNA)
W = weather
D = debt level
d = money owed in January
T = the number of days since Christmas
Q = the number of days since you abandoned your New Year's resolutions
M = your motivational level
NA = your need to improve your motivational level
Using this rule (Can anyone just make up a rule? Pi ``r'' and forget the squared?) Cardiff interviewed more than 1,000 people in a stress management class (hardly a random cross-section) then crunched some numbers and what do you know? He's now the expert of the day and so what if it's the alleged ``worst day of the year.’'
It's an excellent day for him.
It's clever actually. And in the old days it might even have been true. Cold and snow can get you down. But now we know there are worse things.
Snow melts. It's not a plague. It's not fallout. It's not your kid going off to war. Or your husband on Flight 11.
And the cold? Piece of cake. We get to go inside where it's warm. We have cars, buses, shopping malls, even shelters.
And most of us have homes. And in our homes and on our TVs we see, every day, so many people who have lost everything, so many people who would love snow to be their biggest problem, who would love to have Jan. 24 be the worst day of their year.
Here's my formula for calculating the worth of a day: If you wake up in the morning and go to bed at night and still have the same number of people you love in your life, it's a great day. No one got in a car crash? Or fell down the stairs. Or on ice. No one had a stroke or a heart attack? Or got kidnapped or buried under mud or swallowed by a wave?
Perfect.
We complain too much. Winter will pass. It's just a season. Tomorrow is not gloom and doom day. It's one more January Monday that, if we're lucky, we'll be around to see.
