ISBN: 978-0-06-085950-3

Publisher: HarperOne

What is the key to happiness? Is what we are doing today to find happiness really working? Hecht explores these questions inside her new book, The Happiness Myth (The Historical Antidote to What Isn’t Working Today)

Hecht says that while certain types of food may bring happiness, it is only there for a short period of time. I have discovered this is much the same when you drink alcohol. For those first few hours, even if you are pretty down to begin with, suddenly you feel so much better and can even break a smile. Slowly though, as is inevitable, the beer-goggle effects that alcohol gives, wears off. Then you hit a new low and feel pretty rubbish. I have done this myself and it is not nice to wake up after a “booze up” and discover that things have returned to normal and your problem is still there. It certainly does not achieve the long-lasting happiness so many desire.  

Hecht says this is the classic core to wisdom and happiness: knowing yourself, controlling your desires, taking what you know is yours and remembering death. I don’t know if everyone wants to remember death thank you very much! Surely that, if anything, is the most morbid thing of all and certainly not useful for evoking a sense of happiness….is it?

Hecht talks about how supermarkets and magazines always paint over death. Almost as if they are saying meat grows on white Styrofoam….of course for those of you who actually look at what they eat, we know this is not the case. For me, I choose not to consume dead animals - it means I am paying money to farmers who kill and butcher animals. That is not something I wish to buy into but so many people do today. Children do not know that the meat they are eating has come from something living and so, just as the author states, think it must grow on Styrofoam.

We are taught to not think about death in this Western world but Hecht says to do so is actually good. It prepares you….or makes you aware of it anyway which I certainly think all people should be when it is connected with animals and meat.  

Later on in this well-researched book we explore drugs and how it is rare these days, to not walk into a public place and smell marijuana. It seems to be the heart of our culture to hang around in gangs and get high - to forget our worries and concerns and cloud them in a haze of illusion.  This is certainly not the way to go about getting happy.

Hecht states: “…especially young people, say they are never happier than when they are a little high and listening to live music.”

I can kind of understand this but drugs are just there to create a false sense of happiness. So what is the real key to long-lasting happiness? Read this book and find out for yourself. 

Such a brilliant, well-researched book as this is hard to find. Jennifer is an author blessed with a wonderful insight to what we are like and what we can do to find happiness. Money is mentioned here too but can it really buy us happiness? It can if you buy this book!

Fantastic stuff!