Happiness & Wellbeing

Who would have thought that there was a website for Happiness? Unsurprisingly it's closely linked to Buddhism.
http://www.actionforhappiness.org/

For a mere £25 you can do an online course called "Do Happiness"
http://dsd.me/programme/dohappiness/

I haven't done it yet, but if it works it seems well worth the money. So many people are not really happy. So many people have mental health illnesses.
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/fundamental-facts-about-mental-health-2015

When you look at what we in the developed world have, our general standard of living, you would imagine that we would all be really happy. Compare that to the relatively un-complex existance of many in the developing world & you could be forgiven for thinking that they weren't. But that doesn't seem to be the case. The more complex our lives get the more dis-eased we seem to be.

One factor seems to be community & neighbourliness. In my lifetime that seems to have largely disappeared. As a child I played on the street with other children in the neighbourhood. We walked or travelled by public transport so interacted with neighbours on a daily basis. We shopped in local shops, met there, gossiped & learned what was going on locally. Adults popped into eachothers houses regularly. We knew what was happening in our neighbours lives & we helped & supported eachother.

It was all more ad hoc, relaxed & part of the daily routine & interaction. Now we are all on a treadmill, whether it's work, school, social life or running a home - usually an exhausting combination.

No wonder there isn't enough happiness & wellbeing. Somehow we need to try to create time to bring back genuine neighbourliness. Facebook & Twitter isn't enough.