Happiness is not classified as a permanent feeling, and we cannot feel it after following certain steps, or by taking a magic capsule. Rather, it is a relative, temporary state that increases and decreases according to the brain’s interactions with the events of life.
The book does not teach you how to be happy; rather, it highlights the times when you were happy, goes inside the brain and explains in simple language what made these events a reason for your happiness! And how do the brain's chemical reactions control raising the level of happiness in your day?
In each chapter, the author hosts a famous person who is supposed to have the ingredients for happiness to ask him: He talks to him about his opinions and level of happiness, each according to the role he occupies in life.
The book is divided into 8 chapters. He began by explaining the meaning of chemical happiness and how the brain interacts with it. He then followed it with the components of happiness according to what he concluded, which are: having a home, a job, good social relationships, in addition to a pleasant love relationship and the presence of a percentage of laughter and joking in life.
In the last two chapters, he explains how each person’s happiness changes and differs according to his age and intellectual maturity, and he emphasizes that there is no permanent happiness, but rather it is a renewed feeling with renewed causes, and that focusing on searching for it makes us lose the feeling of it.
The book consists of 400 pages and was written by a doctor and neuroscientist, but it is written in a gentle language and a style that is not without humor, and it also explains difficult scientific terms in a simple style suitable for all readers.
After reading the book, I cannot help but link the basic reasons for happiness mentioned by the author with the hadith of the Messenger, in which he explains to us the basic components of life. He, peace and blessings be upon him, says, “Whoever among you wakes up secure in his home, healthy in his body, and has his daily sustenance, it is as if the whole world has been given to him.”
Finally, we will discover that we all have a share of happiness, more or less, and that the percentage of disparity is simple and temporary, but people turn a blind eye to what they have and search far away...
Written by Batoul Watfa
Written by Batoul Watfa
