There has been much chatter regarding David Cameron’s happiness index. Ok, I understand why people think it’s an easy one to knock and by any measure, it certainly is. However, it is a worthy question to ask and analyse because, should we be presented with conclusive evidence with regard to what does make us happy, maybe those who are perpetually miserable will be able to re appraise whatever it they choose to pursue and that in itself could be a life enhancing experience.

If you ask anyone the happiness question, you do receive a multitude of varying answers. Love is right in the middle of most. The happiest people appear to be those with a capacity to love well.

However, love comes in many guises and if not the overall obvious harbinger of all happiness, may be in some way the root cause.

Take the taxi driver I met today whose wife is suffering from breast cancer. He manages to make ends meet each month, but that is all. He and his wife couldn’t afford a holiday last year and he will very definitely have to work until he is at least seventy as he has no pension.

When I tipped my taxi driver today, he gave me a pink ribbon.” I hope you don’t mind love” he said, “only, I don’t keep the tips, I give them to breast cancer research. If you really want to know, nothing makes me happier. I get excited each time I get near a hundred as I hands my donations over in £100 lots – nothing makes you feel as good as that”. He then thanked me for the work I did. Told me he admired brave MPs who didn’t take the silvery shilling and stood up for the bigger issues”.

He made me feel very humble indeed.

How many of us are as good as that man? How many of us are as happy as he obviously is, despite the fact he has so little?

If the project tells us that a very clear route to happiness is helping others, then it will have been well worth it.

UPDATE:  We have had an email asking us to link to the Pink Ribbon web site. Apologies from Nadine, links are not easy to do from a Blackberry
http://bit.ly/gIR9wd