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A rather large happiness thought

What would you do if you had three minutes to live?

I suspect you’d fall in line with the classic joke and wouldn’t bother boiling an egg?

You might go berserk and rush around screaming at the unfairness of it all, but on reflection, I hope you’d use your three minutes more wisely. The chances are you’d tell people closest to you that you loved them. You’d get out into the garden and watch the clouds. You might sit and contemplate – pray a bit maybe? Listen to your favourite song, being careful to choose a short one. Eat some cake. Guzzle a cold beer. Make love (I’m resisting the urge to say that in three minutes, if we cut out the small talk and foreplay, you could do it twice). Or, if that’s stretching it, you’d at least have a hug, most likely a very long, lingering embrace in which you can feel the love transferring.

I guess it’s pretty hard to say because it depends where and with whom you are for your three minutes. But the bigger question might be how many of those things did you do today?

The happiness conundrum comes from the fact that you already know what makes you happy but, whatever it is, you tend not to do it quite as often as you should.

And that conundrum is wrapped in another – many people want to change the world; they don’t want to change themselves.