We are gathered in the drawing room. Well, sort of. It probably was once called by that name, but since we’ve owned this house it’s been known as the TV room. I have an audience of four for my denouement scene, and one of them is my dog, Brewster. The other three are my husband, Dan, and my two teenage children, Phoebe (17) and Guy (15).
It’s now or never. So it’s now.
I have purposefully chosen the thought, ‘I have my ideal audience here today and it couldn’t be more perfect’. I am managing to believe this thought even though, where fifteen-year-old boys are concerned, there’s a thin line between eagerly awaiting the denouement of a suspenseful mystery about the nature of happiness and a grudging willingness to remain in the room in exchange for new sportswear.
My husband, like me, is a questioner-tipping-to-rebel. Once while we were watching the denouement scene of a David Suchet Poirot episode, he said irritably, ‘Why do they all just sit there and let Poirot accuse them of stuff? I’d get up and walk out.’
He looks ready to challenge me, though he has no idea what I’m about to say. My daughter is interested but doing her best to pretend not to be. Brewster looks as if he can’t understand what all the fuss is about, since the correct answer is obvious: happiness is steak, and/or cheese, followed by an endless game of ‘Throwy’ with his orange rubber ball.
‘Okay,’ I begin. ‘So, you know I’ve been trying to solve the mystery of happiness?’
‘No,’ says Guy. ‘Mum, how long’s this gonna take? I wanna go to Lily’s.’
‘Vaguely,’ says Phoebe.
‘I thought you were writing a book about it, not solving a mystery,’ says Dan.
‘The book is about the solving of the mystery. Anyway, I’ve been doing all this research and reading and making longlists and shortlists, and listening and talking to life coaches—’
‘Are you gonna start banging on about Brooke Castillo again?’ Phoebe narrows her eyes.
‘Yes! Thanks for reminding me. I’ve worked out how to resolve my one area of disagreement with Brooke, and it turns out that we don’t disagree at all. We just use different terminology. She sent out an email recently – I’m on her mailing list, three times over, actually – in which she described how she decided not to employ a particular florist. This woman came to her house, and Brooke overheard her being rude to a member of her staff and so decided not to employ her, and in the email she wrote something like, “I wasn’t going to give her my business because she’d shown me who she really was.” When I read that, I realised that Brooke’s way and my way, or what I think is probably the ideal way of relating to other people, from a happiness point of view, are not as different as I imagined they were. They might not even be different at all!’
‘What are you on about?’ says Guy.
‘Do you actually want to know?’ Phoebe snaps at him. He is polite enough to limit his response to a half-shrug.
‘Never mind,’ I press on. ‘The point is, if Brooke allows herself to decide that someone is rude and that she doesn’t want to employ them, that means she thinks it’s okay both to acknowledge grudge-worthy behaviour, even if she would never call it that, and to change her thoughts and actions in relation to a purveyor of grudge-worthy behaviour. I reckon that when she talks about unconditional love, she means a sort of general well-wishing spirit towards all humans and an awareness that we’re all fallible and all doing our best – which, again, I totally agree with. She doesn’t mean what I mean by love.’
‘So you totally agree with Brooke,’ says Dan. ‘Is that the answer, then? Agreeing with Brooke?’
‘No. It’s just something I’m pleased about, because I love Brooke.’
‘But it’s not the solution to the mystery of happiness?’ asks Phoebe.
‘No.’
‘Then what is? I’m not being funny, but I’ve got a philosophy essay to write by tomorrow morning.’
‘I’m getting there. In my last session with a life coach, Diana, I told her I thought it would be easier to define what constituted happiness in relation to specific things. I’d told her about Dream Author and I said that I knew exactly what happiness meant for writers, and she said, “What are you going to tell the people who join your programme about how to be happy as a writer?”, and as she said it, everything clicked into place!’
‘What do you mean?’ Dan asks.
‘I’ve got a notebook full of Dream Author content and— ’
‘You have?’ he cuts in. ‘I thought you weren’t starting it till September.’
‘I’ve been making notes since last November,’ I tell him. ‘It’s what I do when I’m supposed to be working and can’t face it. One of the exercises I’ve created for Dream Author – one of my very favourites, because it kind of contains the essence of the whole programme and the main lesson I want to teach anyone who joins – is called “The Best Result”. Shall I read it to you?’
‘If you must.’
‘Go on.’
‘How long’s this going to last? Oh my God.’
‘Ssh, Guy. Okay, the question is “What is the best result that any writer can get?” Then underneath that I’ve written, “I’m not going to explain any further at this stage. I’m very interested to see what you come up with. Try to write an answer that would be equally true for any writer, no matter what their genre is or where they’re at in their writing journey.” When Diana the life coach asked me what happiness means for writers specifically, my ‘Best Result’ exercise popped into my mind and I realised that the answer to that question was the solution to the mystery of happiness!’
‘How?’ says Phoebe.
‘Explain.’ ‘The Dream Author exercise answer is this: “The best result for any writer is always to have a Dream-Goal that they are passionate about, totally committed to, and taking active steps towards achieving, and that they believe 100 per cent that they can and will achieve.”’
‘What?’ Guy frowns. ‘Isn’t the best result getting as rich as J. K. Rowling?’
‘Nope. Because you can be stinking rich and incredibly miserable. You can be a world-famous multi-million seller and be bored and lonely. Or oppressed by deadlines. Whereas if you’re committed to a goal that you’re happily working towards and believing you’re going to get there—’
‘So that’s the answer: working towards a goal?’ Phoebe sounds disappointed.
‘No. The solution to the happiness puzzle isn’t exactly the same, but it’s so similar that thinking about the Dream Author ‘Best Results’ answer made me realise exactly what the solution to the mystery of happiness is. Want to hear it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Get on with it.’
‘Mum, this is torture. I wanna go and see Lily.’
I freeze. I don’t want to tell them, in case saying it out loud ruins the perfection of it. It really is perfect. Nothing will convince me that it isn’t.
‘Happiness is actively and passionately working to solve the mystery of happiness, while totally believing that there is a solution and that you’re going to find it. And that means … it means I could have been perfectly happy all this time, except I wasn’t 100 per cent convinced I would be able to definitively solve the mystery! But now I am, because I have!’
Everyone stares at me, apart from Brewster who fell asleep a few minutes ago.
‘I’m right,’ I announce after a short silence. That’s why the 65 Days felt so much like moving in the right direction – it required more than simply contemplating and comparing theories. It involved taking active steps to solve the mystery of happiness, while believing that I could and would. (The believing part is vital. If you don’t believe you’re going to get there, you won’t be able to feel amazing en route.) And there’s no element of bad-crime-novel anti-climactic resolution to the 65 Days, because it’s a search rather than an answer, and as I said in the introduction to this book, definite answers shut down possibilities, while an unsolved puzzle ignites our imagination.
That’s why my solution to the mystery of happiness is so neat and satisfying: the solution is the continuing search for the solution. You could say that it’s trying to have its cake and eat it, but that would be churlish. I prefer to think that it offers the joy of ongoing possibility in combination with the certainty of resolution, and with neither one detracting from the other.
I love it.
I am filled with Poirovian certainty. I know my answer is the correct one. No one – not Aristotle, not Bertrand Russell and not even Brooke Castillo – has come up with anything so short, elegant and right.