If happiness were a physical feature

[First published 2023]

Fun thought experiment I recommend for the next time you're waiting in a supermarket queue:

Imagine if you could tell how genuinely happy the people around you were, just by looking at them. If happiness were as visible and obvious as skin or hair or body type. I don't mean happiness in the moment, but the sustainable deep happiness and contentment and secure okay-ness with oneself that comes from knowing who you are and what you're about, loving and approving of yourself, knowing you are worthy of love and respect from others, feeling you are doing your bit to make the world a better place, accepting your and others' weaknesses and mortality, all that jazz.

Imagine if you could see, at a glance, how much of that everyone had.

Would we culturally admire the same people? Who might we stop idolising or envying and start worrying about? Who might we stop pitying and start seeking advice from instead? What would it to do beauty culture, fitspo, influencers? The patriarchy? Capitalism? Racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia? How we vote, what we read and watch, whether and how we partner, whether we have kids?

So much of our value system relies on visible proxies for things we believe signal happiness, usually with a profit motive in operation somewhere down the line. It is fascinating to think about what would happen if we didn't need to rely on the proxies.