Life’s bookends provide the twin peaks of happiness!

If you’re trying to work out the times in your life when you’ve been happiest, the chances are that the first peak is behind you and the second one is hopefully still to come.

Of course, there will be moments of sheer joy along the way – the birth of your children, winning the All-Ireland, waking up on a sunny day – but the first sustained period of happiness in your life occurs when you’re 16.

Which stands to reason, because you haven’t a worry in the world at 16; only to look at your whole life spanning out in front of you.

But the journey is a lot darker than it looks initially, because your happiness is hitting a downward trajectory until it next explodes into joy unconfined. . . at the age of 70.

In fairness, the research that established these twin peaks also discovered that things start to improve from the age of 51, right up to that second summit at 70 – producing what they call this ‘horseshoe of happiness’.

For the purposes of this survey carried out by the UK’s Resolution Foundation – analysing data from the Office for National Statistics – participants were asked to rate their life satisfaction, self-worth, happiness and anxiety on a scale of one to ten.

And the shocking thing is that the happiness level at 16 is really as good as it’s ever going to get because, while a whole new period of delight beckons in retirement, you no longer have the money or the movement to really make the most of it.

The upturn around the age of 50 might be down to a couple of things; you’ve sorted your stuff out by then and you’re on the road to rearing the kids.

The prospects of a little more ‘me time’ might be somewhat diluted by the shadow of a massive mortgage – but you’re again beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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