Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine

by Derren Brown

We are normally awoken abruptly by an alarm clock when we could do with an extra hour of sleep, and if we have allowed ourselves a brief time to lie in bed and adjust to the morning, we tend to resort to that most banal of pastimes: browsing our phones. We check social media or see what emails have come through. One connects us with the rabble; the other starts our day with problems to which we are obliged to find solutions. Perhaps we check the news and again without realising we emerge into our day smothered by demands from the outside world, which root themselves unpleasantly in our groggy, too-malleable consciousness. We have prepared our psychological state for the day by laying the groundwork for envy (we see that a friend has bought a new gadget we want but can’t afford) and by letting our barely sentient minds absorb the concerns of work communicated overnight to our inbox. Those first few moments of the day, when we are still suggestible enough to slip back into dreams unfinished, have been invaded by the outside world’s blaring cries for our weary attention. And our brains, still spongy and soaked in semi-sleep, have had nothing of the preparation needed to distance themselves from the onslaught. Already by the time our shower has brought us into the fully waking world, it is too late: we have begun our day at the mercy of the crowds.