A worldwide survey comparing relative happiness between 178 countries places Nepal in 119th position. Our southern neighbour debuts at 125; Denmark tops the list. Says the survey coordinator Adrian White of the University of Leicester, “a nation’s level of happiness is closely associated with health levels, wealth and education, in that order.”

Another popular study conducted by the Positive Psychology Centre at the University of Pennsylvania, hints that Manhattan, New York, is among the unhappiest places in the US. At first blush, this seems counterintuitive: New York is home to the best healthcare facilities, teems with millionaires and hosts some of the best educational institutions in the world. It turns out that New Yorkers ‘choose’ to be unhappy. The fast-pace life of New York allows people little time to establish strong social bonds. For the same reason, the proportions of singles and atheists are also vastly high in the Big Apple as compared to other US cities. But the biggest factor that renders New Yorkers prone to depression and pessimism maybe their high ambition.

Martin Seligman concurs. But even Seligman, one of the pioneers of Positive Psychology, chucks in the sponge and admits that pessimism is associated with “seriousness and greatness”. To wit: Happy people tend to be satisfied easily, while the unhappy ones are more likely to push the envelope that bit further. In other words, success doesn’t come cheap. Happiness is the price one pays. Among the few who traded hard work and honour for happiness are Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Virginia Woolf, Erza Pound, Kurt Cobain and Van Gogh.

Perhaps the author of the best-selling The Road Less Traveled, M Scott Peck, sums it up the best for these folks: “Our finest moments are likely to occur when we feel deeply unhappy. Only in such moments, propelled by discomfort, are we likely to step out of our ruts to search for different ways or truer answers.”

The “five easy ways to happiness” may hence be as much a myth as a dose to scale down one’s expectations; Nepal’s position on the ‘Happiness Scale’ a measure of our indolence and dearth of self-determinism as a lack of resources.