If you were to google ‘making people happy’, you would find around 7.8 billion threads to follow up. Ironically, this is within 1% of the human population of our blue and green planet, which is either spooky, sweet or utterly banal.
There are long lists, as far as I can see mainly written by religious ladies in America, which includes things like ‘holding the door’, ‘giving a sincere compliment’ and ‘leaving a great review for a friend’s book’. Particularly the latter. Just saying.
Even on Jeff Bezos’s emporium, you can buy over 100,000 books, videos and things related to happiness, one of which could possibly be a one way ticket for the founder up into space on one of his expensive rockets.
Be that as it may, I have discovered a much simpler secret: Socks.
Someone close to me has been in hospital for the last month, seriously unwell and therefore seriously deprived of life’s ordinary joys.
When I was planning a visit, I asked them if I could bring anything- grapes, flowers or books, for example. They said that they had cold feet all the time, specifically at night, and could I possibly bring some socks.
In the event, I took a bit of care about it, and chose my very best ultra-low temperature skiing socks, made in loop stitch from the wool of Norwegian humming sheep, and costing a small fortune at Cotswold.
When I arrived at the ward, the flowers were disallowed by the nurses, the book was deemed unreadable and the grapes were unsuitable for someone in my friend’s condition. Which just left the socks.
Each time we subsequently spoke on the phone, those socks came up as a thing that had brought comfort and joy in equal measure. So much so, said my friend, that it had manifestly improved their life at one of its lowest ebbs.
They were discharged yesterday, still apparently exulting at how big a role in their recovery those socks had played, socks which are now back in the second drawer down in our bedroom.
Two things strike me about this.
First, the unexpected joy of making someone accidentally happy. I never knew how good that could be, much like a christening present of port that cannot be drunk for thirty years.
The second is how it is almost inevitably the simplest things that bring the deepest, and least complicated happiness.
And on a rainy Sunday morning, it is a happiness that I wish to any decision maker attending COP26 in Glasgow in abundance.
Norwegian socks included.
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