Religion, philosophy, and the arts have long considered happiness a subject suitable for study. In the Michaelmas term we devoted several assemblies to the religious aspects of attaining happiness and I thought this month would be a good point to return to this theme. The movement Action for Happiness describes this month as Joyful June and offers 10 keys to happier living, spelling out the phrase Great Dream. With the end of the academic year still a way off and impending assessments for some year groups, happiness may not be at the forefront of students’ minds! But in this blog I attempt to show them how learning and happiness are heavily intertwined.

Taking my own advice that learning precedes motivation, I have been dipping a toe into the world of Philosophy, reading a book entitled Letters to Sofia about Happiness by Raffaele Tamborrino. Although it is not an original work by one of the three great thinkers of ancient Greece, it is a series of reflective letters inspired by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, in which the author offers advice to his daughter Sofia, in modern times, on how to make her life happier. Here I offer three of these pieces of advice.

Socrates had a great intellectual hunger. In speeches made nearly 2400 years ago, we are guided to the view that if you adopt the mindset of considering your knowledge to be always partial and superficial, this provides the stimulus to continue to learn. To be happy it is important to take care of ourselves by feeding our minds with knowledge, knowledge gained by thinking critically. You might expect me to include this piece of advice, given that our primary business in education is the acquisition of knowledge. But there is a lifelong lesson here, that continuous learning brings happiness. Paolo Poli, an Italian theatre actor and lifelong learner, who still performed on stage in his eighties, was once quoted as saying The mind is like an umbrella – it must be open to operate’

The second piece of advice is to know yourself, recognise your limits and ask questions. This is not meant to be a self-limiting view but rather that it is only through awareness of our own ignorance that we are able to fill in the gaps by asking questions, reflecting, investigating and progressing our knowledge. Asking questions and being open to dialogue and discussion with others (the Socratic Method) was a way of questioning designed to expose ignorance and clear the way for knowledge.

The third piece of advice is to behave according to your principles and live in total awareness. Socrates was the critical conscience of the city of Athens, always living according to his thinking and advocating that we should build our own existence rather than living that set out by others. He was not a popular figure for holding and sharing this view publicly with others but he never wavered from this view during his life.