In Pursuit of Happiness

Occasionally, you will read something that will stay with you forever.
Occasionally, you will attempt to begin a new blog and be struck with a lack of confidence in your worth.

Considering these two facts, I feel it only appropriate to begin my (possibly very brief) career in the blogosphere with the words of someone far more qualified and talented:

One Thursday afternoon, nearly two thousand years after [a] man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

 Douglas Adams, 1979

The girl, we later discover, was called Fenchurch (after the railway station ticket queue in which she was conceived), and ever since first reading this, as a significantly younger human male, it has haunted me.  It has returned to me frequently.  Because, to me it seems more than just fiction.  I really think there is a simple answer.  Because, all complex systems are based on very simple rules.  This has been proven time and time again.  Consider Einstein's famously elegant equation.

So, of course, I've thought about what the answer might be ... a lot. Mostly, when I shouldn't be. People who know me will be aware of my tendency to drift into some other realm mid conversation. Annoying as this may be for them, trust me, it's far safer than when I've done it driving down the motorway on cruise control, only to return to reality and realise I've forgotten what the pedals do.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Back to the blog. My goal with this column is to seek out the essence of Fenchurch's lost epiphany. To find the simple answer - without nailing anyone to anything. The journey, I suspect, is long, for before we get anywhere near an Answer there are an awful lot of things that need to be discussed.  The intention is that that will occur here. I cannot promise as to how regularly my posts will arrive. But then, we've been tackling this problem for two thousand years already, so a short delay here and there will hopefully not serve to inconvenience too many.

Until my next post, with more meat on the bones, so long ... I'm off to eat some fish.

(PS: to pre-empt anyone who makes the rather obvious comment that the answer is 42, let me clarify that that is not the question we are considering.  I'm expecting the answer to be nearer 74.)