Awww….that would bring an inner smile to even the most outwardly unhappy person (:

I agree Brian – it’s also about timing. If this poll was carried out 2 weeks ago when people were wrapped up in the shallowness and materialism of Xmas people would have said they were happy. Now reality is back, 2012 is well under way, bills arriving etc. Glumness factor on the rise, methinks.

You pretty much summed up my feelings. Congrats on the birth of your Son.

Thanks Gareth.

Enough fiddling went on here to do us for a while Seamus. A blast on the pipes might clear the air though!

Nice one Seamus, you’re very welcome. Sure Galway is the place for a bit a trad, if you need a break from the dirty old town :)

my advice to keep you in a positive mood is don’t listen to news or current affairs radio shows… they are all doom and gloom… try lyric fm

Yes German opera and the Funeral marches really hits the spot.

Life is wonderful, we’re naturally creative and joyful beings…. just look at children. However we can get confused and wounded along the way by patterns of woundedness and acting out. Good news is, we can heal by a) taking control of our life, being true to ourself and b) looking at old hurts when we’re safe from the environment that caused them, and realising we can let go of the limiting defense mechanisms.

From then, it’s up to us to choose who and what we’re surrounded with and bombarded by! Loving, safe stimulus or wounded, confused, dark stuff… it’s up to us!

@Paul do you mean “sacrifice” as in to the Gods or just in general? ;)

“Maggotty happy”. That’s my new phrase of the day, MJ, thanks.

Bet you can name a moment of beauty from the last 7 hours if you reflect on it

Yeah – being asleep not having to deal with it was probably about as good as it gets :)

Still – to phrase the cliché… things could always be worse.

Sounds like you have some real reasons to be angry and upset there Margaret. Any hope in sight for you?

thank you conner for your supportive, kind comment. and note three people ‘disliked’ my comment about being disabled and left shut in my home with no help to get out, and two did not like conner supporting me. now these individuals are in the minority but probably ones who feel disabled people should be euthanased!

conner, latest news from community nurse is…find volunteers…

When I was a child, I remember thinking ‘don’t adults realise that all of this news is depressing rubbish, and they don’t need to listen to it?’

I am only happy when twisted drunk

I am generally happy but the past six or so months I find I get stressed out doom and gloom stressed Thanks to our wonderful caretakers (government) if this wonderful Island of ours 1 bug grey cloud over us all the time

No problem, Michael.

That’s a good point, I think, Patrick. I’ve done some counselling work, and a large part of it is discharging emotions, blowing off steam. Sometimes a cry might be the release of distress, while to onlookers it might be confused with the distress itself. In our culture we generally overlook the fact that shouting, crying, laughing, stretching, and shaking can all be releases.

Unfortunately, as I experience it, a lot of Irish ‘discharging’ of emotions is done under the veil of drunkeness, so we don’t really deal with them consciously in these cases. If this can be done consciously, happiness follows naturally :)

I got my comment removed because I called you a populist. Talk about the author being pathetic.

@Luke Mac an Bháird, You had your comment removed because you didn’t call Patrick Coffey a “populist” – you called him something else. As you will be aware, we ask commenters not to resort to personalised attacks on either fellow commenters or on the authors of these pieces. (You just called me “pathetic” which is also uncalled for). Please read our comments policy if you are not familiar with it – http://www.thejournal.ie/comments-policy/ – and note our three-strikes policy. Thanks, Susan, Editor.

My bet is you have several choices

Sorry folks, not my fault you’re stuck here with those bills and taxes. I didn’t vote fianna fail, fine Gael or labour and I protest when I think it’s good for the country. But clearly the country doesn’t care for me so I’m done sacrificing

Good for you Matt! I only hope the vacuum created by your absence pulls the ship out of it’s whirlpool -_-

Ah sure, when your as close to the bottle as you are in your pic, it can all seem so negative! hope all these indigineous troubles are left behind when you rebuild your life in the cold light of a new day

Conor, I’m glad you took an entire 3 minutes if your time to think of me and consider a smart comment out of something everybody can see plainly. Big deal, I like jack Daniels. What has that to do with what I said? You begrudging me of it by any chance?? Way to go! You must be so happy with yourself

I guess I was acting smart, but only out of defensiveness, for which i hope you’ll forgive me. I felt your comments, although I ‘m sure honest and self-motivating, were demeaning and negatively unbalanced towards Ireland and those of us left here. I meant nothing personal, and wish you the best of luck in your emigration

Your lucky you can abandon I cannot like a lot of people my age cannot but I hope you find wealth and happiness where ever you go but I feel if we all abandoned our Country we will never see Ireland back where she fell from

I’m happy. And loaded!

Deck off for yourself so.

Sorry matt,darn I phone won’t let me say what I want.

So, let’s go with sod off shall we? Sod off away with yourself. And hey, dont be in a rush coming back. And take your pride in hard drinking with you,

Dan, this poll was days ago. Get a life and stop spamming my email address with your begrudging and negative comments, you useless troll

It’s the private sector whos jobs taxes vat corporation tax ect ect that pays your salaries and your pensions (regardless of what happens to world stock markets).what the public sector pays in P A Y E only just about covers pensions in public sector so your argument is flawed.

I think sean is being sarcastic….correct me if I’m wrong sean…

David i voted that i am happy despite most people are in the same both when it comes to jobs and taxation. Oh try not use the word raped willy nilly.

Hi Dec. See reply above to Michael.

Dec that’s how surveys work, that if you have a proper planned sample amount it should remain consistent throughout the whole population.

Ah… But the majority of options ore focused on the negative… :)

I don’t see it that way, perhaps you’re projecting your values onto the options! happy=positive, unhappy=negative, both ‘neither’ and ‘varies’= neutral to me. But I suppose you can read what you do into them…

The first option is to cover those of us who feel happy (I added the ‘in general’ because I imagine that even very happy people must occasionally feel below par).

The question in the headline is different to the question in the text.

Quite misleading. Doesn’t make me any less happy though.

So you basically didn’t read the article or the question, just the headline.

You must have been top of your class Adrian.

So happy = deluded to you.

You know there are people you can see about that, right?

Depends on your values & what happiness means for you …..of course I’d prefer if we were in a boom period & not a recession, had no financial problems etc….. I personally know someone who won an €8 million lotto & has just lost her husband to cancer & has a daughter who is devastated from learning she can’t have kids. I would prefer to have less & be healthy. Financial worries are undeniably stressful – but take a walk through Crumlin or Temple Street Hospital & you won’t be long about getting your priorities right….. I’m not minimising the stress of unemployed but nothing compares to the death of a child or the stress of a serious disability !

Don’t think you’ve got that straight, David CC. We don’t really know what happiness is, maybe it’s always subjective to some extent. What we’ve got here, and you’ve misrepresented, is two groups of stats with hugely differing objects: the one you quote, which is a personal general statement from an unknown number of Jounal.ie readers, in which 50% claim to be generally happy… and, an objective study of the general Irish happiness index, in which 20% are ‘happy’.
Further, I’d question the deduction you do based on the 50% stat. While it may be indeed delusional, in the positive sense that saying you’re happy in general may be a device to make you feel happy in the moment, or be based on present or recent feelings rather than an objective review of one’s life… or may not be delusional, I would argue that your position that ‘in turn means they enjoy being raped by their own elected government…. they enjoy this because they have friends and new born babies…awww sweet.’ Is itself deluded, as people would of course be happy despite this.
So, if you are implying that people should be ‘generally unhappy’ because of taxes and cuts etc, I would say you are wrong. Yes, it is good to be politically aware and active, but I don’t think it’s wise to let negative things bring down your general happiness. Like so many have posted above, it’s the real things that bring happiness…. relatedness to other things, sunshine, frost, trees, being alive.
Cuts and such, gotta think about positive, creative approaches to them, not let them get you down :)

ok .. so i should look at the straving child on a Trocaire box to get some perspective. I should tell my girlfriend i love her more often, meet my friends regularly and hug my 7month year old kitten daily.
This is inspirational. thank you.
(ehmmmm by the way i’m still being raped by the people in power…. any thoughts.???.)