“The times are a changing”, so is happiness. This is the spice of life we might add as well. Trajectories of happy life run not as flat lines simply on different, but largely parallel levels. Curves of different persons intersect. Even the focus of what determines personal happiness is different from one person to other. A job-focused person deviates substantially from a person deriving happiness mainly from her/his private life. The time dimension of happiness is yet another puzzle. Some persons have a focus on now and today, others consider a future time perspective for a happy life as less, equally or more important. Even the retrospective experience of happiness or unhappy childhood experiecences can override current emotions and oveall satisfaction with life. Economists apply a so-called discount rate to benfits or costs that accrue in future, which means that 1000 € in future, usually are estimated to have a lower value than 1000 € now. Happiness at some point in time in the future is likely to “suffer” from the same rationale. Satisfaction now is valued higher than even the same satisfaction at a later point in time. This probably explains a large deal why fewer people are concerned with their retirement benefits early on in their professional career and their job satisfaction trajectory. Many artists, apparently have a deviating time horizon. They endure economic hardship now for some recognition in future, but still have a happy time now.
(Image: Jorge Carrasco, Church Painting, France) 
Happy Runner
The happy runner is a nice example of how hard it maybe to experience happiness through running. The so-called runner’s high is available to everybody, if you manage to run long enough already. Most predictions put the threshold distance at about a 1 hour run. The reward for this effort is a special feeling that exceeds the pain or it makes you forget or supress the pain at least temporarily. Special reinforcements can be achieved through the big city runs in exciting places with thousands of people cheering you on. This has become a big business as well. Training for such an event might raise your feeling of happiness substantially. The chemistry of the endogenous production of stimulants of happiness in our body has been enlightened substantially in recent years (partly as doping control). Most of the brain active drugs our body can produce itself, although this involves a lot of physical and mental effort. The rewards are pretty healthy for most runners contributing to their basic level of happiness. Running outside, has contributed more to happiness for me more than the same exercise on a treadmil. Maybe, the environment is part of the happy runner’s high effect. 
Happy Biology
At first glance happiness from a biological perspective is easy to understand. Its hormones, stupid, that regulates it all. Only problem, there are many of them that interact and, apparently, a lot depends on the right dosis and duration of exposure or deficiency. Oxytocin deficiency seems to be a corollary of anxiety and lack of pro-social behavior, potentially making people less happy – to put it bluntly. There are other complex interactions between hormones not only in the circadian circle of humans like for cortisol, but also related to differential reactions to stress. Genetics and epigenetics are involved as well stress regulation and early exposition to stress during the life course has longer lasting consequences later on. How much stress is good for you? Climbing Mountains induces physical stress, but most people report lasting happiness referring back to such singular events. Hormones seem to play tricks with us as well.
Some time after the novel “Klara and the Sun“, endocrinologists have documented the positive effect of a robot on oxytocin levels in humans. Improvements to mental health and well-being are apparently easy considering that oxytocin is a driver of feeling happy as well. Maybe we should take our depressors and drivers of oxytocin more seriously to be “biologically” happy.
(Image: Extrait Frans Hals 1660, Catharina Hooft and her nurse. Exhibition Gemäldegalerie Berlin 2024) 
Happy Employee
The research on happiness, subjective well-being or overall satisfaction with your life is also an empirical question. Analyses of being happy donot only focus of overall happiness, but look much more into the details of happiness. Beyond the tricky longitudinal observations of happiness it is common scientific practice to deal with subdomains of happiness like satisfaction of employees with their job, satisfaction with one’s job beyond the honeymoon and hangover effect, best known from family studies.
Each of those subdomains has a significant effect on overall happiness. The novel “Happy Life” by David Foenkinos is an interesting example which focuses mainly on the subdomains of job satisfaction, satisfaction with private and romantic partners as the major domains of a happy life. As developed in the novel, people make job changes to re-orientate professional careers or reset their private life. A low point on the happiness scale in one domain might be compensated by higher levels in another domain. These impact from one domaine to another might have substantial time lags involved as well. More drastic resets (à la Foenkinos) can be avoided through focus on other subdomains of overall happiness as well.
How happy are you with your housing situation, neighborhood, your pet, your physical health? There a multiple +/-spill-over effects to overall happiness. Reading a novel might be one as well, just take time reserved to yourself.(Image BnF expo “women in sport”, 20024)
Happy Maths
The link of maths and happiness is not straightforward. Individual accounts of a happy (euphoric) or unhappy (dismal) life are mostly referred to psychologists for treatment. The biografies (documentaries) or fictional biografies told in novels or cinema allow to trace the changing moods of the personalities over time. This resembles life course research. In happiness research social scientist ask questions like “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life“. Measured over time or coded from biografies this allows to reconstruct happiness trajectories. At this point the maths of happiness enter the stage. Long periods of observations yield interesting patterns of curved lines, rarely simple linear trajectories. Social scientist speak of within person variability in contrast to between persons variability. After all, the (short-term superior) happiness of your neighbor might simply be due to the fact that they are doing drugs.
Whatever, try to remember a bit of your high school maths and the bore to deal with “curve discussions or sketching” beyond the manifold shapes of your classmates. Lots of interesting information derives from growth or decline rates, tangent lines, stationary or inflection points. Different starting points or so-called intercepts vary between individuals as well as he potential to cross the Zero-line on one of the axes. Additionally, in geometry you would compare syncronicity of curved lines as well as forms of symmetry for the curve(s). This will simplify or comlexify your perspective on the happiness trajectories of people or characters in a novel.
We are so used to narratives or videoss with a happy end, yet we appreciate the complex trajectories and (multiple) troughs main characters have to pass. Novels teach us about tricky inflection points and subsequent trajectories as well. The maths of happiness, however, is rather simple in comparison.
(Image from Toronto District Christian High School -pdf p.207). 
Happy Life
There are countries in this world that want to prescribe to their citizens what constitutes a happy life. Religious beliefs are another powerful instigation of what may be called a happy life now or in the future. Most people on earth, however, have their very own idea about happiness and how to get closer to this moment, phases or destiny of their lives.
Happy life is also the title of the novel or „une fable optimiste“ by David Foenkinos with the almost programmatic title „La vie heureuse“. It has been qualified as a bit absurd, but at the time of celebrating 100 years of surrealism, this fits into the surreal world episodes and narratives that surround us. The novel is full of ups and downs for the major characters, which reflects the inevitable links of happy relative to unhappy moments in life. The pseudo experience of death allows to press a kind of reset button in life after which love and life can start afresh. This might not work for all us as Foenkinos seems to tell us with the choice of the dedication and citation of Charlotte Salomon „On devait même, pour aimer plus encore la vie, être mort une fois“. Charlotte Salomon, however, lives on through her formidable artistic work accomplished in her short life.
Own Insulin
People who suffer from type 1 diabetes do not produce enough insulin themselves. The World Health organization estimated that „in 2017 there were 9 million people with type 1 diabetes; the majority of them live in high-income countries“ (WHO 2023). The report on successful reprogramming of stem cells of a person to produce insulin again and subsequently transplanting these cells into the same person allowed to produce own insulin again for that same person (Mallapaty, 2024). The hope for millions of people with type 1 diabetes is high that eventually there will be a cure to the disease. Scientists caution that there are no data yet for how long the transplanted own stem cells will produce insulin. Hence, the hope is driving research forward on a promising way forward. The case of type 2 diabetes is very different as additionally the absorption of insulin in the body causes problems. We keep walking and building muscles to facilitate the insulin absorption in the body to guard against the onset of type 2 diabetes. Interaction of diabetes and aging is another topic that needs our attention as rapidly aging societies are at higher risks to face many more people with various forms of diabetes.
Russian Demographics
Dictators prepare their countries long before for upcoming wars. One indicator of such strategies is the pursuit of “natalist” policies. These are demographic policies that aim to increase a country’s population so that the human losses endured during war maybe recovered faster. Russia has had such a policy doctrine in place for quite many years. Only, it didn’t work. Alain Blum and Sergei Zakharov (2023) have shown this in their paper on “L’obsession nataliste de Poutine“. Rather than achieving a growth in the population, at best, the further rather rapid decline of fertility and the population size before the war is reflected in the data (until 2022). The recent objection of youth and women to bear more children is subject of massive opposition of Putin’s forces inside the country. So-called total fertility of 1.5 per woman before the war is as low as or lower than in many other European countries. However, on the other end of aging is mortality or life expectancy. The data show a rather bleak picture of Russia already before the invasion of Ukraine. Based on data published from INED in France Russia has about 1.000.000 more people dying in 2022 than babies born. Bad handling of the Covid-19 pandemic (inefficient vaccines) is also a reason for this dent in population size. Adding outmigration of youth that does not want to stay in a country that goes to war with peaceful neighbors, this bleak population outlook is the disastrous heritage of the Putin years of Russia in the 21st century for generations to come as well. 
Ballistic Missiles
Ballistic missiles have been studied as part of physics for centuries. The basic mechanics in gravitational fields like on earth are well known. Longer reach intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) have been built by several countries for defensive or offensive purposes. China had demonstrated to master the science and technology of rockets since its latest launch of a ICBM in 1980. In 2024-9 China has demonstrated again, it is still capable to launch such missiles with long distance range (Japan Times 2024-9-25). This is both a technological task, but much more a geopolitical issue as a reminder to be taken seriously on the international political arena currently. Technological capabilities and capacities have regained geopolitical strategic importance as attempts to shift the global balance of power, which is undergoing multiple challenges or even changes. Flagging technological options is not only important to demonstrate own military strength, but to present a country as a potential strategic partner of global reach. Window dressing using weapons is much more oriented towards other countries (buyers of weapons mainly) than of relevance for Chinese society. Strategic alliances seek strategic partners. China is likely to receive more attention in the 21st century than before.
(Image: extrait de Gustave Courbet: La vague, 1870, Berlin SPK)
Patient Capital
There is something cultural about capital. Different cultures use different narratives when they commonly talk about capital. In Western capitalist societies it is common practice to cite “capital is a fugitive dear”, meaning that people who command sizeable amounts of capital tend to flee places once they become to agitated, especially by politicians. The Eastern narrative surrounding capital is more focused on “patient capital”. The newspaper “China Daily” has more than 6.000 entries referring to this term. On 2024-9-26 (p.9) the Japenese economist Kazuyuki Motohashi praised the Japanese economic system and its specific form of patient capitalism as based on” long-term, stable investment, which enables companies to achieve sustainable growth in the long run”. The Chinese economy suffers as Western capitalism from excessive focus on short-term profit seeking and this causes huge market flucturations shifting quickly from shortages to oversupply and back again. Short-term rent seeking is driving whole industries into fluctuations that are hard to attenuate through other economic (fiscal and monetary) as well as labour market policies (training, re-locations, internal migration).
It is interesting to witness that recently in Germany an example of a bank that had benefited from a patient capital approach of the German government for more than a decade (Commerzbank) is now prone to a bit of a hostile takeover from another bank probably more interested in the short-term rent-seeking. After all, banking and the varieties of capitalism approach highlight that at the very heart of economic rationale there remains a little bit of a cultural twist to understand what is happening in international economics and competition.(Image: Musée Rodin Paris 2024, Le Penseur”)
