Erik T Langstrom was a Professor of Applied Science, whatever that means, at Nordmaling University, in Sweden.
He was an average man. Of average height. Average weight. In fact, he was so extraordinarily average as to be almost unique.
He thought himself to be a happy man. Not a particularly happy man, but most of the world lived in poverty, or servitude, or Birmingham, and was probably not very happy.
He was married to Rikke.
He thought she was happy, as he had tried to be a good husband, and had never asked her to live in poverty, or servitude, or Birmingham.
But then, when Professor Erik T Langstrom was around 35 years of age, his wife Rikke left him.
He asked her why?
And she replied that she was not happy.
This confused Professor Erik T Langstrom.
And...
He did what all scientific types do in these situations, and ordered all the books on happiness he could find on Amazon.
And he read them.
Which led him to a conclusion.
No one really knew what it was that made people happy.
But...
In some small part of his brain, Professor Erik T Langstrom believed that if he could discover the equation for happiness he could try and make Rikke happy, and she would return to him.
For...
He loved his wife.
And so, armed with all the knowledge he found in all those books, he wrote a questionnaire and gave it to lecturers and students at the University of Nordmaling.
He spend many hours compiling the data, the hundreds of questions, and checked it against the last answer on each form, which asked each participant…
“Are you happy?”
He found no correlation.
And so began a search that would take up eleven years of Professor Erik T Langstrom’s life.
To find the equation for happiness.
Questions were revised, changed, reordered, taken out, put back in…
Interviews were conducted with everyone at the University.
At least once.
Sometimes several times.
Until…
One day…
After eleven long years…
He thought he had it.
He gave the new questionnaire, comprising of twenty questions, to three members of staff.
The end result of these questions was a score, between zero and one.
Zero was totally unhappy. No-one scored less than 0.1003
Even if they lived in poverty, or servitude, or Birmingham.
A score of one was totally happy. And so, impossible to achieve.
Even on high doses of Ecstasy you were unlikely to score over 0.9
But that could be down to all the giggling, and the difficulty of trying to ask a question while the interviewee was dancing wildly and attempting to kiss the interviewer.
The best anyone had ever scored was 0.8978.
So...
He took the three scores of the three staff members and used the equation to suggest changes to their lives.
It was a simple matter of differential equation mathematics.
The results...
One old man was told to play more golf.
A middle aged lady was told to drink less coffee, and eat more fruit.
And a young male Physical Education Instructor at the University was told his answers indicated that he was a homosexual, and that he should stop hiding this fact, and find a lover.
Then...
After a certain period of time the questionnaire was given again.
This time he had reduced the number of question to just eight.
Eight questions that, when answered honestly, could accurately gauge your happiness and predict ways to improve it.
It appeared that the advice he gave the three staff members had been heeded.
And to his amazement, the scores had increased by an average of seventy percent.
The lowest now stood at 0.7993
The highest, 0.8376
Perhaps…
Just perhaps…
He had done it...
Discovered...
The equation for happiness.
He gave himself the test.
Could it be true, after eleven long years… Could it be true?
Professor Erik T Langstrom scored 0.9945
The highest score ever recorded.
But why was he so happy?
He thought about it.
He believed that, having finally discovered the equation for happiness, it would undoubtedly lead to tv appearances, book deals, the respect of his colleagues, and fantastic wealth.
No wonder he was happy.
This was what he always wanted.
He didn’t realise it before, but it was.
And then…
A few days later...
By a very strange coincidence…
His ex wife, Rikke came back to him.
And…
Four weeks later…
Professor Erik T Langstrom…
Committed suicide.
But...
Why?
That was something we all wondered.
Some postulated that he was too happy, and he knew it would never get better than this, so it was better to end it now.
Others thought that, perhaps, he had fallen out of love with his wife. Even begun to hate her.
The romantics believed the first of these.
Those of us who have met his wife, believe the second.
Later...
Scientists from all over the world came to Nordmaling and pored over the research papers of Professor Erik T Langstrom.
The first thing they found was that Professor Erik T Langstrom had terrible writing.
Not one person could decipher the chicken scratchings that made up the sum total of his life’s work.
They also came to realise that Professor Erik T Langstrom had a very unusual filing system.
No one could figure out the beginning, middle, or end, of his eleven year research into the equation of happiness.
And…
Sadly...
Professor Erik T Langstrom had not thought to write down the equation for happiness.
They had his questionnaire, and the final eight questions.
But no one could work out how it all fit together to produce any kind of scientific theory.
Now, I suppose you think that this is an unhappy ending to the tale.
An eleven year search that ended in suicide.
But…
I like to think, not of Professor Erik T Langstrom, but of three other people.
An old man who smiles a lot on the golf course.
A middle aged lady who stopped drinking coffee, ate more fruit, and laughs a lot more than she ever did.
And a young P.E. Instructor who lives with his boyfriend Arvid, and is, in more ways than one, a very gay man.
Three happy people out of seven billion.
It’s not a lot.
But...
It’s not a bad legacy for Professor Erik T Langstrom.