H=R/E

I am now reading a book that just introduced a completely tangential and seemingly inconsequential character, Lewis. What he said, however, has been at the center of much of my thinking the past several days.

By trade, Lewis is a psychologist who dabbles in economic theory. One of these theories seeks to calculate the mathematical formula for Happiness: Reality divided by Expectations.

The few times I've tested it, it makes quite a bit of sense and is accurate, albeit simplistically unrealistic.

For the three days since I read the passage that started this all, however, I've actually had a bit of difficulty finding at the same time absolute numbers for numerators and denominators.

Considering that I lost my cell phone (which skews Reality in that my world became much smaller), started a new job (which skews my ability to accurately gauge Expectations), and had a car die on the connecting ramp from the Toll Road to 635 during morning traffic (which makes equating predictors as to how much I will laugh or smile seem silly and ridiculous compared to predicting how or when I will call my wife and a tow truck, considering the first factor, and how I will get to work the following Monday, considering the second), I simply need more time to test this theory to its fullness.

What I've found, quite simply, is that Happiness has always been found when not over-thinking it, pursuing it, expecting it, or inviting it to stick around (which makes Lewis' theory the corollary to Occam's razor that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity).

Whether that may be artificially increasing Reality while lowering Expectations, I'll leave that for the mathematicians to debate.

I've better things to do and I was never that good at math to begin with.