Chapter 1

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”,were the words that John F. Kenndy spoke during his famous speech. The moon was unattainable until that time: nobody had set foot on the moon. This changed when Neil Armstrong uttered his legendary phrase: “That’s one of a kind step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. The moon was accessible from that moment, the unthinkable became a fact.

“We choose to be happy in this life, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard”, is Nuiten’s reaction to Kennedy’s famous speech. Ever since time mankind has been looking for happiness and the meaning of life. If answers to those questions are omitted in an unreasonable way, the absurdism in which we now live arises. Yet we continue to look for goals in life, one of which is ‘being happy’, but what is the definition of being happy, what are the conditions of being happy? Science has researched that there are seven components that – can – experience our bliss. These are the neurotransmitters and hormones that are in our body and released to give a sensation of happiness. The seven neurotransmitters that are closely involved in our mental well-being are endorphins, dopamine, serotin, oxytocin, adrealine, gamma-aminobutyric acid – also known as GABA and anandamide. Is it possible to study these values, just as the alchemists were busy with their search, so that in a certain way we can put together an elixir to make us happy. Maybe Maslow was right about his pyramid, anyway, everything is about finding a goal, to take steps to make a giant leap. But maybe the answer is in the stars.

Nuiten captures his search in which he plays with the reality of life and (pseudo)-science to find an answer to the big question. his research is divided into several chapters that examine the different aspects of happiness.