YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO BE HAPPY, SO STOP TRYING!

For readers who enjoyed THE PSYCHOPATH TEST by Jon Ronson, REACHING DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE by Brian Burrel, ON BECOMING A PERSON by Carl Rogers, THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT by Oliver Sacks, THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK by Mark Manson and books by Ryan Holiday

Our DNA doesn't want to make us happy. It prefers to keep us forever anxious about potential threats and in need of new rewards that will never quite satisfy us. Our biological self is naturally unhappy, as the 10th century Caliph of Córdoba discovered when he counted the days he had felt happy in his whole life and found they amounted to only 14.

Through a series of conversations with his patients some funny, others poignant Rafa Euba reflects on the futility of chasing happiness as a goal, while accepting that money, pills, sex and food sometimes make this quest more agreeable. The author looks for evidence of happiness in the workings of our brain, in our mythology, and in even in fairy tales, but can't find any. He also looks for it in self-help books, but concludes that their vacuous optimism can't possibly lead to a state of emotional contentment. This is because however hard we may try to govern our emotions, they will inevitably remain mixed and messy. Happiness is a myth, an ethereal ghost that inhabits our brain only as an abstract idea.

Rafa Euba is a seasoned psychiatrist, who can't help constantly pondering about the flaws and wonders of human nature, even when he should be doing other things.