AT this time of year, we are all supposed to be happy.

Whether or not we are usually happy, we are expected to be so over the festivities.

I close my office for two weeks over Christmas but I always reply to everyone who is in touch with me as an MP to let them know they are in my mind or let them know who to contact if they need help while my team take a well-earned break.

I also tell them I hope the time of year brings some peace but I know their problems have not gone away. Letting people know you care matters more than you think. Freeing them from the pressure to be happy is also important. I know this from the responses I receive.

I’ve had plenty of times in my life where I’ve been unhappy and it’s not a great feeling. Worse is when someone experiences clinical depression. Overcoming that takes a great deal of hard work, persistence and support. That’s not what I’m talking about today.

Call me radical but I’m just going to say it. I think we would all be a lot “happier” if we didn’t keep trying to be so happy. Keep reading because I have a suggestion for something more achievable – happiness itself is just too much pressure for some people.

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The Christmas and New Year period can take that pressure to extremes. There is an expectation that we’ll all be happy just because of the time of year. Don’t get me wrong, I personally love the run up to Christmas, the day itself and seeing trees and lights and hearing Christmas carols does make me feel some semblance of happiness.

But I’m always aware it’s not the same for everyone.

What if you can’t create that rosy glow because you can’t afford to heat the house? I know from experience it’s very difficult to feel happiness when you’re absolutely freezing.

What if you’re overwhelmed with guilt because your kids are underwhelmed with the presents you were able to afford? It’s not their fault any more than it is yours because we are all bombarded with images of what Christmas should be like – what gifts should be given, what food should be served and how ecstatically happy everyone must be.

What if your childhood memories don’t come anywhere close to matching the media images? What if, like so many this year, you were preoccupied with the brutality being meted out to thousands in Palestine?

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The next big event after Christmas is Hogmanay, which I have often dreaded. I’ve never enjoyed the forced excitement and “niceness”. Suddenly everyone is your best friend and wants to hug you. I’m all for people being nice to each other but is it just December 25 and 31 which merit that?

I know I sound like the Grinch but while I had quite a nice festive period, I know many of my constituents and many of you reading this will have had a very different time and I think seeing everyone else’s supposed happiness plastered all over social media will have made things worse.

If you’ve not felt that happiness but it looks like everyone else has, how left out must you have felt? And how much pressure does that put on you to change your life and make it a happy one?

I say stop. Stop all this. Stop trying to be happy. You’re searching for the wrong thing. Happiness is too fleeting, it’s too dependent on too many variables and it is far more difficult to achieve than connection, fulfilment and purpose – that’s what we should be looking for.

Connection with other people, a sense of purpose in life, fulfilment – these are things you can engineer.

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I know someone who is a full-time carer for a family member. Five days a week she supports someone with a painful, debilitating condition.

It’s hard work but it’s her purpose in life. She is needed and while she would like to have more free time, she gets real fulfilment from being needed.

But it’s lonely, just the two of them for much of the week. So on her two days off she volunteers at a local charity shop. Why? Because there she connects with people from different backgrounds, ages, cultures.

She talks to them about the weather, about Coronation Street, about the price of the weekly shop. Her need for connection is greater than her need for putting her feet up.

I asked her once if she was happy. She said she hadn’t really thought about it but felt she had a good life. To my mind, she has cracked it. She’s not pursuing happiness, she just knows what she needs and for her it’s purpose and connection and she finds ways to get both.

My job as an MP is to fight for policies and decisions that will make the lives of my constituents better. It’s also to fight for them individually when those decisions and policies have a negative impact on them.

But I am not a fan of box ticking. I believe in a holistic approach and I’m happy to say my whole team does, too. So while we’re fighting for constituents’ basic rights and their material lives to be improved we also work with them to find connection purpose and fulfilment if they don’t already have it.

In 2024, why not focus on some of those aspirations and stop trying to be happy. I bet if you do, you’ll end up feeling a whole lot happier this time next year.