Trusting your neighbors is especially important. Simply knowing them can make a real different in your quality of life. One study found that, of all the factors that affect the crime rate for a given area, the one that made the biggest difference was not the number of police patrols, or anything like that but, rather, how many people you know within a 15-minute walk of your house.

In Britain, the happy are few and suspect….For the British, happiness is a transatlantic import. And by “transatlantic” they mean American. ....For the English, life is about not happiness but muddling through, getting by.