The Grand Tour: In Search of Happiness (1)

Looking forward to the next Grand Tour I am going to make in Italy this year. Theme of this Grand Tour 2023 is 'In Search of Happiness'. How can the Italian culture contribute to our search for happiness? What is the role of storytelling in our experience of happiness? How can we have more and more happiness in our daily lives?

More than anything else, men and women seek happiness. While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal - health, beauty, money, or power - is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy. Much has changed since the first tourists travelled the Grand Tour. Our understanding of the worlds of stars and of atoms has expanded beyond belief. And yet on this most important issue very little has changed in the intervening centuries. We do not understand what happiness is any better, and as for learning how to attain that blessed condition, one could argue that we have made no progress at all.

In the film The Third Man, while Harry Lime is riding the Ferris wheel in the Prater park in Vienna, he says to his friend Holly Martins that Italy, for centuries plunderend, torn by interminable wars, massacres and tragedies of all kinds, nevertheless produced Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and the like, while Switzerland, despite centuries of peace, produced no more than the cuckoo clock. Are the Italians creative because they have suffered a great deal? I could mention other peoples, who have suffered horribly over the centuries and whose culture has not developed, remaining unchanged for millenia. So we must look elsewhere for the reasons for Italian creativity.

Despite the fact that we are now healthier and grow to be older, despite the fact that even the least affluent among us are surrounded by material luxuries undreamed of even a few decades ago (no Roman experor could turn on a TV set when he was bored) and regardless of all the stupendous scientific knowledge we can summon at will, people often end up feeling that their lives have been wasted, that instead of being filled with happiness their years were spent in anxiety and boredom.

Is this because it is the destiny of mankind to remain unfulfilled, each person always wanting more than he or she can have? Or is the pervasive malaise that often sours even our most precious moments the result of our seeking happiness in the wrong places? The intent of this journey is to use some of the tools of modern psychology to explore this very ancient question: When do people feel most happy? If we can begin to find an answer to it, perhaps we shall eventually be able to order life so that happiness will play a larger part in it.

"So, when we talk of Italian creativity, from arts, to literature, from cuisine to fashion, from architecture to the construction of the simplest everyday objects, FI think we ought to bear in mind the principle of variety, Italian creativity is due to the diversity of places, languages, of ancient history and even local interests." Umberto Eco

If you want to know more about the Grand Tour program - a 14 day journey through history 'in search of happiness' contact me at [email protected]