Material pursuits deprive us of happiness

I recently stumbled on an online video of The Happy Song, which is designed to make babies happy.

British psychologists used babies' brainwaves to find out what kinds of sounds make them happy. The babies like, for example, words that start with the letters "P" and "B", but not with "L". They like the pitch to be in the range of a female human voice, with fast tempos. Grammy-winning songwriter Imogen Heap used this research to write The Happy Song.

It worked. All the babies in the video started laughing on hearing the song. My 10-month-old grandniece perked up and paid close attention when she heard it.