In Pursuit of Happiness ( a mean-reverting property of life? )

Mind is the forerunner of states of existence. Mind is chief, and (those states) are caused by the mind. If one speaks and acts with a pure mind, surely happiness will follow like one's own shadow! - Gautama Buddha and also The Bhagavad Gita

Happiness is an emotional or affective state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. As a state and a subject, it has been pursued and commented on extensively throughout world history. This reflects the universal importance that humans place on happiness, courtesy Wikipedia.

I can't figure out my sudden surge in the philosophies of Happiness. I guess I just woke this Sunday morning and had a trailer of some pleasant flashbacks. An abstract business cycle alternates between contraction (recession) and expansion of the economy, saddled by peaks and troughs, as shown in the figure, reverting to an imaginary mean. Many other things in life imitates mean-reverting properties, for instance prices of financial instruments (stocks, bonds etc.)...How about happiness in life? Hmmm...it appears so.

After the mundane things this morning, I placed my mug with Bru instant coffee in microwave to heat it, and decided to clean up my closet. I set my eyes on a blue baggage that had a huge plastic bag inside. I couldn't recollect what it contained, as its been a while since I touched it. On opening it, I felt like the old man in the movie Amelie who is overjoyed on seeing his long lost trinkets. In the bag were audiocassettes/tapes of GNR, Nirvana, scorpions, AC/DC, Van Halen and David Lee Roth, Black Sabbath ( gosh, did I listen to these crap one point of time in my life?), great collections of the legendary M.S., and a whole lot of assorted collections MLTR, Michael Bolton (what the hell?), Cranberries (remember the popular song "Animal Instincts"?), Cardigans (remember "Love Fool" from the movie "Romeo and Juliet"?), Richard Marx, to name a few.

With my Bru in hand I went over to my desk, put my feet on the desk, leant back on my rocking chair, and closed my eyes to savor this moment. These audiocassettes, insignificant in monetary value, brought out a deluge of diverse emotions. That obnoxious boy who used to play mridangam at 4AM and wake everyone up, customary ablutions, morning prayer and sandhis followed by that great filter coffee, daily dosage of mathematics, idli for breakfasts, school and sweet girls, pretty girls and Sruthilaya (a dance school founded by actress Shobana), dosas and adais for evening tiffin, street cricket and fights for couple of hours, shower followed by sandhis, homeworks, rasam for dinner, few games of carrom board with friends and family, late night masala tea/milk at the street corner tea shop...hmmm...life was so stress free, laid-back and pleasant...Certainly those were the peaks of my happiness cycle. And if happiness in life is mean-reverting too, I hope I have reached my trough and look forward to the upward surge in that real-valued function called Happiness...For some desserts are "The simple Joys in Life...". :-) For me, a feeling of nostalgia of that long lost world is the big kick.

Does Happiness really have cyclical properties or is it a myth? If its not a myth, is it reverting to a mean that can be estimated with reasonable levels of confidence? What are the statistical properties of that mean? Using various monetary and fiscal policies, the Fed tries to avoid/delay recession and shocks to the economy by allowing a gradual slowdown. If Happiness indeed has cyclical properties, hope GOD tries something similar, to the fed, to slow down troughs (sorrows and pain) in the cycle of Happiness...