From Rarely Happy to Frequently Happy

I didn’t pick up Frequently Happy  because I was in a deep emotional spiral or yearning for a spiritual awakening. I picked it up the way you reach for a biscuit when you’re not quite hungry but feel like something’s missing. I was… curious. Life was moving. Work was work. Days were days. But somewhere in the blur of emails, errands, and the endless loop of “What should I eat tonight?”, I wondered: Could I feel a bit more alive  in my own life? Enter David Larbi’s Frequently Happy —a bold, yet quietly compelling book that doesn’t claim to change your life, and thankfully, doesn’t try to. What it does do is gently poke at your brain, your habits, and your default settings. And in doing so, it makes a pretty convincing case for happiness being less of a pursuit and more of a noticing game. The book is made up of poetry, prose, and stream-of-consciousness entries grouped by the four seasons. Each season has its own mood: Winter is still and sparse, Spring is tentative and hopeful, Summer is open and warm whilst Autumn is quietly reflective. Engaging with the book feels like flipping through someone’s journal, except that “someone” just happens to be insightful, observant, and really good at putting words to the things most of us feel but never say out loud. Larbi writes about everything from quiet jealousy to good eggs on toast. One entry might be a paragraph-long musing on joy; the next, a poem about letting go of friendships. There’s no build-up to a grand conclusion, no TED Talk energy, and absolutely no “5 steps to fix your life.” It’s more like a friend texting you random thoughts at 2 in the morning—but the kind of thoughts that make you go, “Wait… same.” At the heart of it is this idea: happiness isn’t a rare phenomenon or a future reward for good behaviour. It’s something that shows up frequently—just not always dramatically. Larbi suggests that if we stop waiting for happiness to arrive in bold, cinematic form, we might start seeing it in the small, quiet, everyday stuff. “Happiness isn’t rare. It’s underappreciated. It’s missed because we’re waiting for it to be grand.” This one line rearranged something for me. I’d been acting like happiness was some kind of annual bonus—something that came at the end of a successful quarter of life, if I hit all the right marks. But what if it was more like loose change in your coat pocket? There already, just unnoticed. So, I started noticing. Not in a "today I begin my journey to enlightenment" way. More in a “let’s just see if this does anything” way. I tried what I now think of as Larbi’s accidental technique: micro-noticing. Picking up on the tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments that felt kind of… nice. A satisfying stretch. A surprisingly good apple. The way sunlight hit the pavement just right. I didn’t write them down or make a vision board. I just took it into account. “Your life is already poetic. You just haven’t slowed down enough to read it.” This quote is nestled deep in the Spring section, and it caught me off guard. I remember blinking at the page thinking, “Is he calling me out… kindly?” And yes, yes he was. The idea that poetry isn’t something to seek out but something to witness was a subtle but profound shift. The beauty wasn’t missing; my attention was. It didn’t make me euphoric. It made me lighter. Like I’d been carrying a low-grade emotional fog and hadn’t realised it until a bit of it lifted. Larbi’s writing doesn’t force you to feel good. It doesn’t really force anything. What makes the book powerful is its lack of pretension. It’s honest, meandering, unpolished in parts, and entirely human. The way it’s structured—by season and by feeling—means you can dip in anywhere, read a page or two, and come away with a slightly shifted lens on the day. This format of reading is even encouraged in the book’s introduction: “This isn’t a book you read in one go. It’s one you return to. When the day’s been long. When it hasn’t. When you just need a voice that won’t ask you to be anything.” It sets the tone for how to engage with the text: gently, without expectation. As someone who often turns reading into a task (complete with post-its and mental highlighters), this invitation to simply be  with the book was refreshing. There’s also something sneakily clever about how it gives permission. Emotions such as hope and joy may be the focal point but not the only point. He writes about envy, melancholy, doubt, and the uncomfortable parts of being a person. But he never lingers on those emotions like they’re flaws. He observes them, sometimes even jokes with them, and then moves on. That tone, light but thoughtful, is what drew me in. It felt like emotional honesty without the residual, lingering feelings it’s often associated with. “Some days I feel like I’m made of moss. Soft, quiet, a little too damp, but still alive.” It’s a sentence that doesn’t mean to be profound, but somehow is. It’s gentle in its weirdness, and that’s Larbi’s sweet spot—naming feelings in a way that feels oddly accurate and totally unpretentious. Reading this felt like someone finally captured that murky grey area between apathy and calm. From a structure perspective, the seasonal grouping is very cohesive. It mirrors how emotional life actually happens—not in neat arcs, but in waves. Winter offers more than just cold weather; it’s also the mental and emotional quiet that comes with it. Summer represents more than brightness; it’s also openness, connection, and sometimes overexposure. This layering makes the book reflective at first glance, but the deeper I delved, the more rhythmically relatable it became. “I feel different in every season, and I never quite realise until I’m already in it.” That line doesn’t just describe nature—it describes mood, identity, energy. And in acknowledging it, the book made me feel less strange for being inconsistent. More seasonal. Less broken. As a reader who leans toward curiosity over intensity, I appreciated that Frequently Happy  doesn’t try to be more than it is. It’s a gentle nudge, not a manifesto. And that makes it feel oddly trustworthy. This is a book for those in a season of your life where things are mostly fine, but you can’t shake the feeling that you’re skipping over the good bits. It’s for the person who doesn’t need fixing, just a different angle. I wouldn’t say I’ve become permanently, dramatically happier. But I have become more frequently happy. The key wasn’t in leaping toward the goal. Instead, it’s a series of soft, repeated steps. David Larbi reminded me that the path was always visible and available. I just needed to look down, slow down, and start walking.