Tennis and the economics of joy

It’s the beginning of the tennis season and I love tennis. In fact tennis is the one sport that I will really run around for, as most of the time I am not a creature of speed.  But I also love to watch tennis – especially when played on the quintessentially British grass courts of Wimbledon and Queens.  Yesterday tennis fans were treated to a great final contested by the great British hope – Andy Murray – and one of the great showmen of the circuit – France’s Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Tsonga was diving all over the place getting volleys back into court from impossible positions and Murray rose to the occasion by hitting two outrageous trick shots through his legs.  The second of these was extraordinarily cheeky as it was entirely unnecessary and to some people’s minds disrespectful to Tsonga. But I don’t think Murray was being disrespectful I think he was simply expressing his ‘joy’ of playing excellent tennis and finally being in a winning position after a seriously hard first two sets of tennis.

His spontaneous joyful shot, which showed off his extraordinary talent and skill, got me to thinking about how bad economics is at recognising the value of our “joys”.  Economics is so perverse in this way.  GDP, economics’ dominant indicator of national success, implicitly values “regrettables” like money spent on health problems, clearing up after accidents or disasters and even divorce lawyers. But by default as it only values monetary transactions, GDP excludes most of our “joys”; time with our family and friends, a good walk in the countryside, the joy of noticing of something beautiful or learning something new and even the deep pleasure of being generous.

This is why I think that understanding happiness and human well-being is so important – to me as important - as the serious issues of social justice and sustainability. I believe it is only when economics starts to recognise the value of the “joys” of life that it will start to take seriously the very issues that undermine human well-being – the huge inequalities in the world and our unsustainable lifestyles. 

Anyway I hope that Andy Murray treats us to more ridiculously skilful trick shots and that he finds himself in a fantastically joyful position in a couple of weeks’ time!

So find time to enjoy yourself this summer – whether it be the tennis or something else that floats your boat. Meanwhile back to the serious business of work …