Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Americans are compulsive communicators,
obviously, like this conference.
But what strikes me is you really get personal,
one to one.
I was once staying in a farmhouse in Maryland,
and I was in the bathroom, and I was cleaning my teeth,
and I turn and look up.
I find it on the wall, in the bathroom, communications:
"Choose your partner in life with care.
95% of your happiness or otherwise will follow from this one decision."
(Laughter)
Well, I have to put my toothbrush in.
And that was just before breakfast.
Now, when my host invited me to speak here,
he very gallantly asked me if I would be bringing my bride.
I said, "Sadly not."
But this set me thinking.
My wife Marie and I have six grandchildren.
Our youngest son is over 16 years old.
In England, the word "bride" really refers to the day of the wedding.
But I am very honored that he recognized in Marie
those wonderful bride-like qualities
that bring out so much happiness every day.
Here she is, you see?
Fortunately, we're all different,
so the one ideal partner for each of us is someone different,
so there's scope for millions of bride-quality wives
and hopefully lots of groom-quality husbands.
So that's 95% of our pursuit of happiness already taken care of.
(Laughter)
Okay, so, turning to the other 5% -
I happen to be an artist.
My chosen art form is the maze.
This is an example of a design which is now in the landscape in England.
It's of Alice in Wonderland.
You can see Alice at the top,
and as you rotate, standing on the middle of the mound,
you can see the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat,
the Red Queen, the Gryphon, the Mock Turtle and the Dodo.
And it's all happening around a tea party, so you can see the teapot in the middle.
The marks of the clock, with the staircase up and down the tower, denote 4:00,
which is, in England, tea time.
And there's a little Dormouse in the handle
and playing cards at the end.
So before you've even started looking at this
as a physical puzzle in the landscape to solve,
it's also got this wonderful, rich symbolism.
I think I've got the best job in the world.
Actually, I've met several other people
who also claim to have the best job in the world - their job.
Which is great.
Fortunately, there's scope for many people to claim this
since all our jobs and all of us are different.
And so maybe one way for mankind to pursue happiness
is to have as many people as possible seeking,
and for each of them, finding
the best job in the world.
And then there's more happiness.
Anyway, back to mazes again.
Here's a maze in Italy
with a hedge maze in the background and a tower in the middle
and various people enjoying the maze.
Blenheim Palace - this is for the Duke of Marlborough.
Very finely clipped yew hedges in a historic landscape.
In the Czech Republic,
this is laid in the landscape quite beautiful.
It's a single-thread path - more like a labyrinth, a path of life.
And this is one I created in my own garden in England,
which is a turf maze.
It goes back many centuries,
and the children are following the path of life:
it's the thread of time from birth to death and resurrection.
This one looks like it's been there for centuries,
and the stone rings have been neglected,
and saplings have taken root and crept upwards,
but actually, it only went in a few years ago,
deliberately leaving the trees where they were
to make it feel that old,
but the mood is great,
and people do go there for meditation.
500 years old, we had a dynasty called the Tudors,
and this was the house of that period,
so we created a Tudor Rose maze in 1985 to celebrate that historical event.
I believe your country was founded sometime later.
(Laughter)
A water maze.
What fun if we have another dimension, the dimension of time.
The walls rise and fall with time,
so you go into a cell, your companion goes into the next cell,
the water rises between you.
Her future is different to your future.
You can now go sideways; she can't.
She can go forward to the next cell,
but you can't.
So, an interesting twist on the dimension of time.
In Liverpool, in 1984, there was an international garden festival,
and this was the Beatles maze we created, with a submarine,
and Her Majesty the Queen came and opened the maze,
which was great fun.
And if you go to Dubai,
this is a maze up the side of a building that goes up 600 feet,
with 55 floors of balconies and walls.
It's not to be attempted unless you happen to be Spider Man.
(Laughter)
Indoors, you could have a mirror maze.
This one's in Mexico.
If you have three babies, you can have the illusion of eighteen.
(Laughter)
Designing a maze is rather like playing a game of chess with the public.
I have to make all my moves in advance,
and yet in the end, I have to let you win.
And I have to let you win just before you've had enough.
So here's a locomotive.
This is actually in Pennsylvania,
with the Pennsylvania Railroad going under,
but it looks like a steam engine.
It's all exciting; a [inaudible] puzzle.
Fascination.
Your maze journey can become an adventure.
The fun of solving the puzzle
is heightened by discovering its hidden meanings;
its story gradually unfolds like the film "Pulp Fiction,"
where the story is not told in strict time order.
So in a maze, you may come across some things more than once
and miss other things altogether.
This actually is one of the ways a maze is fascinating,
because every visit is different.
But the true artistic encounter
is what happens when you engage with a maze -
like you come up to a piece of sculpture,
and you engage with it.
You walk around it, you explore it,
and then as you go away, you turn your head,
and you can't get it out of your head,
and you start telling your friends when it's out of sight, and tomorrow.
If that's a work of art,
then I suggest to you that the maze is an art form.
And then, when you're solving a maze,
what is the world "solve"?
It's the Latin word "solvere," to sail.
As in life, it's the way you conduct the journey that is crucial,
not how fast you get to the end and climb in the box.
So, how is it these seemingly simple three-dimensional puzzles,
which have been around for more than 4,000 years,
can make people so happy?
These two girls are in a mirror maze in Spain,
and they are really quite lost.
(Laughter)
This girl's an incredibly loyal friend.
(Laughter)
And they're making choices, and they are truly lost.
Ah, there, she's finally got it.
That's great.
What we've seen here
are three very powerful instances of the maze experience.
One is they're doing things together.
And the second is they're making choices.
And, thus, thirdly,
they're exploring the unknown.
So let's look at those three, in turn.
Doing things together.
Individuals are happiest when they do things that lead to group success.
And groups make tremendous efforts, socially,
to create and maintain their cohesiveness.
Boundaries are dissolved, equality rules
and people celebrate
with people of totally different backgrounds and status.
Most of us have felt something like that in our own lives;
we've played a team sport,
we've sung in a choir,
perhaps we've worked closely with friends to achieve a noble goal.
We lose ourselves and forget our petty concerns.
We're filled with energy and purpose.
Such memories often stand out at peak moments of happiness
when people reflect on their lives.
Seeking experiences of intense joy by doing things together with others
is a fundamental human need.
In mazes,
often the first thing children do is rush ahead and disappear out of sight.
The opportunity for the family to enjoy solving it together
can be over before you've begun.
In America, in 1993, I designed the world's first corn maze.
This is an example.
Some eight acres, four miles of pathways,
bridges, towers, lookouts -
all based on a fantasy castle, actually, this one.
Unlike hedge mazes, the corn stalks grow way above the height of your head,
and no one can be seen.
So we soon began to issue a flag to each visitor
so you could see hundreds of flags fluttering around
in what was otherwise just a crop.
One day, I got a call from our maze in Massachusetts,
and they said the flags were running out;
it was so popular that day.
So I suggested they rationed it to one flag for each family.
And that evening, I got a second, very excited call.
"They're behaving completely differently; families were sticking together.
they've been coming out happier and feeling better about themselves."
Nowadays, we deliberately ration flags to one for a family.
The children take it in turns, in carrying the flag,
and they hand it over whenever an adult suggests.
So if I had a flag - here's a toothbrush.
Anyway, so you have little Sophie here, you see?
And she's saying, "Okay, everybody, I think we ought to go left.
Granddad, what do you think?"
"Um, yeah."
"Okay, listen everyone.
Granddad and I have decided we're going left. Follow me."
You see little three-year-old, precocious Sophie
leads her whole team forwards,
and a bit later, her brother gets to take the flag,
and he makes other choices.
So the whole family's completely committed to this random set of choices
that these little ones are making.
Keeping close to the person behind the flag
is an unremarked, but a very notable long-standing American tradition,
as can be seen on this painting of the arrival of Christopher Columbus
to the New World.
He's the chap holding the flag.
(Laughter)
And not a maze cornstalk in sight.
The next thing we noticed with our girls in the mirror maze
was making choices.
We understand that the more there's choice, the happier we are.
But having too many choices can be a bad thing.
So, there's a classic experiment by Professor Sheena Iyengar,
and she presented shoppers with a gourmet choice of 24 jams.
And she found that the more jams she put on,
the more people were drawn to her display,
but very few people actually bought anything.
She then set up another stand with only three or six.
Fewer people came there,
but nearly, well, a good third of them, or more, actually bought.
So how does this work with designing mazes?
Well, actually, it helps quite a bit.
If you have a hedge maze - this one's in Scotland;
you can see it's sort of tartan weave of green and copper hedges and things -
you can't really have more than two or three junctions
at any little part of the maze.
So, actually, it works quite well.
So luck would have it, really,
I've been designing mazes with two and three choices
for many, many years,
but I've only recently discovered why I was doing it.
So, that's the theory.
(Laughter)
Now, exploring the unknown.
The compulsion is to see what lies behind that ridge or that ocean;
it's part of our identity.
What is this sort of human madness to just keep exploring?
The genome DRD4 is used to control dopamine,
the chemical brain messenger.
And researchers have found that DRD4-7R
involves increased curiosity and restlessness,
and studies have shown that people are more likely to take risks,
explore new places, ideas, food and friendships,
and in generally, embrace movement, change and adventure.
So, with this in mind,
I love ancient medieval cities and their wonderful twisting streets,
places like Jerusalem or, in this case, Marrakesh,
and I suppose one of my favorites is Venice,
where the alleys and footbridges cross over each other
above the network of canals.
We're always wanting to know what's out of sight and forbidden.
By her insatiable curiosity in the Garden of Eden,
Eve definitely showed signs of having 7R.
(Laughter)
By the action of eating the forbidden fruit,
Eve and Adam brought mortality down on all mankind
and got banished from a really nice place.
Mazes can have consequences.
Despite this cautionary Biblical tale,
we cannot escape the fact that we are genetically wired
to exploration with pleasure.
Little children recognize this as soon as they can walk.
For them, play is their life's work.
Unfortunately, as we get older, we lose that early playfulness.
So I guess my single-handed task as a maze designer
is to revive and awaken this primal urge, to liberate more happiness.
So these are three principles
I've been applying for 35 years as a maze designer.
And each of them
is also a fundamental element in the pursuit of happiness.
But do these work outside the world of mazes?
In August, we went on holiday in Wales with my six grandchildren,
our daughters, our sons-in-law and Figaro, the dog.
The premise is very simple on family holidays:
whatever keeps the grandchildren happy keeps the parents happy,
and whatever keeps the grandchildren happy keeps the grandparents happy,
and the dog's happy anyway.
Now, my eldest grandson - this is Tom, here with that green hat -
is absolutely nuts about railways.
(Laughter)
And so we ended up riding the highest funicular railway in Britain,
another funicular railway and a narrow-gauge railway,
and it was very simple.
The choice was,
Do you take narrow-gauge or do you take funicular?
And the whole became two choices - very easy, fantastic holiday.
So we made choices.
We did this all together -
here's the whole family in the narrow-gauge carriage -
and we discovered things we never expected.
At one station, we drew into the platform,
here was a complete brass band of Welshmen playing on the platform.
Magnificent.
So we discovered something together we weren't expecting at all.
So, we have discovered three things:
making choices, doing things together and discovering things.
And we've found that they work for mazes.
These principles also apply for steam railways,
and perhaps other ways will occur to you next time you are brushing your teeth.
(Laughter)
(Applause)