At risk of asking the most middle class question yet, has anyone had their chimney swept recently? No, it’s not a euphemism, but those that have are likely to have met the most cheerful people on the planet. I have no idea how highly Sweeps get rated in job satisfaction surveys, but they generally arrive as though having recently won the lottery, yet don’t want to give up the day job.
So, to take a break from ineffective fuming at three letter globalist organisations currently banqueting in Paris like it’s the 1780s and devising plans on how the plebs should eat less meat, it’s time to consider the happiness of our fellow man, perhaps even that of those whom deign to govern us but maybe not; they seem to have it covered via private jets, direct energy weapons and an unquestioning media.
Happiness is the sort of thing we spend such an inordinate amount of time considering, particularly if you’re a French existentialist, that it makes us utterly miserable. It’s unclear what the average life span of existentialists is, but it is apparently long enough to conclude that the pursuit of happiness is not only unattainable, but unfulfilling. Jung said, ‘The more you deliberately seek happiness the more sure you are not to find it.’ This might be a little brutal, but happiness is so often moments of fleeting joy that fuse with sadness as they slip through your fingers that it’s not dissimilar to grasping at the lights beamed from a disco ball.
Existentialists understand the tragedy at the centre of life; that you need to eat the crust to enjoy the loaf, with most philosophers seemingly preferring the crust. However, modern society apparently values happiness over all else. It is something, in its absence, to be cured by any means necessary, as though unhappiness is to be erased. Yet, isn’t it being unhappy that provokes you to shift to a more favourable position on the sofa?
When did this expectation, or pursuit of happiness arrive? There was a time when the successful stalking of prey and a clean kill was enough to dine out on for a week. Everyone defined themselves by their jobs to the extent that it frequently became their surname, the Bakers and Smiths of today might be called Designers or Producers or Customer Assistance Consultants, but perhaps there’s too much emphasis on professions; how about spending time with your children, or pets, or a fine autumnal day. It’s as though happiness is a destination, an unrelenting sate of mind that frankly would have you mooning about like a children’s TV presenter, incapable of reading Tolstoy and scaring the horses.
People didn’t get married to be happy, but to deliver as many babies as possible in a numbers game of increasing the odds of surviving into adulthood. No flint miner, after his 16 hour day, or a shepherd peering from beneath the hood of his dripping plaid, thought, am I happy? They were too fucking tired to formulate a sentence that long. Most trudged around with a face that suggested they’d caught pubic hair in their flies, and even in posed turn-of-the-century photos all appear to be suppressing toothache.
Ironically, there’s little social cache these days in being happy. It might even be seen as privilege by the social justice brigade. Stoicism, a kind of precursor to fake it until you make it, has been brushed aside in favour of miserablism. If victimhood is now the defining attribute of a person, its currency valued above all else, then what mileage is there in being happy if you desire public sympathy? Labels to demonstrate victimhood are now collected like children accrue Pokemon and football cards; anything to somehow persuade the world to change in accommodation of their shortcomings rather than adapt themselves. Human beings are built for adversity, we’re good at it, it takes faith to believe it, and while it feels constantly out of reach, the inner resources are there. Instead of celebrating the full dignity of human existence, where sadness and hurt are celebrated alongside joy and contentment, sadness might be viewed as micro-aggressions upon an entitlement for tranquility.
If the glut of articles in the weekend papers on how to be happy are indication, then we are heading into dark months; winter is coming. By spring, depressed people will be dug out from avalanches of advice and mood-boosting smoothie recipes. Despite lengthy attempts to prove otherwise, no one learns as much about themselves from lying on a sun lounger, even if they’re reading Camus, as they do from booking the wrong flight, leaving their debit card at home and splitting up with their partner en route. That’s not to suggest one should actively miss the carrots in favour of fingers on the chopping board, but it’s in adversary that you discover who you really are, and which old wounds it is that really fill your sails. Happy teaches you nothing. Happiness and unhappiness swim in the same water, you can’t drain the tank of one without killing the other.
That’s not to say happy isn’t a favourable target. There are basics to staying happy. Eat well, exercise, encourage friendship, be gentle with yourself, but not all the time. Discontent is a powerful state of mind that advertisers, governments and institutions feed upon for power. Don’t allow them to dampen your vibe. You don’t need them.
The irony is that weekend papers promoting advice on how to be happy are the vessels used to create worry and unhappiness. The low frequency of ‘news’, and weightless gossip about shiny happy people, whom even when ‘bravely’ going public with their mental health challenges to promote their book/film/flower arrangement, promote an unattainable lifestyle glossier than the soles of their borrowed photo-shoot shoes. Even headlines like ‘the 5 golden rules of happiness’ are enough to glance at your life and return with a spoilt ballot card. Even sofas are described as ‘bursting with personality’, which frankly is the last characteristic you need in a sofa.
As with shifting those pillows (they’re cushions!) on the sofa, discontent is a crucial motivator in striving forwards, but unless you’re stranded on a desert island and have eaten the last coconut there’s always something to be grateful for. Gratitude is a fruitful state of mind; you can sense yourself sitting back into yourself when you’re grateful. We live in a fine time, yes, it’s encroached upon by the creepy inevitability of AI, digital currencies, and pharmaceutical reliance, but we have a good standard of living you can say no, and embrace what’s timeless.
Because the main pillars of happiness are family, friends, work and faith. It’s little wonder that authoritarian States wish to dismantle religion as that subsequently strengthens reliance on the state.
Thanks to social media we’re comparing our entire life against a millisecond in snap-happy influencer lives, no one takes a selfie when they’re deliberating which toilet duck to buy, or wondering why they were a twat the previous evening. And feeling lonely is common; most people are also wandering around, curious as to when they stopped seeing their friends all the time, and why it always feels like they’re the one instigating social meet ups. Loneliness is so common that you can ask someone thick in the jolly melee and they’ll probably admit to being lonely despite having their arms around two people.
While appalling conditions at work - cobalt mines of the Congo digging out resources to fuel western virtue signalling EVs - brings nothing but ill health, in the west is it really advisable to run for the cover of Netflix at the sight of every squall? Research suggests that being out of work is far worse for people’s wellbeing than being in a job, and brings in the coin. If you want to be a lounge lizard or a Playstation bore that’s your decision, but don’t then blame your helplessness on others, that’s down to you, and it’s the sense of agency that brings a peace to your life, if not happiness.
These days, despite worrying so much less about breaking fingers on coal seams or steel girders, people seem unhappier than ever, it’s almost as if people are looking to be. Youth has been forever wasted on the young, but these days they’re skulking around in oversized let’s-play-dress-up-clothes, afraid to be who they really are, in case it contravenes their new puritanical value system, instead vanishing beneath the pin badges of raging causes, self-hatred and shame. You get no prizes for fake piety. Unhappiness always seems to be caused by others - as anyone driving at 20mph through Wales knows - but you can’t change the world, only your response to it, and you get no medals for your search for pity. There is a developing culture that celebrates not achievement or a strong work ethic, but encourages mental health days and probably sees such things as old fashioned, after all progress is always good isn’t it; self-reliance is probably right wing.
Self-reliance might be old fashioned and even seen as selfish, but there’s little point in helping others at cost to yourself, besides you’re shielding them from an opportunity to grow; after all, you don’t carry 6-year olds around in your arms. In many ways it’s not happiness we need to pursue, but meaning. Happiness is a jolly balloon, what you’re left with when it has unexpectedly burst is what you have to live with.
The great irony is that a state of unhappiness is preferable to those who wish to control, influence or simply scalp us of cash. An unhappy human is one whom is more likely to buy the promise of cream crackers and a flight neck-cushion making you happy. Similarly a scared and unhappy populous will clamour for more governmental intervention from Mummy state. So we must fight it. And it is a fight. It’s a constant battle to be yourself, and no one else can wield the sword; the fight is all yours. The dragon is inside.
One route to being happy is to not be UN Secretary-General António Guterres who somehow without laughing declared “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” Similarly Dr. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, the head of the WHO Climate Change and Health Unit, in his unelected position of priesthood, said of hot days in London that it was “extremely concerning” and called for investment into solving the climate crisis. It might be clear how much of a laugh these clowns are at a party, yet unclear as to how much of other people’s cash their global organisations can throw at the weather, but the latest estimate is quite a lot. It’s probably better to emulate the chimney sweeps, who perhaps know that CO2 is plant food and apparently follows global warming, rather than causing it; they perhaps instinctively know that the earth being now 14% greener than it was 20 years ago is something to celebrate.
One of the most defiant actions you can take is to be happy. Raise your vibe, drag that frown upwards even if it takes a Chinook (smiling releases dopamine, endorphins and serotonin. These neurotransmitters are associated with lowering your anxiety and increasing feelings of happiness.) I guess you have to smile like you mean it, as the Killers suggested.
My book on writing - Idle Thoughts of an Idle Writer - is available at Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Idle-Thoughts-Writer-Reflections-creative/dp/B09157XCCG/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1697876270&sr=8-2