During quiet moments on the taxi rank, which are not exactly in short supply at the moment, I have been reading a library book about being happy.
It is a jolly good read, because it has the unusual perspective that happiness is not universally a good thing, and indeed that certain of our faculties are considerably sharper when we are not happy.
I think I am generally happy, in fact I would go so far as to say that my life is very happy, which might explain why I am not always as quick on the uptake as I might be. I was very interested by a bit in the book which says that wanting things and liking things happen in different parts of the brain, happen at different times, and there is no guarantee, or even probability, that the two things will be linked. Getting the things that we want, the book thinks, does not especially make us happy.
I have speculated a lot about this since I read it, and we talked about it in our walk round the Library Gardens this morning. Mark thought that it might be a good thing to remember the next time I was tempted to make use of Booking.com.
I thought that was not at all the case, and that the important thing is to make sure that I work out what are the right sort of things to make me happy. For instance, I thought, I like Chanel soap and bluebell perfume, and they make me happy in a lot of ways.
They make me happy when I have bought them and the sales lady puts them in a beautiful bag with a squirt of scent and I can bury my nose in it for a moment or two every now again whilst I am walking round other shops.
Then they make me happy when I see them sitting on my dressing table, looking elegant and lovely: and again when I use them and breathe in the lovely fragrance and feel beautiful and loved and looked after, and then again at times during the day whilst I am wearing them, whenever I catch an unexpected breath of the scent, or when I am close to somebody else and know that I smell clean and flowery, which is the happiest feeling.
All the same, they don’t make me happy just because I have got them, of course things can’t really do that.
No amount of bluebell perfume would make me any less cross with people who throw up in the taxi, or stop me longing for sunshine after weeks of rain. Bluebell perfume and lovely soap is a little bright moment in the day to be noticed and cherished, even when the rest of the world is grey. Having perfume can’t make me happy, but it does give me lots of happy moments.
I can manage to be miserable sometimes even if I have got exactly what I want. I badly want to go to York next week, but when I get there I could always spoil it terribly for myself by having a dreadful row with Mark, or by deciding to feel resentful about the weather, and not be happy at all. I know that would be a ghastly thing to do, because once or twice I have done awful things like that, and spoiled my life for myself for a few days, and I don’t want to do it any more, although occasionally even now sometimes I manage it.
It turns out that things going wrong don’t at all need to spoil my happiness. I very much wanted to go to the Midland at Christmas, which happened right in the middle of the time when rich food and alcohol was making me sick, and I thought I might be all right, but wasn’t, and somehow it didn’t spoil it in the least. I slept for a lot of the time, and everybody was kind and lovely, and the hotel was beautiful, and by the end of it I was exhausted and washed out, but absolutely elated with the happiness of a beautiful world and lovely friends.
All this is a bit philosophical for a Sunday. I am telling you about it because I am interested in the process of being happy at the moment, because of my book: but also because the day has had no events of note worth describing, since the ironing was its main feature, and no matter how wittily I try and depict the act of making Mark’s trousers flat, it was still dull, even with the Afternoon Drama on Radio Four whilst I did it. Consider yourself spared.
I was still thinking about happiness when Mark came back from the farm, where he had been trying to adjust the handbrake in his taxi, but it turned out that it needed a new cable so it will have to wait until tomorrow. We spent some time before we went to work thinking carefully about it and making plans for this year, like holidays and Things To Do.
We are going to put in lots of little bright spots, and we are going to be happy about things that we want when we have got them.
In a nutshell.
