I wish I had written this...

Excerpted from India Knight's article on being thrifty in the Sunday Times today. I especially love the last two paragraphs. I could've written the words myself, especially the bit about sniffing the babies' heads:

I believe that part of the reason so many of us feel obscurely dissatisfied in some way is to do with our strange, deluded (and very unthrifty) expectations. I also believe that these are a direct consequence of two things: a) celebrity culture, in which everyone always seems beautiful, rich, happy and fulfilled, and we, by comparison, seem plain, poor, beset with small miseries and chronically unfulfilled/frustrated; and b) the sneaky influence, and legacy, of all those thousands of self-help books, which have now been around for a couple of decades, and which all contain the same message: you’re super-special and deserve everything, and if you’re not getting it, it’s because you’re a victim.

Point a) is easily dismissed: it’s called PR and I sincerely hope that the lovely readers of this publication have enough gumption to see the smoke and mirrors for what they are. (It’s also called airbrushing, and sometimes eating disorder, and often drug habit.)

Point b) is more prevalent and more damaging. You don’t even have to have read the self-help books for their message to have trickled through, as though by osmosis. We’re all fluent in psychobabble and we all love to emote — both of which aptitudes would have our grandparents spinning in their graves. We seem to have lost any idea of the merits of self-control or even piping down occasionally.

This isn’t (quite) a plea for all of our human transactions to have a tragically repressed Brief Encounter vibe about them. But it is a plea for a return to a stiffening of upper lips. We’re all damaged to some extent, and we all carry around our emotional burdens. They’re not that interesting. I liked it better when the answer to “How are you?” was inevitably “Fine, thank you”, even if the person in question only had moments to live. Instead, what you now often get in response to your polite inquiry is a detailed catalogue of grievances and perceived injuries. But being free with personal information in this way doesn’t make you an “open” or “emotionally in tune” person. It just makes you sound really needy, like you’re the only thing that matters.

Going on and on about yourself, or about a thing that has happened to you, is incredibly bad manners — it makes any conversational exchange about you and you only. I wish people would desist — not just because it would make me happy, but because I genuinely think it would make them happier too. If you are what you eat, you are also what you think, and if what you think out loud is relentlessly self-centred and negative, it kind of follows that you’re unlikely to be especially chipper.

What you need to do with a bad thing is get over it. Your boyfriend has dumped you: it’s very sad, but there you go. It doesn’t get any less sad if you discuss it solidly for three weeks (or three months) and turn every single conversation round to the subject of your deep and unique unhappiness. Be adult: shoulder your burden, process it and move on. We’d all like to marry incredibly studly millionaires with PhDs and well-developed social consciences, but I suspect they’re probably a bit thin on the ground. We’d all like to be promoted into the stratosphere, but it’s unlikely to happen if we insist on leaving at 5.30pm on the dot and are intent on our “right” to every single holiday. And anyway, sometimes what you have under your nose is exactly right for you, even if it (or he) doesn’t quite match the fantasy version.

It seems to me that too many of us believe so much in fantasies that we waste all the goodness of what is real and tangible. Appreciate what you’ve got, even the really small things. For me, those are often domestic. Everyday happiness, as opposed to one-off great bursts of pure ecstasy, is intricately tied in with tiny everyday events: the jaunty-looking teapot that pours without dribbling, the children’s bath time, an especially good book. These things aren’t sexy or envy-making, but they are the fabric of all our days. Concentrating on them, and on all the small joys they provide, can be intensely fulfilling. Moaning because you can’t afford a £300 pair of shoes is not. Neither is moaning tout court.

Be happy. We are all blessed, in thousands of different ways. So we’re not a size 6, cavorting on a yacht with George Clooney. So what? I’d rather be sniffing my babies’ heads. There is enormous beauty in everyday life, and it doesn’t cost any money to look at it and feel glad to be alive.