a viral clip of a human-sized back-flipping robot, it feels like reality has become science fiction.
And we are encouraged to desire this state of affairs. ‘Embrace’ the future and ‘let go’ of the past. The whole of consumerism is based on us wanting the next thing rather than the present thing we already have. This is an almost perfect recipe for unhappiness.
We are not encouraged to live in the present. We are trained to live somewhere else: the future. We are sent to kindergarten or pre-school, which by its very nature reminds us of what is about to hit us. School school. And once there, from an increasingly early age, we are encouraged to work hard so we pass tests. Eventually, these tests evolve into actual exams, which we know will dictate important future things like whether we pursue further education or decide to get a job at the age of sixteen or eighteen. Even if we go to university, it doesn’t stop there. There will be more tests, more exams, more looming decisions. More where do you see yourself in a few years’ time? More what career path would you like to pursue? More think very carefully about your future. More it will all pay off in the long run.
All through our education we are being taught a kind of reverse mindfulness. A kind of Future Studies where – via the guise of mathematics, or literature, or history, or computer programming, or French – we are being taught to think of a time different to the time we are in. Exam time. Job time. When-we-are-grown-up time.
To see the act of learning as something not for its own sake but because of what it will get you reduces the wonder of humanity. We are thinking, feeling, art-making, knowledge-hungry, marvellous animals, who understand ourselves and our world through the act of learning. It is an end in itself. It has far more to offer than the things it lets us write on application forms. It is a way to love living right now.
I am coming to realise how wrong many of my aspirations have been. How locked out of the present I have found myself. How I have always wanted more of whatever was in front of me. I need to find a way to stay still, in the present, and, as my nan used to say, be happy with what you have.
Goalposts
YOU WILL BE happy when you get good grades.
You will be happy when you go to university. You will be happy when you go to the right university. You will be happy when you get a job. You will be happy when you get a pay rise. You will be happy when you get a promotion. You will be happy when you can work for yourself. You will be happy when you are rich. You will be happy when you own an olive grove in Sardinia.
You will be happy when someone looks at you that way. You will be happy when you are in a relationship. You will be happy when you get married. You will be happy when you have children. You will be happy when your children are exactly the kind of children you want them to be.
You will be happy when you leave home. You will be happy when you buy a house. You will be happy when you pay off the mortgage. You will be happy when you have a bigger garden. In the countryside. With nice neighbours who invite you to barbecues on sunny Saturdays in July, with your children playing together in the warm breeze.
You will be happy to sing. You will be happy to sing in front of a crowd. You will be happy when your Grammywinning debut album is number one in 32 countries, including Latvia.
You will be happy to write. You will be happy to be published. You will be happy to be published again. You will be happy to have a bestseller. You will be happy to have a number one bestseller. You will be happy when they turn your book into a movie. You will be happy when they turn it into a great movie. You will be happy when you are J.K. Rowling.
You will be happy when people like you. You will be happy when more people like you. You will be happy when everyone likes you. You will be happy when people dream of you.
You will be happy to look okay. You will be happy to turn heads. You will be happy with smoother skin. You will be happy with a flat stomach. You will be happy with a six-pack. You will be happy with an eight-pack. You will be happy when every photo of yourself gets 10,000 likes on Instagram.
You will be happy when you have transcended earthly woes. You will be happy when you are at one with the universe. You will be happy when you are the universe. You will be happy when you are a god. You will be happy when you are the god to rule all gods. You will be happy when you are Zeus. In the clouds above Mount Olympus, commanding the sky.
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe
MAYBE HAPPINESS IS not about us, as individuals. Maybe it is not something that arrives into us. Maybe happiness is felt heading out, not in. Maybe happiness is not about what we deserve because we’re worth it. Maybe happiness is not about what we can get. Maybe happiness is about what we already have. Maybe happiness is about what we can give. Maybe happiness is not a butterfly we can catch with a net. Maybe there is no certain way to be happy. Maybe there are only maybes. If (as Emily Dickinson said) ‘Forever – is composed of Nows –’, maybe the nows are made of maybes. Maybe the point of life is to give up certainty and to embrace life’s beautiful uncertainty.
3
A FEELING IS NOT YOUR FACE
‘It’s such a weird thing for young people to look at distorted images of things they should be.’
—Daisy Ridley, on why she quit Instagram
Unhappy beauties
NEVER IN HUMAN history have so many products and services been available to make ourselves achieve the goal of looking more young and attractive.
Day creams, night creams, neck creams, hand creams, exfoliators, spray tans, mascaras, anti-age serums, cellulite creams, face masks, concealers, shaving creams, beard trimmers, foundations, lipsticks, home waxing kits, recovery oils, pore correctors, eyeliners, Botox, manicures, pedicures, microdermabrasion (a strange cross between modern exfoliation and medieval torture, by the sound of it), mud baths, seaweed wraps and full-blown plastic surgery. There are facial-hair trimmers and nose-hair trimmers and pubic-hair trimmers (or ‘body groomers’). You can even bleach your anus if the mood so takes you. (‘Intimate bleaching’ is a thriving sub-market.)
In this age of the beauty blog and make-up vlogger and online workout instructor, there has never been such a plethora of advice on looking good. We are bombarded with diet books, and gym memberships, and ‘dream abs’ workouts and ‘action hero’ workouts and ‘face yoga’ videos we can access via YouTube. And there are ever more digital apps and filters to enhance what the products can’t. If we so desire we can make ourselves into our own unrealistic aspirations and create an ever wider gap between what we can see in a mirror and what we can digitally enhance. Women – and increasingly men – are doing more than ever to improve their appearance.
Yet, despite all our new methods and tricks to look better, a lot of us remain unhappy with our looks. The largest global study of its kind, conducted by research group GfK and published in Time magazine back in 2015, suggested that millions of people were not satisfied with how they look. In Japan, for instance, 38 per cent of people were found to be seriously unhappy about their appearance. The interesting thing about the survey was that it showed that how you feel about your looks is surprisingly far more determined by the nation in which you live than by, say, your gender. In fact, all over the world, levels of anxiety about how you look are moving towards being as high in men as they are in women.
If you are Mexican or Turkish, you are likely to be fine about what you see in the mirror, as over 70 per cent of people there are ‘completely satisfied’ or ‘fairly satisfied’ with their looks. People in Japan, Britain, Russia and South Korea were much more likely to be miserable.
So why are so many people – with the exception of Mexicans and Turkish people – unhappy with their looks? A few reasons, it seems:
1. While we have an increased ability to look better than ever before, we also have much higher