ONE Sources of Happiness

      Women can be wonderfully happy. When they’re in love, when someone gives them flowers, when they’ve finally found the right pair of shoes and they even fit. I remember once, in love and properly loved, dancing round a room singing, ‘They can’t take this away from me.’ I remember holding the green shoes with the green satin ribbon (it was the sixties) to my bosom and rejoicing. I remember my joy when the midwife said, ‘But this is the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen. Look at him, he’s golden!’

      The wonderful happiness lasts for ten minutes or so. After that little niggles begin to arise. ‘Will he think I’m too fat?’ ‘Are the flowers his way of saying goodbye?’ ‘Do the shoes pinch?’ ‘Will his allegedly separated wife take this away from me?’ ‘Is solitary dancing a sign of insanity?’ ‘How come I’ve produced so wonderful a baby – did they get the name tags wrong?’

      Anxiety and guilt come hot on the heels of happiness. So the brutal answer to what makes women happy is ‘Nothing, not for more than ten minutes at a time.’ But the perfect ten minutes are worth living for, and the almost perfect hours that circle them are worth fighting for, and examining, the better to prolong them.

      Ask women what makes them happy and they think for a minute and come up with a tentative list. It tends to run like this, and in this order:

      Sex

      Food

      Friends

      Family

      Shopping

      Chocolate

      ‘Love’ tends not to get a look in. Too unfashionable, or else taken for granted. ‘Being in love’ sometimes makes an appearance. ‘Men’ seem to surface as a source of aggravation, and surveys keep throwing up the notion that most women prefer chocolate to sex. But personally I suspect this response is given to entertain the pollsters. The only thing you can truly know about what people think, feel, do and consume, some theorize, is to examine the contents of their dustbins. Otherwise it’s pretty much guesswork.

      There are more subtle pleasures too, of course, which the polls never throw up. The sense of virtue when you don’t have an éclair can be more satisfactory than the flavour and texture of cream, chocolate and pastry against the tongue. Rejecting a lover can give you more gratification than the physical pleasures of love-making. Being right when others are wrong can make you very happy indeed. We’re not necessarily nice people.

      Some women I know always bring chocolates when they’re invited to dinner – and then sneer when the hostess actually eats one. That’s what I mean by ‘not nice’.

      Sources of Unhappiness

      We are all still creatures of the cave, although we live in loft apartments. Nature is in conflict with nurture. Anxiety and guilt cut in to spoil the fun as one instinct wars with another and with the way we are socialized. Women are born to be mothers, though many of us prefer to not take up the option. The baby cries; we go. The man calls; ‘Take me!’ we cry. Unless we are very strong indeed, physiology wins. We bleed monthly and the phases of the moon dictate our moods. We are hardwired to pick and choose amongst men when we are young, aiming for the best genetic material available. The ‘love’ of a woman for a man is nature’s way of keeping her docile and at home. The ‘love’ of a man for a woman is protective and keeps him at home as long as she stays helpless. (If high-flying women, so amply able to look after themselves, are so often single, it can be no surprise.)

      Or that is one way of looking at it. The other is to recognize that we are moral creatures too, long for justice, and civilized ourselves out of our gross species instincts long ago. We like to think correctly and behave in an orderly and socially aware manner. If sometimes we revert, stuff our mouths with goodies, grab what we can so our neighbour doesn’t get it (‘Been to the sales lately?’) or fall upon our best friend’s boyfriend when left alone in the room with him, we feel ashamed of ourselves. Doing what comes naturally does not sit well with modern woman.

      And so it is that in everyday female life, doubts, dilemmas and anxieties cut in, not grandiose whither-mankind stuff, just simple things such as:

      Sex: ‘Should I have done it?’

      Food: ‘Should I have eaten it?’

      Friends/family: ‘Why didn’t I call her?’

      Shopping: ‘Should I have bought it?’

      Chocolate: ‘My God, did I actually eat all that?’

      But you can’t lie awake at night worrying about these things. You have to get up in the morning and work, so you do. But the voice of conscience, otherwise known as the voice of guilt, keeps up its nagging undercurrent. It drives some women to therapists in their attempt to silence it. But it’s better to drive into a skid than try to steer out of it. If you don’t want to feel guilty, don’t do it. If you want to be happy, try being good.

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