We've Never Had It so Good, so Why Are We so Miserable?
Summary
The man with the suit, the pleasant-faced wife and the big saloon was obviously in a hurry. He reversed aggressively into the tiny space between my car and the roadworks. As I sat in my driver's seat, open-mouthed, he rammed into my back bumper and jolted me forwards. I got out and said, mildly: "You hit my car." "No I didn't," the man said brazenly. He was fortysomething, well-spoken, well-dressed; a father - there were toys and a child's seat in the back of the car. He looked like a surveyor. His wife had a Liberty print dress and a face stained with embarrassment. It was mid- afternoon in a business sector of Glasgow. "Yes, you did," I said, peering at my bumper, trying to be assertive. He was already 10 paces away, rushing, pulling his wife by the arm. "Why don't you just **** off, you fat cow," he shouted at me.
It was the sort of occasion when you only get angry 12 hours later. I was the victim, I realised, of a middle-class mugger. At the time, I just felt bewildered by the undercurrent of anger I had glimpsed. Happy people don't behave like that. Miserable people do. Here, plainly, was a man who maintained appearances; who had a partner and a child, presumably a comfortable home somewhere, who maybe on a Friday night said: "Hello, darling, let's open a bottle of wine and watch a video." Yet his life was seething with internal frustrations, blighted by stupid people, with goals unachieved and targets not met.See the full content of this document
Extract
We've Never Had It so Good, so Why Are We so Miserable?
I certainly did not fancy walking a mile in his shoes. But the point is that we should try, for manifestly there are many like him, apparently successful people for whom life is one long series of disappointments. Who beneath the glossy surface simmer with disconte...
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