I was born a Thursday child: what this means is that I am, by nature, not bonny, nor full of grace, and certainly not fair of face. A Thursday child is 'full of woe'. How much more chipper life would have been had the contractions started sooner.
At times, so it has been said, I am curmudgeonly , especially when faced with the Happiness industry - which pedals trite, hollow affirmations, the spread of 'glow' and 'light' and 'love' and whatever else sanitises, and flattens, and reduces to sushi bite-size catch-phrases the full range of human feeling and the complex responses to people and events that shape our lives.
This industry, once only the domain of the greeting card business, or featured on the back of cereal boxes, is everywhere: in email signatures; in platitudinous quotes and channelings and slogans; in the blogosphere and, particularly, on social networking sites, where the expectation is that you should be a constantly happy camper.
There is no room for complex thought or for soulful feeling in the face of the Happiness quaffers of bubbly and nibblers of bon-bons.
Does one join the Gatsby crowd in order to find a place to hide?
I wonder.
Copyright © Barbara Elion, 2010
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3 comments:
Please don't hide, cantankerous cousin. The world - and especially the asocial network - needs more Thursday children.
As a fellow Thursday child, I share your contempt of the Happiness industry. Not being a natural born smiler, people sometimes ask me why i look unhappy.... This used to annoy me but now I simply respond with the truth: i am ecstatic on the inside. Alan W
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