Happiness Matters

To be happy

It seems to be increasingly difficult to be happy or peaceful when, lately, lots of things seem to be happening to us, and “out of the blue”: at the end of a bruising and politically divisive three years, on 31^st January, 2020, the UK finally left the EU. After the flags had finally been re-arranged following the end of the final – final – extension period, full-page adverts placed by the UK government appeared in newspapers to remind the few of us who might have forgotten, that, “The UK has now left the European Union”. Good to know that, in the face of gloomy post-Brexit forecasts, revenues were being well deployed.

At the same time, at the end of last year, new headlines were appearing indicating the origins of coronavirus in Wuhan and speculating wildly about its causes, spread, and likely mortality rates. I watched the news and tracking reports with fascinated alarm, as one would watch the approach of a tornado following a clear path and bound, at some point, to pass nearby. By now we are beginning to realise that we don’t need a direct hit, for life to change utterly.

If there is any good news to be had out of recent events, it could be that, in the face of a growing climate emergency, the natural world has the chance to recover some ground. We also have the opportunity to reassess what really matters to us, and to work co-operatively to find sensible, practical and compassionate outcomes that include us all. Increasingly I see that working together need not be difficult, but can be immensely rewarding, both for the unexpected joy we uncover and because in working together we are more open to sharing and being inspired by new and interesting possibilities.

By finding solutions that include everyone – it is interesting, for example, that the emergence of Covid-19 in the USA has finally forced the political concession that everyone who needs it can get tested, and everyone in need can get treated – finally, we may see the beginnings of a recognition that effective solutions are, and have to be, inclusive. “Value” is not just about the stock markets or the size of our wallets.

I’m going to be taking a break for a while. It’s a time for reassessment and reflection. More than ever, we need to listen to each other, avoid jumping to conclusions and try to stay healthy, cheerful and optimistic.

Thanks for listening.

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Find something you love and donate to it.

To find something you love, a cause we would enjoy supporting, is fun. And having done our research and made our choice, we can then donate time, energy, enthusiasm or funds to it: Children and adults in need, trees and forest conservation, all kinds of wild and wonderful creatures, the causes of free speech, our local library, local producers, volunteer centres, all of these benefit from our input, big or small.

We may say we “cannot afford it” – we haven’t the time, or the energy or the funds; but on closer inspection, we may be excusing ourselves because “there’s so much wrong, what difference can I make?” or “I’m just so busy… I’m tired by the sheer scale of the problems we face…”

These are always good arguments, valid and full of reason, to explain why we fail to get involved. And indeed, compassion fatigue can creep up on us. How many petitions have we signed lately, urging action? How many appeals have we seen, and wished we could do more for? But maintaining that, therefore, there is no point in getting involved, is a tiny bit like walking along the street or in the supermarket, seeing a lost child, and not stopping to ask them, “Can I help you?”

I know there will also be lots of people who would say, “I would love to help, but I don’t want to be accused of doing anything inappropriate…” and that too, is a legitimate concern. But, on the other hand, how appropriate would it be, to leave a lost person lost? How appropriate is it, to notice that there is a problem and do nothing about it? How appropriate, to leave the moral, the difficult physical and emotional work to other people, to our young people and those who must come after us?

Lots of people do that. They make a mess, and expect nameless “others” to tidy it up. I see very clear examples of this from my kitchen window, when someone fills up the communal waste bins with something totally inappropriate, or dumps something on the kerb that they know will not be picked up by the garbage collectors. How do they expect that stuff will get sorted out? Who else will deal with it? Is it right just to expect it to miraculously vanish, one day?

Lots of questions. But it is easy to make a difference. We just have to decide that we want to, and the rest follows.

Thanks for listening.

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Spring clean personal effects

And an old favourite of mine: spring clean personal effects of anything you have not used for three years.

Many practitioners of the “tidy life” movement advocate “letting go” of anything that we have not used or admired for a period of six months. I prefer a period of at least a year, not only because our sentimental preferences may take a while to catch up with our more business-like decisions – sometime in the middle of the night, we may be frantic to find that particular top…  – but because a full year, and three of these, is likely to cover most seasons, weathers and eventualities. Even eventual changes of mind.

I also favour putting unwanted items aside, out of our line of sight for a while, into a kind of emotional “cooling tank”. A halfway house of this sort tempers our fear of letting go of those things which we have grown accustomed to, without ever having asked ourselves, “Do I actually like this? Or find it useful?” If I put something that I’m not sure about aside for a while, I can always say, “Well, I haven’t thrown it away just yet…” which in turn means that I can be a bit freer with what I choose to let go.

It is not wasteful to be thoughtful about what we choose to keep and the reasons why. It is not selfish to keep and use personal effects that make us feel happy and contented. A simpler, more conscious approach to our possessions does not blindly accept, but asks us to regularly check that the things we are keeping are with us because of our own choice and not merely by default.

If I have anything in my personal space that makes me feel heavy or unhappy, in passing it on, I am letting it go, not throwing it away. I am passing it on to a good home, not discarding it to add to the landfill pile. I am selling it or donating it for a good cause or a charity concern or an auction.

Thanks for listening. I welcome any other ideas you might want to share about this, an ongoing project.

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Carry a bag

It should be easy for us to carry a bag by now. We’ve had charges for plastic carriers for a while, and increasingly supermarkets and suppliers are introducing heavy duty paper bags, cardboard boxes or zero waste options for transporting our groceries: all of which has a very “Seventies” vibe about it. If we acquire a few sturdy carrier bags, these can last literally for years.

But you can also carry any kind of bag or wrapping of the sort which you would find protecting new pillows, or those that clothes are delivered in, for re-use to pick up any pieces of litter you may find lying around.

One of the main reasons we don’t collect litter – oh dear, I don’t have a bag with me… – can so easily be overcome if we remember to keep some wrap – bag – packaging – in the car for this purpose. Not that we spend a great deal of time glancing around our feet at whatever dross we might find clogging up the drains or caught wilting in the gutter. It is not good for our sense of ambition to continually looking down at the pavement. Rather, it is useful and refreshing to choose one day, a time, a moment once and a while, to go on a litter search and collect mission. See how much we can recycle or double wrap before we throw it away. Take the time to notice what lies under the hedgerows and beside canals and embankments and retrieve it.

It’s occasionally also useful to carry a pair of scissors, for slicing through cords and the plastic ties that trap official notifications on lamp posts and railings. It is amazing how the litter of discarded signage can clutter and accumulate: how many local authorities, having put up planning notices and landlord and tenant neighbour notifications, ever bother to retrieve them when they have expired?

It only takes moment, when heading out on our daily rounds, to remember to carry a bag.

Thanks for listening.

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Eat less meat

I have tried to live with the vegan diet. To be more precise, in my efforts to eat less meat, I thought it might be possible to go vegan. I was wrong: after a month, my whole system was so light, I almost floated away. Nowadays, I eat eggs, chicken and a moderate amount of pork and pork products. All else in the meat and animal line I either avoid or eat only occasionally: beef, I never eat, milk and cheese almost never and lamb not a lot…because it hardly ever occurs to me to do so.

But I do see a place for locally procured, well farmed meat products and their derivatives like yogurt, butter, milk and ice-cream, if only because domesticated animals have gone through a very long and honourable process of evolution to make them safe for humans to eat. (Which compares them very favourably with the types of produce that are never intended to go near the human palate, including wild animals, primates and other sorts of unsavoury bush meat. The latest outbreak of norovirus is said to have originated in a market where wild animals were held for sale, probably for human consumption… Never a very clever idea at the best of times.)

So while I do not eat much meat, I do not condemn those who do. There is a place for meat eating. Instead of worrying about the habits of others, I aim to eat less meat, and purchase only a modest amount for my family – I suppose I’m what you might call a “meat reducer”. When I can, I try to buy from farmers or farmers’ markets since undoubtedly, meat does have a heavy environmental cost. But though we can source our complex proteins from other sources, I would regret the loss of bovines and birds from our food chain altogether.

Increasingly, instead of an embargo, I favour simply a more modest aspiration, hoping to leave a bit of space for those who come after, to enjoy some of the life privileges I’ve had. Too often “consumerism” justifies the total swallowing of resources which, if allowed to continue, will leave nothing for others who succeed us in life on this planet. And if, in order to allow future generations some hope, I have to temper my expectations, eating less meat is the least I can do.

Thanks for listening.

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Switch to an eco friendly energy supplier

At the suggestion of my sister, some years ago, I made the switch to an eco friendly energy supplier. (As an inducement, they promised her a free bottle of wine which never arrived. I like to think that they were inundated with requests and ran out of wine.) That was for 100% renewable electricity, and some years later I was prompted to sign up to the supplier’s dual energy supply which includes carbon-neutral gas.

My sister at the time was installing solar panels and taking advantage of energy exchange schemes through which electricity generated at her home would be fed back into the wider energy grid and reduce her bills. In light of her brave schemes, it seemed to me that signing up for eco electricity was the least I could contribute. I don’t have to go and generate my own electricity, after all.

The thing is, in among all the other things we have to pay for, the increase in energy costs is fairly easy to accommodate. And since we pay by direct debit monthly instead of by cheque quarterly in the old way, the expense is hardly noticed. I got a kick out of telling my previous supplier that no, I wasn’t looking for cheaper energy as I had signed up with an eco-supplier and was very happy to have done so. The chap on the phone didn’t seem to realise that threatening me – “you are making a big mistake, you’ll regret it” – I paraphrase – would hardly endear me to his company or to his company’s ethos.

I have tended to find that, the smaller I live my life – the more I try to scrimp and save on costs – the smaller my life becomes. Doing my bit by signing up for eco electricity and gas seems to be a small gesture in the right direction that might make a big difference. The larger utilities companies are now beginning to wake up to increased demand for eco fuel, and I have myself seen how change can be consumer led.

Thanks for listening.

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