The Happy Depressive by Alastair Campbell

Author:Alastair Campbell [Campbell, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448134984
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Happy Depressive

For me happiness is not about moments – though they can build towards it – but about fulfilment over time. I think the pursuit of those things that many people may think make them happy in our consumer society - fame, money, alcohol, drugs, quick-hit relationships –are less likely to make people happy than give them a sense of elation, the endurance of which is all too elusive.

If you ask me if I am happy that I devoted a large part of my life to helping Labour get elected and then helping Tony Blair in government, I will say yes. If you ask me if I was happy all the time doing it, read the books; talk to Fiona and the kids, and understand why they think it is funny that I was asked to talk about happiness.

If fame was the answer, then you wouldn’t have the extraordinary situation where ‘real people’ often seem happier than the famous. I know plenty of both. The famous ones are, in general, more disgruntled than the not so well known who are likely to be more pressurised financially and in numerous other ways. How many stories do you read of the rich and their problems? Or lottery winners who regret the win? The reason for Professor Layard’s graph diversion is that we adapt to wealth quickly. We get a bigger salary, or a bigger house, a bigger car, a more expensive holiday; then we sit around saying how much fun we had when we were struggling. And for the really wealthy, there is never enough. As for drugs and alcohol and gambling and the other well-known areas of addiction, nobody can ever tell me that the addict finds happiness in a bottle, a needle or a punt.

So despite being grumpy, despite being a depressive who occasionally needs medication to deal with it, I am reasonably happy. That seems like a bit of a conundrum. It has also given me the title for this ebook, The Happy Depressive. I am both, and sometimes at the same time; because I am reasonably fulfilled, and the fulfilment has not been easy. That’s the other thing – to me, any sense of happiness requires a sense of fulfilment and any fulfilment, worthwhile fulfilment, requires struggle. It doesn’t come easy.

I know this is not a universal view. Fiona’s version of my mum’s ‘why can’t you just be content?’ is ‘why do you keep needing to do so much?’ A variation, which I hear when I wake up groaning because of aching joints from over-exercising, then grunts about how much I have to do in the day ahead is: ‘why do you keep torturing yourself?’ Her observation of my life patterns is that I decide to do something, throw myself into it, do it well, but then decide I need something else. ‘You’re never happy.’ That is not strictly true. I have moments, but the building of happiness through fulfilment is a long game.

So here is my theory of happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end.

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