What Makes Women Happy. Fay Weldon
get out of bed and see to it. Thus Mother Nature, that unseeing, unthinking, callous creature, ensures the continuation of the race.
Whether or not you have children, the capacity to feel guilt is there. Stronger in some than in others. Certainly stronger in women than in men.
She: ‘We need to get back, darling. The babysitter’s waiting up.’
He: ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. What do we pay her for?’
Guilt is society’s safeguard. If you don’t feel guilt at all they declare you’re a psychopath and lock you up, and quite right too.
Let me add to that – just to counter the effect of so much Darwinian reductionism, which is true enough but there are other truths as well, namely that we have a spiritual life – that guilt is the soul’s safeguard. And if the soul is safeguarded, we start from a higher level of life content than we would otherwise do. If you are good – abstain from bitchiness, doing others down, malice and complaint – people like you. If you are liked, you tend to have a good life.
Be good and you’ll be happy. Be happy and you’ll be good and go to heaven.
As a corollary, if you don’t respond to the promptings of guilt, you might very well go to hell – in other words, fall into a depression, get ill and end up with no friends.
The Value of Guilt
You could see the ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ which litter our lives as a nuisance, as contrary to our own self-interest. So our partner suffers because we were unfaithful, so our mother is lonely and upset because we didn’t visit, so our children weep uncomforted. So who cares? ‘I really deserve a holiday. I deserve it because I’m me.’ Stuff and nonsense.
‘Now at last,’ says the new-style granny, abstaining from babysitting, spending the children’s inheritance, ‘I’m going to do something for myself.’
You won’t enjoy it, you know. You will feel guilty and selfish every minute of your sun-soaked, pampered holiday, and so you should.
Therapists may well try and iron the emotion of guilt out of us, and some do, seeing it as ‘negative’. By which they mean it’s uncomfortable, painful and inconvenient, and aren’t we trying to achieve happiness here? ‘Look to your own skin,’ they advise. ‘Do what you want.’
Alexander Crowley, black magician, rapist and philosopher of Edwardian times, self-styled Beast no. 666, had this as his philosophy: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. It was an attitude seen as very shocking at the time, even satanic. If it doesn’t sound all that unreasonable now it may be our loss as, seeking validation for our bad actions, we virtuously pursue the ‘authenticity of our feelings’ (‘I have to leave you and the kids because I’m in love’) and decide we deserve every good thing, in the words of the shampoo ad, because we’re worth it.
Self-esteem can go too far – a little low self-esteem might not come amiss as we consider our faults and failures. On our deathbeds the memory of the authenticity of our feelings might not seem as important as the love and company of our friends and relatives.
There is a truly simple answer to the pains of guilt: If you feel bad about it, don’t do it.
Now there’s an old-fashioned doctrine. Step by step, little by little, do what you should, not what you want.
Conscience is to the soul as pain is to the body. It keeps you out of harm’s way.
Doing Bad and Feeling Worse
There are little everyday acts of meanness, little evils which are under our control, little tactlessnesses meant to hurt, which contribute to our own unhappiness. For hidden somewhere within us is the fear of retaliation. ‘If I do this, you might do that.’ You get wary and untrusting. Meanness shows – it’s bad for the complexion, gives you a dull skin, wrinkles and squinty eyes. You end up, in fact, with the face you deserve.
And then there are the great big destructive acts, like bringing your family toppling down like a house of cards. It’s quite easy to do and you will always find allies.
Daughter: ‘You were a terrible mother. That’s why I’m such a mess. My therapist says so. I hate you. I’m not letting you see your grandchildren any more – you’re such a monster you might do the same to them as you did to me.’
Mother: ‘But I did the best I could. You are the meaning of my life. I love you the way you love your own children.’
Daughter: ‘Daddy, you must have abused me when I was a little girl. My therapist says there’s no other explanation for my feelings of hostility and depression.’
Father: ‘Perhaps you were just born that way. Perhaps you should go to church and not a therapist. Meanwhile, thanks a million for breaking up the family. I’m off.’
One day you come to your senses and wonder what it was all about, and you can remember everything, but there’s no one to tell, no family shoulders left to cry on, and your own children don’t seem to seek your company.
Conclusion
There are some truly bad therapists out
there as well as some very good ones.
Proud, Defiant and Unhappy
You can take the proud and defiant path through life, of course. Some do and get away with it. You can decide you have problems because you let yourself be trampled on and go to assertiveness classes.
It has never seemed to me, however, that assertiveness classes have done anyone any good. My friend Valerie went to one, complaining that other people walked all over her. My own feeling was that she was the one who normally did the trampling, while worrying about her self-esteem and tendency to self-effacement. When she returned after her two-week course she bullied more, smiled less and her self-esteem was sky-high. It’s true she got a rise, but she lost her boyfriend. Justice was on her side, but life wasn’t.
The fewer the mini-nastinesses we do – and we all do them – the better able we will be to deal with the real, great, imponderable areas of unhappiness when they come along. Which they do, unasked, in everyone’s life.
Moral
If you haven’t anything nice to say, don’t
say anything at all. Smile though you want to spit. When in doubt, do nothing.
This flies in the face of contemporary wisdom, I know. Valerie was told to give voice to her anger (or she’d get cancer), speak emotional truths (it was only fair to herself), claim the authenticity of her feelings (‘I feel, therefore I’m right’) never fake orgasm (it’s a lie, an indignity) and in general claim her rights and seek justice in the home and at work. Above all she must never be persuaded into making the office coffee, because she was worth more than that.
Valerie sounded off at her boss when he said it would be nice to have a cup of coffee, and he said that was the last straw, he was tired of being bullied, and he fired her. She told her mother she’d rather she didn’t phone the office because of her Birmingham accent and her mother spent her savings – those that hadn’t gone on Valerie’s expensive education – on a little cottage in France and wouldn’t be there to babysit when she was needed – not that there was much question of babies any more, since Valerie was 41 and her boyfriend got so nervous in the end about not ‘giving’ her an orgasm (which didn’t seem in his power to give anyway) that the sex dried up altogether