Don't Be Grumpy – Be Happy

As we get older, it’s easy to whinge and scowl, says Lucy Deedes. Much better to avoid confrontation, smile and accept life’s little let-downs

- Lucy Deedes

When we were small children, the things that made us angry were predictable: the wrong jam on our toast; being teased; toys that wouldn’t work, however hard we bashed them; not being allowed to wear a ballet dress to church.

As we age, any of these can still be problematical, but there will be other Red Alert areas, around which our nearest and dearest learn to tread on eggshells, as with Mrs. Bennet and her nerves in Pride and Prejudice. We bemoan the things we can no longer buy (yes, you, Pentel 1.3 Italic pen) but we need to get over it and stop being grumpy.

A brief surge of anger at our own stupidity can be healthy and make us strive to do better, but a constant state of grumpiness is wearing, bad for our health and dangerously habit-forming. In P G Wodehouse’s Jill the Reckless, Wally urges Jill to ditch her frowning fiancé. ‘Scowling is the civilised man’s substitute for wife-beating,’ he tells her, not entirely altruistically. But he has a point – a state of simmering fury is, intentionally or not, intimidating.