Reasons to be cheerful

Theodore Dalrymple

13 December 2003

Theodore Dalrymple on the joy of seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary — in gooseberries, for example, even in human beings

In my line of work, it is rather hard to think of reasons to be cheerful. On the contrary, it requires quite a lot of concentrated intellectual effort: one has the sensation of scraping the bottom of one’s skull for thoughts that just aren’t there. Of course, since lamentation about the state of the world is one of life’s unfailing pleasures, the world is a greater source of satisfaction than ever. Another consolation is that most people are not nearly as miserable as they ought to be, or would be if they saw their own lives in a clear light. I meet more than 1,000 people a year who have tried to do away with themselves, and the wonder is not that they should be so many but that they should be so few. Reasons to be cheerful? Is that reasons for me to be cheerful, or reasons for one, that is to say for humanity in general, to be cheerful?

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Marijke Boucherie

August 17th, 2008 10:30am Report this comment

Thank you for your beautiful text, especially the sentence: "All in all, my life is a rich one, and it is rich because the world is so much richer than my life can ever be". MB

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