Why do people insist on leading such terrible lives? Why do they choose misery when contentment is so easily within their grasp? Why is complete disaster so attractive, and modest success so repellent? This, surely, is the question that any unprejudiced observer of British life must ask himself.
Personally, I think that soap operas have a lot to answer for. As is well known, each episode ends with a crisis, and since an episode lasts only 30 minutes, the impression is given that an interesting life, that is to say one worthy of portrayal on the little screen, must be nothing but a succession of sordid crises.
I don’t propose this as the whole answer to the puzzle, of course. But the desire to avoid boredom is one of man’s distinguishing features, which I am sure explains a lot of wars. Think of the tedium of life in the interior of Borneo or in the valleys of New Guinea without tribal conflict, head-shrinking, cannibalism, etc. The same applies, a fortiori, to the desolate cities and towns of Britain. How dull life would be without domestics: assaults, not servants, I mean.
Last week a patient of mine — who was suffering from, or at least complaining about, the kind of trivial physical symptoms that usually mean a life without purpose — described his life to me. He had been married for 15 years, and worked on an assembly line. It did sound pretty dull, and I told him so.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s what all my friends say.’
‘Do they suggest anything?’
‘Yes, they tell me to enjoy myself and get a couple of girlfriends.’
The interesting question is why they recommended two, not one, girlfriends or mistresses. The answer, I think, is that while many men can manage to lead undetected a double life, sometimes for many years, none can lead a triple life, and so a couple of girlfriends guarantee that scenes, recriminations, tantrums, overdoses and so forth — all the dramatic incidents that persuade the bored that they are actually living — will take place. Strong emotion, or at least an outward display of strong emotion, is what people desire above all.
My next patient had likewise chosen the emotionally torrid zone. She and her husband both liked a drink, as she put it, a fondness that included consuming it for breakfast. Their common-law marriage had been what she called ‘an on-off affair’, which for some reason brought to my mind the Belisha beacons of my youth. When finally she is murdered, the newspapers will describe the couple (if they describe them at all) as having had a ‘tempestuous relationship’.
The latest squall in the relationship occurred when she went out to the pub to watch men stripping. Reports got back to her beloved that she had touched one of the strippers, and though the very model of infidelity himself, he was furiously jealous.
‘What did he do?’ I asked.
‘He ran a bath, pulled me into it by my hair and tried to drown me.’
Tried? Why didn’t he succeed?
‘His friend came round and pulled me out.’
‘Did you call the police?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘How can you call the police on someone you care for?’
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