‘The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.’
Plato
Rich, poor, married, single, disabled or healthy – does what you are make a difference to how happy you can be?
I asked Anthony Clare some important questions.
Why do some people talk of the war as the happiest time of their life?
Among those who fought in the Second World War there was a comradeship. People who might otherwise have found it difficult to socialise were thrown in together. They had no choice. And there was a shared philosophy, a common purpose. The basic fighting man felt he was doing something worthwhile. And those engaged in the war were testing themselves. That seems to be rather important. Happy people are rarely sitting around. They are usually involved in some ongoing interchange with life. Of course, we’re talking about people who survived the war, not those who were wounded or killed. And I’m not sure how many back home felt that way, other than those in the blitzed cities where again there was this comradeship.
During the deepest troubles in Northern Ireland, in the Shankhill and the Falls, while people might not have described themselves as happy, they certainly felt a bond, a sense of community. One of the things that was destroyed when the slums of Dublin were moved to the suburbs was that sense of comradeship, of being together. I don’t glory in the tenements of the thirties, Sean O’Casey’s tenements in the city here, but my God, they did produce a sense that people mattered to one another.
What about individual circumstances that are conducive to happiness? Is wealth important? Are the rich happier than the poor?
No, not necessarily. It has suited all sorts of people to equate material possessions with a state of happiness, because that keeps you pursuing them. But money and material things are a means to an end. I do not knock them. Often they free people. It is difficult in situations of struggle to be happy, but it doesn’t follow that in situations of plenty you will be happy.
So winning the lottery won’t make me happy?
Not of itself. Money is an enabler, but our society has got it horribly wrong and confuses the enabler with the end.
Is health important? Jung seemed to think it was.
It can be an important component, but not necessarily. You will find disabled people who describe themselves as happy, and people who have led terrible lives who, because of a philosophical view of life and of suffering, describe themselves as happy too.
Does appearance matter? Do good looks help?
Being reasonably attractive is a help. People come towards you, warm to you. But you can be too beautiful. Extremes are difficult for human beings to cope with. Marilyn Monroe wasn’t very happy.
What about family circumstances?
It may be relevant where you come in a family. There’s some evidence that first-borns, who get all the initial attention and love, are more contented, more confident. They may also be more conservative, less radical because they like the world as they see it. A second or third child is immediately in a more competitive and challenging situation, so there may be a tendency for first-borns to be happier.
This is now a politically incorrect thing to say, but, on the whole, it’s better to have two parents than one. This is not meant as an attack on single parents and, of course, we all know plenty of one-parent families that are successful and two-parent families that are a disaster, but as a general rule two-parent families are more conducive to happiness.
In essence, marriage is good for men; and can be, but is not necessarily, good for women. If you take the four categories – married men, single men, married women, single women – it does appear that married men are the happiest and single men are the unhappiest. With women it gets more complicated. For instance, married women with a poor level of education are unhappier than single women, but educated married women are relatively happy. Married men do badly when they’re bereaved, very badly. They either quickly remarry or they die. All women think their husbands will marry again. Women just don’t believe their men can function without the kinds of support that marriage can give them, and it seems they’re right. Women cope with bereavement far better. There’s no evidence of a higher mortality rate among women in the two or three years after bereavement, but there is with men.
Anthony Clare was married, with seven children. I am married, with three. Julian Fellowes, actor, scriptwriter and creator of Downton Abbey, is married, with one. I have known Julian, off and on, all my life. (He is the only Oscar-winner with whom I have shared a bath: we were both three at the time.) Julian says, ‘The best advice I ever received was from my mother: “If you want to be happily married, marry a happy person.” I am glad to say I took her at her word.’
To be happy, it seems, men need wives. I was struck by the opening paragraph from the Daily Telegraph obituary of Valerie Eliot, published on 12 November 2012: ‘Valerie Eliot, who has died aged 86, married the poet T S Eliot in 1957, when he was 68, and by sheer uncomplicated adoration achieved the miraculous feat of making him happy.’ Ah, so that’s how it’s done.
On the other hand, whether or not women need husbands is rather more debatable. This was the view of author, Dame Rebecca West: ‘There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that one sometimes needs help in moving the piano.’
When I met up with the ninety-year-old Quentin Crisp in New York he told me that he had come to the conclusion that, for happiness, the single life is best. ‘I had no opinions about cohabitation until the last four or five years,’ he explained, ‘but recently I have become a kind of mail-order guru, and people come to see me and tell me their problems. And all the problems concern the person they live with, so to be happy you have to live alone.’