No looking back

Ask any of the so-called lifestyle gurus that hang about posh restaurants and quaint coffee houses run by cheery white haired ladies who frequently provide them with biscuits ‘on the house’, and they will tell you that having a girlfriend (or boyfriend) is one of the greatest ways of increasing your happiness. Why else, they argue, would thousands of people go out night after night looking for someone? Why else, they purr softly over their mocha latte espresso coffee drink, would millions of people get married and have families, if such things did not bring happiness? Then said Guru’s would sit back in their comfy arm chairs and fold their arms in the universally recognised symbol of smug satisfaction, safe in the knowledge that they are right,

They are, of course, completely wrong.

Having a partner does not, by itself, make us happy. I mean think about it, if I am unhappy and I start going out with somebody then surely all that will happen is that I will end up dragging her down into my own despair before finally crushing what little spirit of hope and opportunity she had left inside her fragile body, before casting her aside and thus providing the world with one more unhappy person.

Times that by tens of thousands and you see the problem this county is facing. Until we are happy with ourselves, and by that I mean perfectly, unattainably happy we should never be allowed to get together with someone, and even then we should get together with someone just as happy as ourselves to avoid slippage.

Of course the problem I face is that whilst I have achieved complete happiness myself, I am fairly certain no woman has so far equalled my accomplishment. Such a fact has led me to wallow in singleness for 27 years now, a fact that has a high chance of ruining my supposedly perfectly happy existence. No matter how many happy attractive young women ask me out I am doomed to turn them down one by one, until a perfectly happy one comes along. You may wonder how I will know such an individual should she appear, to that I would simply laugh and point out that it is in asking such a question that it becomes clear how far behind you really are, but in a nice sympathetic way.

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I could see that my answer was not quite what the young woman who started talking to me in the dry cleaners was looking for when she asked if I was seeing somebody. In fact it probably didn’t help that I finished the above speech by standing atop of the tumble dryers, removing my shirt and shouting the words as loudly as I could.

I chased her for near on ten minutes before the bus hit me. I suppose I should be grateful that she didn’t look back and see me lying on the road, my legs bent at unnatural angles, but then again at times of such great loneliness sometimes all even the happiest of people need is a quick look back from a beautiful woman that isn’t filled with disgust or hate.

- Toby