I
am writing this on my Macbook Pro. It is a fabulous piece of kit. I use it
every day for lots of different tasks and for three years it has, to use
Apple’s own strap line, ‘just worked’.
The
same applies to my car. A cheap Skoda Octavia. In ten years it has never broken
down. The air conditioning unit has gone, but that’s my own fault for not
servicing it properly.
In
so many aspects of contemporary life things exist that make getting stuff done
easier than ever before and yet I don’t know anyone who isn’t carting around
with them a huge and often unspoken sense of disappointment with modern life.
There is undoubtedly a certain aura of miserablism about the place.
From
university students to the oldest and most experienced people I know, they all
feel that their life is just a little less enjoyable than it should have been.
Given
all the technical gadgets, scientific progress and the political advances which
have clearly benefitted our times, why aren’t we all gliding through this life
permanently gurning with the sheer cheer that this moment has bestowed upon us?
Because,
it’s actually about the little things.
Almost
every aspect of our personal lives have been interfered with by those who know,
with an unnerving surety, exactly what we need to do, say, think and believe at
any time and in any place, including within the walls of our own homes.
Of
course we know that it is best for us if we don’t smoke tobacco, but to be told
that you can never again have a cigarette and a pint in a pub after work makes
life a little less enjoyable for everyone, not just the smoker. The atmosphere,
the social element, the general bonhomie of a busy, convivial and conversation
filled pub is removed and the place becomes a polite, clean and generally
pleasant environment and so, in a wonderful exhibition of counter-intuitivity,
many of us now choose not to "have a quick one" before heading home,
but instead to trudge off early, feeling healthier and smelling fresher, but
without the great story to tell or the new friendship to recall.
It
is, after all, the little things.
And
so it goes on, everywhere you turn; rules, interferences, policies………why are
you forced to drive at 50mph on the M56 at 3am? There is nobody on the M56 at
3am. These non statutory, made up and utterly pointless ‘ad hoc’ speed limits
have appeared across the UK Motorway network over recent years and are another
example of our lives being surreptitiously governed by those we do not know, but
who clearly believe that they know what is best for us.
It
is the little things.
And these
little things are making our lives a little more miserable than they need to be.
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