Megan Nicol Reed: What you've missed in the pursuit of happiness

Is it possible to ever be light of heart? Photo / Getty Images

There's this shop. I don't really need anything from this shop, in fact I don't even particularly like what there is to buy in this shop, but I find myself popping in on the flimsiest of pretexts. Why? It's been puzzling me. The other day the penny dropped. It is the woman who works there. So sweet and warm. And funny. So funny. Around her, you cannot help but feel glad to be alive.

I've spent my life brooding. Given how much capacity the world holds for pain, a constant state of low-level fretfulness has always seemed to me the only sane response. As though by worrying about every terrible thing that could happen I might somehow pre-empt any terrible thing from ever happening. But her sunniness makes me question this. Could I ever be as light of heart?

After hearing the remarkable Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard speak recently I have been reading more of his work. Knausgaard's ex-wife suffered from a most monstrous depression. In his book Spring he details her mood when she was pregnant with their youngest child. How as the depression descended she renounced first movement and then speech, until bed was the only place she could be, although even there, she found no respite. "What merely a few weeks ago had seemed beautiful to her, was no longer beautiful, it was nothing. What merely a few weeks ago had felt good to her, was no longer good, it was nothing. This was so because the beautiful and the good gain meaning through connection, through exchange, through what stands between ourselves and the world … It is through resonance that we connect to the world, and that is what happened to your mother, the world no longer resonated within her."

Reading about the utter desolation of his ex-wife's spirit, about how night can fall so abruptly upon a mind, has given me perspective on my own tendency to downheartedness. Knausgaard occupies himself hugely with the commonplace; whole essays on the wonder of apples or gumboots or teeth. By writing so attentively and extensively about a trip to the bank, he gives meaning to mundanity. I've always believed if only I could just get on top of things, could silence the inner noise, all the mental notes and the guilt and the analysis, the bloody analysis of everything, then I'd be contented. But, writes, Knausgaard: "Life clatters within the living, with all their mentalities and psychologies, and when they die and the clatter within them subsides, it continues in their children, and one comes to understand that the clatter was the main thing, the clatter was the point, the clatter was life."

I should like to ask the woman who works in that shop whether this is the secret to her good cheer, that it is not a matter of being immune to the woes of existence, or, as I have sometimes cruelly suspected of the perennially jolly, a paucity of depth, but, rather, that she gets it. She gets that life resides in the squeaks and the snarls. And that true gladness lies in accepting this.

*On a practical note, last autumn it dawned upon me that when winter closes in, so does my frame of mind. Anyway, somewhere, I can't recall where now, I stumbled across a suggestion that as the number of daylight hours diminishes it can be helpful to take vitamin D. And I resolved as soon as daylight saving ended I would begin a course. So far, so good! I'm no doctor but, if, like me, you're inclined to melancholy, it might be worth considering.

Following on

Talk of dinner parties had Judy reminiscing. "My mother, who was born in 1898, always entertained simply. She often had overseas guests to feed owing to my father's work. Well-cut roast beef (sirloin with the eye fillet left in, which is impossible to buy now), followed by apple shortcake made with a light, thin, non-stodgy shortcake, masses of apple and a good dollop of cream always went down well, winning comments from the guests on how they always looked forward to dining at our place. Over the years I have tried all sorts of recipes and ideas for such evenings. However, the most successful dinners are the ones where I feed the guests roast beef followed by apple shortcake. I thank my mother every time, as the simplicity of the meal creates a relaxed evening for all, cook included!"