Ticking the happiness boxes

I remember when I was growing up I used to spend a lot of time with a family around the corner.

In this family there were four kids – three boys and one girl. The dad was a plumber who lived permanently in a pair of King Gees and a blue singlet. The mum was always at home or at the RSL with her husband. The house was a chaos of clothes in piles and there was stuff just lying around everywhere. The backyard was a homage to a clutch of working-class hobbies – greyhounds, pigeons and off-road motorbikes, with the ubiquitous Hills Hoist centrally positioned.

I used to spend more time around there that at my own, very sterile apartment. My mother was always studying at university, or when home, writing an essay. My brother was five years older and was out doing his own things. My dad was a cop and when he wasn’t at work he was out playing various sports or drinking with his mates. So this gave me plenty of time to be around the corner and not at home.

I did all sorts of stuff with this family – prawning at Abbotsford (in Sydney harbour for god’s sake), fishing at the Cook’s River (even worse), cricket, footy, speedway and I even used to go on holidays up to Forster with them, where they had a fibro coastal classic.

My memories are old and my young awareness may have been limited, but I strongly recall this lot being extremely happy. They didn’t have a lot of goods by today’s standards but they had enough and very little interest in matters outside their immediate daily experiences. Notably, everyone in this family always did things together – they didn’t sneak off to their own corners like my mob.

I cannot think of a single family I have met since which has even a semblance of their inherent happiness. In fact, the contrast to the modern families that I know is remarkable. I would say the families I know now are anti-happy; not necessarily unhappy, but a sort neutered neutrality on the subject of enjoyment. They are just grinding it out whilst trying to tick all the boxes, the ones that the global marketing machine assures them brings universal happiness if all ticked.