Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

the angel would not actually join us under the stairs — only open the door and tell us it was time to come out. Our mansion in the sky was ready.
    Those elaborate interpretations of a post—apocalypse future occupied her mind. Sometimes she seemed happy, and played the piano, but unhappiness was always close by, and some other thought would cloud her mind so that she stopped playing, abruptly, and closed the lid, and walked up and down, up and down the back alley under the lines of strung washing, walking, walking as though she had lost something.
    She had lost something. It was a big something. She had lost/was losing life.
    We were matched in our lost and losing. I had lost the warm safe place, however chaotic, of the first person I loved. I had lost my name and my identity. Adopted children are dislodged. My mother felt that the whole of life was a grand dislodgement. We both wanted to go Home.
    Still, I was excited about the Apocalypse because Mrs Winterson made it exciting, but I secretly hoped that life would go on until I could be grown up and find out more about it.
    The one good thing about being shut in a coal—hole is that it prompts reflection.
    Read on its own that is an absurd sentence. But as I try and understand how life works — and why some people cope better than others with adversity — I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me—first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon—like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because this is your stream . . .
    Which brings me back to happiness, and a quick look at the word.
    Our primary meaning now is the feeling of pleasure and contentment; a buzz, a zestiness, the tummy upwards feel of good and right and relaxed and alive . . . you know . . .
    But earlier meanings build in the hap — in Middle English, that is ‘happ’, in Old English, ‘gehapp’ — the chance or fortune, good or bad, that falls to you. Hap is your lot in life, the hand you are given to play.
    How you meet your ‘hap’ will determine whether or not you can be ‘happy’.
    What the Americans, in their constitution, call ‘the right to the pursuit of happiness’ (please note, not'the right to happiness'), is the right to swim upstream, salmon—wise.
    Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the same as being happy — which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine.
    If the sun is shining, stand in it — yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass — they have to — because time passes.
    The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is lifelong, and it is not goal—centred.
    What you are pursuing is meaning — a meaningful life. There's the hap — the fate, the draw that is yours, and it isn't fixed, but changing the course of the stream, or dealing new cards, whatever metaphor you want to use — that's going to take a lot of energy. There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half—life on someone else's terms.
    The pursuit isn't all or nothing — it's all AND nothing. Like all Quest Stories.
    When I was born I became the visible corner of a folded map.
    The map has more than one route. More than one destination. The map that is the unfolding self is not exactly leading anywhere. The arrow that says YOU ARE HERE is your first coordinate. There is a lot that you can't change when you are a kid. But you can pack for the journey . . .

3
    In The Beginning Was The Word

My mother had taught me to read from the Book of Deuteronomy because it is full of animals (mostly unclean). Whenever we read ‘Thou shall not eat any beast that does not chew the cud or part the hoof she drew all the creatures mentioned. Horses, bunnies and little ducks were vague fabulous things, but I knew all about pelicans, rock badgers, sloths and bats ... My mother drew winged insects, and the birds of the air, but my favourite ones were the seabed ones, the molluscs. I had a fine collection from the beach at Blackpool. She had a blue pen for the waves and brown ink for the scaly—backed crab. Lobsters were red biro .. .Deuteronomy had its drawbacks; it is full of Abominations and Unmentionables. Whenever we read about a bastard, or someone with crushed