Twas was the week before Christmas

As a nation, we are more affluent than ever. Yet, strangely, we only seem to be getting gloomier and more pessimistic.

It was the week before Christmas. I should have been happy. The people around me should have been happy. We were safe, we had enough to eat and drink, homes to go to.  More than this – we were affluent, we were on holiday.  We were in the middle of a cycle of feasting and partying. In a few days’ time, we would eat a meal that had taken several days to prepare, and toast each other with fancy drinks.

I was walking through a shopping mall. Everybody around me was doing the same thing – buying gifts for their friends, their family. I can’t remember when, exactly, but at a certain point I had a thought I’ve had about a million times already. None of this is making us happy.

People were standing outside shops, laden down with heavy bags, and they were snapping at each other. Or they waited in queues, restless and tormented, barking instructions into their mobile phones.

I was looking for gifts for myself. I felt pressed. I had the sense that all of us, all the shoppers, were trawling a huge Aladdin’s cave for something it could not provide. We were looking for something that was not available. I noticed the way people were searching : there was something familiar about it. Then I realised we were rushing around with the anxiety of people who have lost something.  Were was it?  Were was the thing we were looking for? We were hurried, harried, self-blaming, desperate. And it occurred to me that, in the past few days, several people had asked me the same thing: “How is it going?” They were asking about shopping.

We would look at each other, and shrug. The talk was of struggle, of hours put in, unexpected lucky breaks and reverses. There was a sharp sense of competition, of winning and losing.  Here we were, affluent people involved in leisure activities, taking time out to be kind to each other. But it did not feel good. It didn’t feel like leisure. What was it like, exactly? It was like work. We were buying hard, in the same way that, days earlier, we would be working hard in order to achieve an acceptable level of buying. Something was getting out of control.

Walking through the mall, picking up and discarding objects, I began to think about the way we live now. Christmas was an intense expression of it, certainly, but it happened all year round. I thought about the thing we were looking for, the thing we couldn’t find. What, exactly was it?

Would it be trite to say that what we’ve lost is our ability to be happy? Perhaps it would. But here’s something I’ve learned a lot lately: as a society, we are getting sadder.  According to a recent poll, conducted by YouGov, only 11 per cent of us think Britain will be a better place in five years’ time. On the other hand, 53 per cent think it will be worse. And: less than a quarter of us are optimistic about Britain’s prospects in 2012; 58 per cent say they are not. And: just 7 per cent thought last year was a good one, as far as the country is concerned; in contrast 55 per cent thought it was a bad one. The headline of one newspaper report about the poll was ‘Britain in Gloom’.

Things do not look good for the future of happiness. We have a free market, we promote the idea that economic growth is good, but wealth makes you happy, that possessions free you.  And this system is infections – it makes people feel depressed, and competitive, and bitter, and depressed. People aren’t quite so depressed in countries such as China, because they are at the start of the cycle – the honeymoon period. It’s just like the honeymoon period of an addiction. You do something because it feels good; you don’t realise that, pretty soon, you’ll be doing it because it feels intolerable not to do it. No, things do not look good.

The system is out of control. According to survey data, people would rather be richer than their neighbours. Happiness, they feel, is not linked to actual wealth, but to the feeling of being superior. When it comes to leisure, though, people are not rivalrous. There is thus a tendency to sacrifice too much leisure to increase income.

Which is partly why the system is out of control. We’re working like maniacs to compete with each other, and it’s not working. We want too much; the economy depends on it.  We should want less. A folktale tells us about an unhappy man who doesn’t’ have enough to eat or drink. Also, his tiny house is too crowded. He goes for advice to the village elder, who tells him to take a goat into his house for a week, and come back in 10 days. The man, of course, is overjoyed by this time: the goat has gone. The answer: want less.

But that’s not likely, is it, on a global scale?  As far as happiness goes, things will have to get a lot worse before they get better.

These were the things I was thinking in the shopping mall. It was the week before Christmas. I should have been happy. The people around me should have been happy. We were safe, we had enough to eat and drink, homes to go to. More than this. We were affluent. And we were on holiday.

William Montgomery is a regular contributor to television and radio on all aspects of leadership excellence. To find out how he can help you and your business, please call his office on +44 333 666 1010.