Why weÕre genetically predisposed to feeling down in the mouth

Date Published: {J}

IN many ways, recession and our current economic crisis should suit us, because Irish people are never as contented as when they are deeply unhappy – and conversely the things that make other nations happy only seem to add to our woes.

Think of the weather for example – we complain about the rain and wind through the eleven months of the year, as though it was our national pasttime. And then when the sunshine comes, we go beetroot red, irritable and unable to walk more than a hundred yards as we secretly long for the return of a drop of rain.

We give out about the price of the pint and then drink more of it by way of protest; we drive miles out of our way to buy petrol that’s half a cent cheaper, never calculating the cost of getting to the cheaper pump in the first place.

We fly to exotic places with wonderful, organic ethinc food and stirring local brews to sate our every appetite – and then we complain that you couldn’t get a fry or a decent pint of Guinness anywhere....not even in Dicey O’Reilly’s original Irish bar in downtown Mogadishu.

More to the point in the current climate, when the economy is going down the toilet and we’re all in debt to the point that our grandchildren would be lucky to make inroads into it, we should be taking to the streets in anger at a predicament that was not of our making.

Maybe it will still happen when they put a tax on the houses they’ve already made a fortune on through stamp duty, but there’s nothing in our past to suggest we’re ready to march on the Dail in unison.

Instead we get upset to the point of apoplexy because a Government Minister has a good car or the Cabinet meets in Farmleigh. And for the rest of the year we give out that nobody uses Farmleigh at all, despite all we spent on it.

If we get a bad meal in a restaurant, we tell the waiter that everything was fine when it wasn’t and then we do two things – we bitch about the place to everyone we know and we never go back.

So we have a confused and confusing attitide to life; we seem lifted by depression and unhappy when everything in going swimmingly.To emphasise the point, if you ask the ordinary man or woman in the street how they are, the response is likely to be one of quiet resignation topped off with the old Irish attitude – sure it could be worse.

These days, a simple ‘how are you’ can lead to a twenty minute diatribe – and at the end of it, you’re still not sure whether the question has been answered in the positive or the negative.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.