Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.
Interpretation
Happiness is often overlooked in storytelling, which tends to focus more on struggles and challenges.
In this quote, Lionel Shriver suggests that happiness, while not boring, is less compelling as a narrative compared to life's challenges. As people grow older, they feel compelled to share and reflect on their own experiences, often emphasizing the more dramatic or difficult moments over the quieter joys.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of sharing meaningful life stories.
Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.
For pity's sake, if you don't take a shine to a novel, there are loads more in the world; read something else. Continue suffering, and it's not the author's fault. It's yours.
In my country, we're sufficiently consumed by the concept of happiness that the right to its pursuit is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But what is happiness?
You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.
In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.
Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.
Sexiness is a state of mind - a comfortable state of being. It's about loving yourself in your most unlovable moments.
Exploiting yourself sexually is not a good look. I don't find it encouraging...I just stand there and sing. I'm not worried that I'm a 'plus size' and so much bigger than other artists. No matter what you look like the key is to be happy with yourself.
There was a time in my life when I thought I had everything - millions of dollars, mansions, cars, nice clothes, beautiful women, and every other materialistic thing you can imagine. Now I struggle for peace.
Things which provide deep and lasting happiness and gratitude are the things which money cannot buy: our families, the gospel, good friends, our health, our abilities, the love we receive from those around us.
She decides to make a list of the things that make her happy. She writes 'plum-blossom' at the top of a piece of paper. Then she stares at the paper, unable to think of anything else. Eventually it begins to get dark.
Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment.
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