Are we spoiled brats?

The other morning I had one of those moments when I get out of my own head for a minute and really see my life with some clarity. Nothing earth-shattering happened, but I was driving home after dropping my middle one at preschool and the baby was laughing at his own hand in the back seat, looking adorable in his little polo shirt and khakis. I myself was looking way better than usual for a workday wearing a skirt and cute sandals instead of my usual mom uniform and while my hair wasn’t done (or really all that clean) I had managed to pull it back and blow out my bangs instead of jamming a baseball hat on my head. The sun was shining and Feist’s, 1234, came on the radio and DAMN! if I wasn’t in a good mood.

These are the moments I think to myself, “My GOD! Just shut the hell up already. Look at your life! You’re married to a guy you love and have three great kids. You’re house isn’t a cardboard box and you can fed everyone. Everyone’s healthy and reasonably happy. What the hell are you always whining about?”

Then I started to think, how happy, exactly, do we think we’re entitled to be? That moment of joy I was feeling was fantastic and really colored the rest of my day, but I know I can’t always feel like that. I wonder if that’s what some people expect out of life and if the society we live in doesn't foster that delusion. The covers of women’s magazines encouraging us to “Live Your Happiest Life!” , TV shows feature young, beautiful people doing exciting things and commercials use the promise of happiness to hawk cola and get us to eat at bad Italian chain restaurants. Life seems vibrant, fun, just plain happy, when looking at it through the media’s eyes so our own lives seem drab and dull in comparison. We think we aren’t happy if we’re not bursting with joy every minute.

From a purely biological standpoint, our sole purpose on the planet is not to be happy. It’s to survive long enough to reproduce (guess I can retire now having done it three times – shuffleboard and wine at two o’clock every day for me!). We are so spoiled now with our abundant food and service-driven lives we forget two hundred and fifty years ago people spent their entire day working to literally put food on the table. These people were happy if they had enough to eat and no one had scarlet fever. There isn’t too much time for navel gazing when you have to harvest and entire field of corn before the frost gets it.

Of course tomorrow when the baby takes too short a nap or my girls are fighting over one of the four hundred Polly Pockets they have I’m sure I’ll have a moment saying to myself, “This freaking sucks.” But I will try to imagine Caroline Ingalls* looking at me standing in my kitchen with running water, fridge stocked with over-priced produce from every corner of the globe, clothes tumbling happily away in the dryer telling me,”Yeah, you have it rough. Seriously? Go fuck yourself.”

*If you haven’t seen Little House on the Prairie you must have been living under a rock in the eighties. Love you, Ma! (Hate you, Nelly.)