“My favourite shows on tv have 12 minutes
of advertising. I can’t get behind
that kind of time!”
“I can’t understand why the price of gas
suddenly rises when oil goes up but takes months to go down long after oil
falls. I can’t get behind any of that!”
William Shatner and Henry Rollins on the very
grumpy song, “I can’t get behind that”
I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I am
entering the grumpiest time of life.
Having just passed my 35th birthday, I can confirm that I am
at least 10 per cent grumpier than before.
Why is cheese so expensive in Japan?
Are cows in Hokkaido given a daily massage and a personalised fitness regime? There’s just so much to be grumpy about!
Still, it’s not all doom and gloom for us
curmudgeons. How many times have you
heard that it is important to keep a positive attitude? How many times have you heard that stress
kills? Urban legend would have it
that viruses run away from a friendly smile.
Nonsense!
A massive study carried out by academics at
the University of New South Wales and Oxford University has found the
opposite. They studied nearly 1 million
women to investigate whether there was a link between being unhappy or stressed
and increased rates of death. The study tracked
700,000 women for 10 years, during which time 30,000 of them died. The women were asked to rate how happy or
stressed they felt. After adjusting for
lifestyle factors such as smoking, drinking, and levels of exercise, the study
showed that unhappy women and happy women died at the same rate.
Previous studies which had suggested that
there was a link between unhappiness and early death had been confusing cause
and effect. People who were unhappy or
stressed were more likely to smoke or engage in unhealthy behaviour. This could then kill them. Alternatively, people who were already ill or
dying were obviously more likely to be unhappy and stressed.
Smiling doesn’t keep away viruses after
all.
Hang on a
minute. This study only examined the
effects on women! Maybe grumpiness does
kill men after all. Damn! My grumpy wife will be moaning into
her nineties and I might choke to death on my grumpiness any day. It’s just another example of how the world is
so unfair!
I’m off to pour myself a drink and light a
cigar.
to get behind something – to support something
gas – In British English, we would say,
“petrol”; fuel which powers your car
a regime - a method of organising something
an urban legend – a common belief passed
from person to person, which is not based on science or proper research
to track something – to follow or check the
progress of something
to hang on – to pause or stop for a moment
to moan – to complain in a nagging way
to choke – to find it hard to breathe or to
suffocate
a cigar – something which is smoked, it is
larger than a cigarette and contains tobacco
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