I often joke that I have spent my entire adult life teaching happiness through literature — while simultaneously collecting anxieties like stamps. Somewhere between Shakespeare’s sonnets and Woolf’s waves, I misplaced my peace and picked up panic. Now, on the other side of sixty (a decade that sounds suspiciously like a steep cliff), I find myself thinking deeply about Matt Haig’s wise words: “The world is increasingly designed to depress us.” Oh Matt, tell me something I don’t know.

​

I didn’t always feel this way. I grew up in an era when a single orange was enough to make a child beam like Wordsworth spotting his golden daffodils. Today, children have iPhones glued to their palms—like Macbeth’s dagger: “Is this a phone which I see before me?” Their happiness hinges upon 5G, gigabytes, and grandiose gadgets. (Great grief!) Meanwhile, happiness for me once meant a lazy Sunday, tea brewed to perfection, and the mushy scent of paper as I pressed my nose inside the pages of Dickens. Now, my phone pings like a panicky pigeon every three minutes—reminding me that someone else’s life is prettier, perkier, and posted. The economy, dear friends, thrives on my insecurities.I scroll, I sigh, I succumb.

 

Society, that sly salesman, keeps whispering in my ear:
“You are a professor, yes… but are you a fashionable professor?”

“Your hair is greying — try this magic dye: Black Beauty!”

“Your skin is wrinkling — apply this cream to rewind time!”

“Your bones creak — have calcium, collagen, cryptic concoctions!”

I used to think clothes maketh man — Shakespeare.

Now I believe marketing breaketh humans — Me.

​

The refrigerator, too, has joined this conspiracy. It sulks and stares if not stuffed with superfoods: blueberries, avocados, and almond milk — the holy trinity of Instagram wellness. Gone are the glorious days when a simple roti-sabzi brought bliss. Today’s happiness must be organic, gluten-free, vegan… and valiantly overpriced.

 

Happiness isn’t good for the economy, they claim.

And truly, contentment doesn’t swipe credit cards.

​

Last week, my students caught me chuckling at my own reflection.

“Ma’am, you look so happy!”

I wanted to reply, “Just practicing for capitalism.”

But instead, like any dignified English professor, I quoted,
“To smile, or not to smile — that is the question.”

Deep down though, I was thinking about the absurdity of it all — how my anti-aging moisturizer costs more than my first teaching salary. How advertisements assure me I can look like Juliet… forgetting Juliet died at fourteen.

At sixty, I don’t want to look younger. I just want my knees to stop narrating horror stories every time I climb stairs. Even my mirror has developed a personality. Some days, it flatters like Keats — “beauty, truth, truth beauty…” Other days it mocks like Oscar Wilde — “I can resist everything except your wrinkles.”

But I’ve grown witty in my sixties.

I wink at my reflection and say,

“At least, darling, I earned every line on this face —

like footnotes on a thesis of survival.”

​

My bookshelf is my real bank.

Jane Austen still teaches me sarcasm is a sport.

Virginia Woolf urges me to keep my room — and sanity — of my own.

Maya Angelou reminds me that still, like dust (and dandruff), I rise.

Oliver Goldsmith tells me that innocence can still laugh at pomp.

Happiness, I realise, hides in hardcover jackets.

And yet, society begs me to buy happiness in shopping bags.

What a tragicomedy!

​

Recently, a young colleague suggested,

“Ma’am, you must reinvent yourself! Stay relevant!”
Ah yes — the modern monster: Relevance.
Even happiness needs to trend.

​

So, I downloaded a meditation app. A calm voice commanded: “Breathe in positivity.”
I obeyed. “Breathe out negativity.” I obliged.

Then it said:

“Subscribe now for Inner Peace Premium — 499 per month.” I shut the app and laughed so loudly that Emily Dickinson’s portrait nearly fell off the wall. Inner Peace is also a product now. Retail therapy is our religion. And misery — magnificent misery — is the market’s most successful salesman. If we were happy with what we had, Why would we need more?

The truth?

I am happy — gloriously, generously, giggling-ly happy —
on days when I water my plants, when I watch the sunset paint poetry across the sky,
when a student writes a line so luminous it lights up my wrinkles from within.
Happiness is not loud. It doesn’t scream “SALE!” It quietly sits beside youlike a wise
grandmother in a rocking chair, knitting calm into your chaotic days.

So, here I am, a woman in her early sixties —

less FOMO, more JOMO: Joy Of Missing Out. I leave the economy disappointed and choose the priceless pleasure of being content.

I will continue to buy books — not Botox. I will collect laughter lines — not luxury labels.

I will keep my life imperfect — and incredibly mine. And if the world insists on designing depression,

I, stubborn professor that I am, will rewrite the syllabus: Chapter One: Happiness is homemade. No expensive subscription
required.

Let wrinkles write wisdom

on faces unafraid;
Let laughter linger longer than

glamour ever stayed.
For joy, gently gathered,

in ordinary hours—
Is far richer than riches,
more fragrant than flowers.