To live a happier life be more ostrich-like

Advance medical tests sully happiness today with distant misery, writes Melanie Reid

- Melanie Reid

Thanks to the ruthlessness of algorithms, my online life is peppered with invitations to attend memory clinics. Such advertising feels predatory, designed above all to appeal to the worried well. I've never understood why anyone would seek early diagnosis of a disease without a cure, with nothing to gain but years of miserable anticipation.

But this is the golden age of monetised human anxiety. There’s something wrong with everyone, they just haven't discovered it yet. Diagnosis is what matters; medicalisation of frailties is compulsory; and, given present demographics, dementia is chief bogeyman, huffing and puffing at our door as we try to sleep.

I can think of nothing, frankly, more ghastly than foresight of darkness. Nope, head in the sand every time. Such an attitude isn’t therapeutic nihilism; rather, it’s a rational way of leading a happy life.