I was creating happy times in my own mind. Create the happy times, create the happy times, create the happy times, I warbled away to myself. Everything was so happy. It was as if I’d gone to the shopping centre and bought myself a happy product. Buy the happy product, buy the happy product, buy the happy product, I chortled happily. I had a whole trolley full of happy; I was shopping away in the supermarket of my own mind. I decided after a while to create some good friends to have happy times with. They didn’t have to be real. I didn’t care a damn about reality, you see.

I didn’t care about reality, all I cared about was having a happy time in the special happy world that I had created in my mind. Make the happy thoughts, make the happy thoughts, make the happy thoughts, I chanted away to myself. I was a positive thinker, you see. Positive thoughts are good, positive thoughts are good, positive thoughts are good, I intoned in reverent tones, as smug as a bug in a rug. I was being profound, you see. It was as if I was buying the happy product in a special shop. It’s an important thing to be a positive thinker, I told myself. I’m doing the right thing here and so that’s good. That’s very good. It’s good that I’m doing the right thing.

I was saying the magical words to make the magical things happen. ‘Happen, you magical things, happen…’ I chanted. Making all the magical things happen only they weren’t really magical of course – it was only my mind doing it, as usual. My mind was the supermarket and it was all the products and it was also me shopping for the products. My mind was the product and it was selling the products to the product. We have to keep it in the family, after all. Buy the happy product, went the little advertising jingle, buy the happy product and you will have such a lovely happy day. Everyone else will wish that they could be happy just like you…

‘The happy thing is going to happen right now,’ I shouted, unable to contain my excitement any longer, ‘let’s all let out a big cheer for the happy thing!’ Everyone cheered enthusiastically. All my made up friends cheered. Everyone was keen to enter into the spirit of things; no one wanted to be a party pooper. No one likes a party pooper. How wonderful life can be, I said to myself, when the happy thing happens dead on cue and everyone starts cheering fit to burst. I realise that I’m having such a very happy time and that I’m feeling great. I take a moment or two to feel gratitude for all the good things that have happened to me. Yes, this is such a wonderful moment, I say solemnly, let’s take a moment or two to appreciate it. Everyone is silent.

I have to appreciate the very special gratitude moment I realise, I mustn’t let it slip away unnoticed. Let us all have a moment of appreciation for the gratitude moment, I say and everyone breaks out cheering again. They’re confused you see and somehow that spoils the mood. I’m annoyed and no matter how I try to recover that precious moment of solemn gratitude I can’t. Instead, everything takes on a sinister, mocking, echoey quality. When I speak the proper and appropriate words, the words that fit the occasion, they refuse to come out right – they come out sounding ominous and unpleasant as if they don’t actually mean what they’re supposed to mean. There’s an insolent, vile, jeering quality to them. I am trying my best to be grateful for the moment but it’s just not working out too well. I realise that the present moment is actually a device to torment me. It’s a device invented by the Devil.