Tuesday 22 February 2011

Happily Married or Married Happily?

Here's something I read recently that reinforces what I believe in, a constant theme of this blog - only you can make you happy.

Over the past three decades, psychologists have conducted research to find the factors that determine happiness. After tracking people over many years, they discovered that lots of happy people were in long-term relationships.

Therefore, they concluded, long-term relationships make you happy. Indeed, some of the researchers even went so far as to say that marriage makes you happy. However, as the years went by and they analysed more data, they discovered that this wasn’t quite correct.

It wasn’t being in a long-term relationship, or being married, that made you happy. In fact, people who were happy attracted long-term relationships into their life. So it was not relationships that were making them happy — it was that happy people were making long-­lasting relationships.

This finding was reinforced by a major study which ran over 16 years and showed that people who were happiest in their relationships were also happy before they’d even met their partners.

The consequence of all this research is very clear: being happy with yourself is the best preparation for a happy long-term relationship.

I'm so glad I decided to be happy a few years ago - a long term relationship followed pretty soon. Last month we completed four years of being married happily! :)

 

I or Me

English grammar has never been my favorite subject. Even today I am not very clear on the use of “I” or “me” in a sentence. I understand that "I" and "me" are both pronouns that we use to refer to ourselves. As Dr. Goodword puts it - occasionally we drive a long way down the wrong road, knowing we have made the bad turn, but press on, hoping we will somehow end up in the right place. That is what happened to me.


During a casual conversation with my friend, I happened to mention to him - “I and my brother take turns to look after my aged mother”. He corrected my English usage and told me that one should always mention the other person(s) first. I guess that this usage must have come out the logic of being polite and also respecting the other person. Due to this strong logical reasoning, I never repeated my mistake.


But let us look at some rule based grammar. The correct usage is - “It is I”, “That's he”, and “It's she", but sounds rather funny to me as we generally say - “It is me”, “That's him” and “It's her”.


I won a bet with one of my family members regarding the plural of fish. He said it is fishes and I maintained that it was fish. When we looked up the dictionary, we got the explanation - Fish is both singular and plural within a species. Fishes is the plural when you have more than one species.


I feel that the above rule based grammar will die soon.


For some strange reason, I took a liking for “Transferred epithets”. In a transferred epithet (also known as hypallage) the adjective or adverb is transferred from the noun it logically belongs with, to another one which fits it grammatically but not logically. The above explanation of is rather confusing.


But our English teacher taught us the meaning through two examples in prose and poetry. I cannot forget it till date.


"The plowman homeward plods his weary way, / And leaves the world to darkness and to me" (Grey, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"). The weariness of the farmer is transferred to the way.


The other example was through an essay of Charles Lamb – Dream Children: A Reverie. The author is a confirmed bachelor. Yet he dreams that he has a family and children. He suddenly wakes up and this is how the essay ends: " ------ and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side -- but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever”. The bachelor status of John L got transferred to the chair in which he was sitting.


Later popular authors like Wodehouse used TE liberally in his novels.


“As I sat in the bath tub, soaping a meditative foot and singing, ….." (P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit,) 

“I balanced a thoughtful lump of sugar on the teaspoon” (P.G. Wodehouse, Joy in the morning) 

Finally you may ask me “What is the most often used transferred epithet in our daily lives?” 

“Well, that’s a silly question”

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