The Importance of Being Earnest

I gaze at my neighbour's toddler, standing before me, fixing me with his clear blue eyes. He delivers a long, complicated sentence about how his mummy is going to feed him his lunch and then he will have some quiet time. There isn't a flicker of a smile; this is a terribly serious business.
'How earnest he is!' I exclaim.
'Wide-eyed,' corrects his mother.
'Oh, right, wide-eyed,' I say, instantly abashed at my apparently incorrect description of this super-chic kid.
And yet, as I stumble along the road, un-ironed shirt rippling in the wind, I muse on this little exchange. Is there something wrong with being earnest?
Only the other day, I came in from hanging out the washing and chatting to the teenager who lives across the fence. 'Ah, Kirsty,' said Tom with a laugh, 'you like that girl, don't you? She reminds you of yourself at that age.'
I stopped in my tracks. Was that true?
'I mean,' continued Tom, 'she's so sincere about everything – her studies, her hobbies – just like you were!' Tom raised his eyebrows as if this were the most embarrassing predicament known to man.
'What's wrong with being sincere?' I protest, images of the seventeen-year-old me running through my mind – the intense look out of those dowdy specs. But no – next door's daughter has a lot more sparkle and humour about her. The young me without the painful shyness and terrible dress sense.
On reflection, I realise I have kept parts of this sombre trait well and truly alive since those days of weighty text-books and 3am essay crises. I find the other guests at parties exiting furtively from the room I am in, as I nail an unsuspecting victim to the sofa on the subject of the existence of God, or some such topic. I listen to the peals of laughter from more giggly friends, as I gulp down wine and twist my mouth upwards in an attempt to affect the same jollity and carefree air achieved by them – with little success. I feel my face grow hot with rage as those closest me spot a sober mood or a lengthy gaze out of the window and declare 'You seem to carry the world on your shoulders these days, Kirsty.' I want to shout 'THIS TIME LAST YEAR I NEARLY WASN'T IN THIS WRETCHED WORLD!' Is it so wrong to take one's existence seriously? Have we undervalued the importance of being earnest? I don't suggest that we all delete hilarity from our lives and go round in funereal solemnity, never being able to hoot at a man slipping on a banana skin just because we want to. But I wonder at our reticence about approaching the darker side of life, the challenging things, and the stuff described by that terrible word 'deep'.

Freddie sits on my lap, gesturing emphatically with his small hand. 'Mummy!' he says. 'How Daddy going to fix the loo? Men come and men break it. How Daddy fix it, Mummy?' Freddie's brow is furrowed, his eyes fixed on the phone that bore the bad news. Tom's WC in Leicester is broken and some men, namely plumbers, came to 'mend' it but ended up making it worse. It is a subject that is taxing all three of the Ridges right now. I pick up the phone to describe this small boy's touching concern to his father. 'Freddie's eyes are bulging out of his head!' I say. 'Ahh, is he being all wide-eyed again?' says Tom. 'No, I say. 'He's being earnest.'