Small Pleasures

by The School Of Life

  24

  Sunday Mornings

  On weekdays you’d be out of the house by now, but today you’re still in bed. You’ve got time to notice how the light is filtering through a gap in the curtains. It’s quieter than usual outside; the background sound of traffic is muted. Down the road you hear a car door slam. There’s not much you actually have to do today. You can dawdle in the bathroom. Normally you check your phone while brushing your teeth, rapidly scanning the messages that have come in overnight, mentally racing to keep track of all the things you’ll have to be on top of for the day, as you struggle quickly into your work clothes. This morning it doesn’t matter. You’re briefly liberated from the pressure of watching the clock; you don’t need to keep up. No one will be expecting anything of you until tomorrow morning. Out of the window the bands of clouds are drifting very, very slowly. It might rain this afternoon. There’s the jacket you bought in Edinburgh; you haven’t worn that for a while. You might head off to a café in a bit, maybe take a book or your journal, eat scrambled eggs with spinach; it could be nice to take a walk in the park later and see how the ducks are doing.

  Sunday is a name for the time in which we can explore ourselves and discover, or rediscover, parts of ourselves that we haven’t properly come to know as yet. Attention to them has been edged out in the most understandable ways by the demands of work and the expectations of others.

  For a very long time, especially in the western world, the idea of Sunday was bound up with religion. It was the Christian adaptation of the Jewish Sabbath: a day taken to have been set aside by God. The genius of the traditional religious concept of Sunday was to combine a set of restrictions with a positive agenda for the day. To ensure a day of rest there were various prohibitions. Businesses would be closed; shops, theatres and bars would be shut; the train timetable would be curtailed. The point wasn’t to be joyless, it was to make sure that time was free for other things. Such collective rules have largely disappeared. But the underlying need remains: the time needs to be protected. One might decide to take a break from digital life, not read a newspaper, not to fill the day with routine administrative tasks. There’s a real danger of filling up the day with distractions.

  The other side of the traditional Sabbath was a contrastive set of expectations around the things you positively engaged with in this specially designated period of 24 hours – motivated by the thought that a day is long, but not infinite. It mustn’t be squandered. One was supposed to go to church. Ceremonies were evolved to turn people’s minds to questions that matter but that typically get marginalised: what am I doing with my life; how are my relationships going; what do I really value and why? The traditional idea of Sunday was framed in religious terms. But the needs that it addresses are actually entirely independent of that framework.

  The secular pleasure of Sunday morning isn’t simply one of relaxation and freedom; it’s also linked to a feeling (which might not always be very explicit) that one has the opportunity to re-engage with the wider horizons of one’s life.

  The hope is that we can for a while turn away from current affairs towards the elevated, the silent and the eternal. We’re reaching towards higher consciousness – though maybe not used to putting it in quite these terms. Normally, we’re immersed in practical, unintrospective, self-justifying outlooks that are the hallmarks of what we could call ‘lower’ consciousness. At such moments, the world reveals itself as quite different: a place of suffering and misguided effort, full of people striving to be heard and lashing out against others, but also a place of tenderness and longing, beauty and touching vulnerability. The fitting response is universal sympathy and kindness. One’s own life feels less precious; one can contemplate being no longer present with tranquillity. One’s interests are put aside and one may imaginatively fuse with transient or natural things: trees, the wind, a moth, clouds or waves breaking on the shore. From this point of view, status is nothing, possessions don’t matter, grievances lose their urgency. If certain people could encounter us at this point, they might be amazed at our transformation and at our new-found generosity and empathy.

  States of higher consciousness are, of course, desperately short-lived. We shouldn’t in any case aspire to make them permanent, because they don’t sit so well with the many important practical tasks we all need to attend to. But we should make the most of them when they arise, and harvest their insights for the time when we require them most. A crucial part of the pleasure of Sunday morning is our awareness that it’s a distinct, unusual time.

  25

  A Beloved’s Wrist

  You don’t give it a second thought most of the time, of course. But in favoured circumstances – when it is framed by a leather watch strap, a crisp shirt cuff, a circle of amber stones or placed on a table, palm up – you notice again the especially delicate skin on the inside of the forearm, the interplay of gentle curves, swelling, flaring, narrowing, turning back in. The demands and complications of a relationship inevitably mean that you often don’t feel particularly sweet and generous around this person – with whom you in fact spend so much of your existence. Just looking at this person’s wrist can renew certain tender feelings that, you realise, you’ve been losing sight of.

  Certain reasons why you love them can be rediscovered via contemplation of this strange hinge between the radial and carpal bones. The pleasure of looking at it is connected to remembering its history: how tiny it must have been when they were a baby, how it was once encased in woollen mittens, how they used to pull the cuff of a blue jumper down with their thumb (eventually wearing a little hole).

  You are reconnecting with the grace of gestures they occasionally make and which deeply moved you when you were first infatuated with them, and which still have the power to touch you. There’s a way they have of holding their hand up when pausing while typing at the keyboard while peering at the screen and biting their lower lip. It’s a gesture of the wrist that indicates hesitancy, an anxious desire to get things right. Maybe it started when they had piano lessons aged 8½ and tried so hard to please their teacher and play all the notes correctly. The desire to please is a side of them that you don’t always see in daily life (especially when they are upbraiding you for not having quite accomplished your share of domestic responsibility).

  You are drawn to the way they hold a knife when slicing a tomato – with the forefinger extended far out along the top of the blade and the wrist itself pushed down towards the chopping board: it’s a strange action that only they seem to make. Watching them, you can trace a lifeline back to a more clumsy era of childhood, when it took great effort to control the blade; you are united across time with their earlier self, eager to learn, unclouded by the later complexities of existence. They can be pretty tough to be around sometimes, but the wrist is an emblem of the more fragile side of who they are.

  They might be the only person in the world you could recognise by their wrist alone.

  26

  A Favourite Old Jumper

  It’s not one you can now really wear except at home – and maybe even only when you are on your own or have a good excuse: it’s suddenly very cold; you’re a bit poorly; you’ve just come back from a long trek in the country, it was raining, you have a shower and now you can get wonderfully cosy.

  It used to be pretty smart, elastically moulding itself to your torso, close fitting at the wrists. Now it’s expanded in weird ways, sagged, and the cuffs curl outwards; there’s a hole in the left armpit.

  When it was new, you wore it on a lovely afternoon in Copenhagen; it was with you the night you learned that X had had an affair; it came with you when you changed cities; once you slipped it on over your bare skin after you went skinny-dipping; it propped up your neck on a flight to Singapore; it helped you revise for an exam; once a lover bound your wrists with the sleeves. All these things live on in the jumper. When you bury your nose in it and breath in, it takes you back to those times. It’s lovely to wear it, curled up on the sofa, wat
ching television. Only the people you truly love now ever get to see you in it.

  With the jumper we rehearse something key. It is a transitional object that helps us along the path not from childhood to adulthood but towards old age.

  The jumper works in opposition to a tendency – otherwise quite evident in lives – to fall out of love with things as they lose their original merits. It reverses the cold trajectory of growing disappointment: instead, love quietly accumulates round it. Without quite stating it plainly to ourselves, we hope that we too will be appreciated as this jumper is; that someone will feel about us this way and not only forgive us our frayed, misshapen bodies and characters – but will come to love us precisely for these things. We hope that tenderness, which we catch sight of in connection with a frayed old jumper, can extend its empire to us.

  27

  Holding Hands with a Small Child

  You’re helping walk a friend’s family to kindergarten or to the local park for a picnic and your special charge is a little person – aged 3 or 4 perhaps – clutching a knitted rabbit or a favourite toy fire engine in one hand and, with the other, you. It might be something that very rarely happens in your life.

  We remember from the other side as well; we’re joining up with our own childhood selves; we’re being big, encouraging and sweet to the little person we once were – and in part still are.

  There’s an unfamiliar surge of protectiveness and a revolution in one’s resources of patience. And a new alertness to danger and opportunity: will those three steps be a problem? One becomes supremely careful at the kerb. A poodle being walked nearby might be charming, but for someone the same height as the dog, it contains the potential for terror. You are acutely watchful, ready at any moment to swoop in and scoop up your charge into the perfect safety of your arms.

  One had forgotten how charming a child can be: the intense seriousness with which they investigate an acorn. In their company you are reconnected with how extremely interesting a puddle can be and what fascination there can be in a neighbour’s rubbish bins or the wheels of parked cars.

  The pleasure of the child’s company is an antidote to the real (but now so familiar as to be taken for granted) errors and natural flaws of adulthood; it is the pleasure of meeting again some crucial truths – about the splendour and fascination of the world, the truth about love (and one’s dormant capacity for unconditional kindness). You think, perhaps, that one day this child you are so carefully leading will themselves be your age and will do the same and have the same kind of thoughts which, at the moment, are so remote from their consciousness. And for a brief pointed time one is astonished by the utter strangeness of the course of human experience which gradually takes everyone from childhood to death.

  28

  Old Stone Walls

  There have been decades, centuries of rain, wind, cold and sun; moss and lichen have made homes for themselves wherever they could get a foothold. Maybe this wall was being built before anyone knew the outlines of all the continents, or while the Maratha forces were winning decisive battles in the Punjab or when Napoleon was brooding on Elba. People walked past this wall every day, maybe, during the long years Queen Victoria was mourning the death of her husband. It’s been around so much longer than we have. The stones it is made of were formed long before there were lizards or beetles; each one was handled by someone we will never know and whose life we can perhaps barely imagine.

  You sense the impact of time, and here – for once – it is benign. Normally we think of time as bringing things to ruin. It worsens them, and it leaves them weak, shabby, broken. But here there’s the pleasure of recognising a hopeful, touching truth: things can get better when they get old. The wearing effects of time can actually make something nicer. Sharp angles are softened, colours have toned down and harmonised. The old wall is a good image of ageing and endurance: it’s not getting worse; strangely, it’s nicer because it is older, counteracting our fears (much encouraged by the real but overstressed charms of youth and novelty) that to be old is to be worn out, unlovable, useless, ignored.

  It’s often the way with small pleasures: our attention is hooked before we quite know why. The charm of the wall is felt – and we may never quite work out what this thing has to say to us. And it feels normal to leave it at that. We believe that pleasure is how important meanings often introduce themselves. Behind each pleasure lies an idea, which offers a consoling or constructive perspective on existence. And it is the approach of this not yet grasped, but vaguely perceived, idea that we welcome with a feeling of joy.

  29

  Realising You Both Dislike the Same Popular Person

  Who, and what, you dislike says something important about you. But it often feels too risky to admit that you’re not much taken by someone a lot of people are pretty impressed by. It needn’t be that it’s a public celebrity who irritates you, it can just be someone that a lot of those you know happen to admire. You’ve learned to be cautious. You’ve had experience with negative views going wrong. You tried a sly put-down of a much-loved figure and people have reacted badly and thought you were mean or accused you of being snobbish. It’s not that you don’t understand the appeal at all – you just don’t share it. It’s a minor thing, really, of course. But the antipathy stands for something bigger: certain sides of your experience and parts of your personality have led you to this negative assessment. You can live with usually having to keep this in the shadows. But there’s a cost. You slightly feel you are accommodating the limitations and misperceptions of others. You put up with others’ infatuation but they won’t allow you the same degree of grace and accept your honest dislike. So it’s rather nice when someone else makes a move and tells you outright that they are heartily sick of this individual.

  Shared antipathy creates a positive bond. One surmises that this feeling has quite deep origins and will have other manifestations. It hints positively at other shared reactions. There is some latent congruence of souls that is making itself known at this specific point.

  It’s lovely not having to explain or defend one’s feelings in a hostile environment. It’s a relief not having to politely nod in supposed agreement just to keep the peace. We don’t always realise the extent to which we feel lonely in specific pockets of our inner life.

  30

  Feeling at Home in the Sea

  Maybe you don’t at first like this at all: it’s been a while since you last confronted waves and felt their strange push and pull on your legs as you wade out to mid-thigh depth. You can still just see the ribbed sand on the bottom and the shadow of an occasional rock (past which a little crab may be scurrying). A mysterious strand of seaweed drifts by: you know it is safe but you have to tell yourself it is. You never quite forget the childhood fears of what might be lurking below the surface. And now you’ve remembered how cold it feels, even when the sea is theoretically pretty warm. You are going to have to make yourself go under. You steer well clear of a couple of splashing children and gradually dip yourself deeper into the chilling water; it seems impossible: you’ll never be able to make yourself do it. And then, slowly, you let yourself sink forward; a small wave momentarily freezes your neck. And then you are in; you are used to it – safe, free and (weirdly) warm too.

  You are living in another element. Walking is impossible; sitting is pointless. You bob up and down as the waves roll gently past, ducking your head under, plunging, floating on your back. And part of the background pleasure is the awareness that a slightly timid, reluctant aspect of one’s nature has been enticed and coaxed to overcome its fears. A mask and snorkel let you thrive in an alien zone, while being continually supplied with the needed resources from your old, normal world. At first you can’t quite believe that you can breathe; you keep on expecting to be inundated, but you are fine. The nervous instinct is calmed; your breathing becomes more natural. A tiny fish darts past. Friends’ legs become bizarre, fascinating objects; the desire to suddenly grab an ankle is hard to resist. Yo
u can be yourself underwater because you have an open lifeline to the air.

  Perhaps there may be many further worlds in which – with the right kind of snorkel – we can overcome the initial levels of hesitation and awkwardness. One might come to feel at home with Zen gardens, Norwegian folk music, Baroque architecture, a new relationship …

  A more adventurous part of oneself has come to life. And when you emerge, dripping and pleasantly tired, and make your way to the warm beach, you bring that part of yourself with you back from the sea, where it had been living in exile, waiting for you.

  31

  ‘Bad’ Magazines

  They’re bad, not in the severe sense of being actually wicked and vicious, but in an intimate, personal sense: we’d be embarrassed if our acquaintances knew how much we enjoy immersing ourselves in their pages – from time to time. Other people can read them openly, just not us. You’d probably be reluctant even to buy a copy of any of them yourself – it would feel awkward to turn up at the counter clutching a copy of a magazine aimed at people of a different gender or implying a socio-economic status evidently at variance with your own or that’s out of step with your general outlook. But waiting for the dentist, in the bathroom at a friend’s house, or on a plane, one gets the chance to have a look without fear.