Small Pleasures

by The School Of Life

  One could imagine a micro-pilgrimage – undertaken perhaps on a weekly basis – to visit a cypress tree and to reconnect with the fragment of wisdom it enshrines. Or it might be wise to place a photo of a cypress at a strategic place where you tend to get agitated and experience conflict: in the kitchen, near the bathroom door through which, in moments of un-cypress-like desperation, you have a habit of shouting at the person on the other side. And where a glance at its compact form might transmit to you, in a moment of need, a little of its noble endurance.

  39

  News of a Scientific Discovery

  If you don’t have much day-to-day involvement with the world of science, it can still be charming to come across a news item reporting a breakthrough in pure research – and the fact that the details of the story are pretty much incomprehensible somehow doesn’t seem to matter. A dust cloud has been detected in the Lagoon nebula; progress is being made in understanding the neural networks in the brains of fish; the existence of a particular subatomic particle has been confirmed; or scientists have discovered that at ultra-low temperatures chemicals can react with each other at much greater distances than is possible at room temperature.

  The announcement of these scientific breakthroughs occurs side by side with the regular dramas of the news: a government policy adviser has accidentally sent a nude photo of themselves to the leader of the opposition; a badly decomposed corpse has been found in a Scottish loch; the German economy is not doing what it was expected to do; a woman in Ohio has the world’s largest collection of umbrellas. All the normal things are happening. And somewhere in the background people have been quietly finding out about galactic dust and the neural processing of carp and herrings.

  We might not really grasp the special meaning of these discoveries. And we’re not necessarily imagining possible practical applications. But there seems to be a distinctive pleasure circulating around them, which is linked to a powerful, but nebulous, idea: progress.

  The stories are describing recent, tiny steps in a vast and very long process. It’s taken us very slowly and gradually from thinking that thunder was the rage of a furious being in the sky to recognising that it is a sound produced by the rapid thermal expansion of the air caused by an electrical discharge; or from thinking that the heart is the seat of the emotions to the view that it is apump. And more generally from the sense that nature is a dark mystery to the view that everything can be clearly explained if only we investigate it properly. The small piece of scientific news is a point of contact with the grand vision of the advancement of understanding, the rolling back of superstition and truth triumphing over error.

  Little phrases of the news items are especially touching: ‘at a research laboratory in Minnesota …’, ‘Professor Emilius and her team …’, ‘researchers from a network of over one hundred universities …’ They imply devoted, careful people spending years working together towards these discoveries. These weren’t strokes of luck. They weren’t random. They were planned. There were massive banks of delicate instruments, fiendish calculations, logically constructed hypotheses and systematic experimentation. Huge quantities of brainpower were trained on very specific problems. We’re not just pleased at these specific little increments of human knowledge, we’re responding to the larger theme of organised intelligent effort which lies behind them. We’re struck by the grandeur of the collective effort, the strategic patience and the successful pitting of intelligence against a mystery.

  We may not, in all honesty, care very deeply about how fish process visual information or what happens to Barium at -270 degrees Celsius. But news of scientific advancement is sweet because it edges into our minds the idea of such carefully arranged progress occurring in other areas of human life. We can pleasantly imagine the same kind of highly structured effort being applied to issues closer to the centre of our own lives. Rather than a billion euro budget, 2,000 researchers and a large chunk of a Swiss valley being devoted to working out what’s going on inside atoms, we can imagine equally large-scale endeavours devoted to working out what’s going on inside our relationships. There would be just as big a concerted drive with as many people employed in carefully defined research teams, splitting the problem into tiny sections (here is the team who focus exclusively on Sunday evening; this team is working on couples and money, this one is tackling sex). Their distinctive efforts won’t get lost because they are all part of a vast, beautifully designed programme. For almost all time up to very recently we were totally in the dark about physical entities. It seemed impossible ever to make sense of it. Now the problem is largely understood. And other areas, too, could yield.

  Over many years in large-scale controlled experiments, thousands of highly trained people might pore over tiny details (the lip curl, the indignant stare, fear conditioning and amygdala activity). For a while the discoveries would seem abstract and only of theoretical interest. But they’d gradually unravel the confusions in our lives and their insights would one day lead to the design of conflict-inhibiting kitchens and highly accurate prognostic tools for assessing potential partners; and eventually simplified versions of their insights could be written into colourful textbooks designed to win the attention of lively 7-year-olds.

  40

  Feeling Someone Else Is So Wrong

  Often we’re in search of agreement. It’s very nice when someone wholeheartedly agrees with something we’ve said, especially when we thought they’d be against us.

  But there’s also special satisfaction when someone is not just slightly out in what they say; they’re not just exploring an interesting idea you don’t particularly happen to agree with or advancing a plausible-sounding, but actually mistaken, hypothesis. Over dinner or listening to the radio in the car, we’re finally in the company of someone who is deeply, wildly, plainly wrong.

  It could happen around some conflicted bit of political history or some key problem of modern life: maybe they said that Margaret Thatcher was the best British leader of the twentieth century or that she was the worst. Maybe they’re saying that global warming is a conspiracy of left-wing scientists or that before long cruise ships will be docking in Central Park. They could be insisting that everything built since 1945 is ugly or that we are living in the golden age of architecture; that capitalism has brought the world to its knees or that it is the most successful economic system ever devised. Just now, the final truth of the issue doesn’t matter. We get excited because – in our eyes – what they’re saying is monstrously in error. We feel we’re totally in the right and they are totally wrong.

  It’s tempting to say we simply can’t believe they are actually saying this. But behind the scenes (and without quite realising it) we’ve been waiting for someone to come along and assert just this particular form of stupidity. We’ve entertained it in our own heads as a strikingly absurd option. We’ve maybe made rapid mental portraits of the sort of person who would say this.

  One aspect of the pleasure is linked to the clear appreciation we get – by contrast – of our own wisdom and intelligence. There is a thrilling coiling of intellectual energy as one listens to their folly. Pretty often we’re unsure of what we think. Across a wide range of topics we’re conscious of our own ignorance. We struggle every day with issues that we don’t fully understand. But now their antithetic stance brings our own happy knowledge and insight to the fore. They make us slightly brilliant.

  The world starts to divide: there are those (like you) who are right and there are others (like this individual) who are sunk in confusion. So often we are dealing in nuance and ambiguity; so frequently we have to accommodate the notion that there’s something to be said on the other side; but now there’s an end to that. We experience the satisfaction of inhabiting a simpler, clearer world.

  This pleasure is also linked to personal history. Years ago there was a person who loomed large in your life who took this kind of view: a parent, an unsympathetic teacher, an overbearing individual you were at college with. They used
to spout things along these lines. And at that time you couldn’t hold your own. But now you can. Then you felt they were somehow totally mistaken, but you couldn’t match their confident assertions.

  You’re not angry now – there’s no longer any fear or rage or hatred. But there’s a pleasant feeling of meeting again a representative of this deeply wrong style of thought, when now you are strong and skilled enough to stand up to it perfectly. The terrors of the past are behind you. Now you can cope – and more than that. You can come back the way you always wished you could.

  One particularly charming and special instance of the pleasure occurs when this person is advocating an idea we actually used to believe in ourselves. You once thought as they do, but life, experience, better information or clearer thinking have – you feel sure – shown you the large error of your former conviction. And this person has clearly failed to take the crucial steps you have.

  At such a moment, we get a compelling sense of our own cognitive progress. (The way a child who is currently struggling with multiplication looks pityingly on a young sibling who still has to ask what number comes after seven.) We’re actually thrilling in our own case to the creed of the Enlightenment: that information and reason could lead humanity as a whole to the truth. That all disagreement is misunderstanding. Teaching will always triumph over mistakes. Ideally we should not so much try to put this person right, or despise them for their misguided mentality, as thank them for the pleasing insight they have – quite inadvertently – alerted us to.

  And, to be painfully honest, it is a pleasure which we have to admit we will inevitably, from time to time, provide for others to whom our own cherished beliefs or occasional stray assertions will offer the perfect foil for their own convictions and for whom we will be the ideal, perfect idiot.

  41

  The Teasing of Old Friends

  It’s a particular sign of friendship that people know they can tease you – and that, even when there is a slight sting to their remarks, you rather like it. They email a photo of a gorilla that does slightly resemble you when you are fed up about something. If you’re catching a flight with them they suggest arriving five hours early (or maybe the night before), knowing your tendency to panic about being late; they secretly count the number of times you use a particular word and congratulate you after an hour for only having said ‘actually’ 23 times. They like making sly reminders of old follies – they don’t let you forget about the summer when you were sure you were going to live in a hut in Norway and grow your own vegetables (though you’ve ended up working in marketing for a major office supply firm and get your potatoes from the local supermarket).

  At its best, teasing allows genuinely difficult issues to be raised in an atmosphere of affection. Yes, you’re having an extra glass of wine, as you always seem to do. You do tend to predictably spin off into a rant on a strange range of topics: Japanese aesthetics, snowboarding, the future of China or the right way to make scrambled eggs. Your friends know exactly how to prod you into a state of high agitation. They are gently – and usefully – educating you in the distorted aspects of your own preoccupations; a lesson is being delivered in the form of a joke; when they start laughing just when you thought you were about to arrive at the clinching point and that you would, finally, persuade them of your superior wisdom on these matters.

  The crucial background is that the teasing friend has known all about these sides of you for ages and has stuck with you and is very fond of you. It can sound like such a little thing: they know my faults and they like me anyway. But really it’s a lovely thing – and much too rare.

  So often a useful point can’t get through to us because we experience it as a criticism. We feel it is part of the case being made against us. It is a reason why we can’t be loved. And so we want, if at all possible, to shut it out of our minds or turn our own frustration with ourselves against the person reminding us of an unpalatable truth. It’s a key problem of life: we reject difficult but important knowledge because it comes wrapped in the wrong way. The old friend covers their insight in kindness and fun and so we may be able to acknowledge – in the guise of a tease – things we’ve savagely repudiated when we sensed scorn or disappointment in the delivery.

  Teasing works because the old friend knows you are not going to fall apart. They could wound you. They know how to deeply distress you and deliberately make sure not to. They don’t bluntly accuse you of having been awful to an ex (though you now recognise you were) or of having mucked up a portion of your career (which you never forget for a moment). The surrounding goodwill is large and well-established, the touch is light; the paws are velveted. That’s what it is to feel at the same time known and liked.

  So often we despair of the two – knowledge and love – being united. It feels as if we can only secure the goodwill of others by carefully editing our self-presentation and keeping the less admirable aspects of our characters hidden. Or we feel that we can be known only at the price of being condemned: if they saw the darker corners of who I am, no one could like me. The teasing old friend finds the small, wonderful intersection: they see us as we really are and yet they love us.

  And at the heart of it there’s an unspoken invitation to reciprocate. It’s not one-sided: you know how to tease them back and you know that’s a pleasure for them too.

  42

  Getting Over a Row

  It was horrendous while it was going on. You said some awful things – though you were pushed so hard. You slammed a door. They shouted. You felt angry with them and angry with yourself. You felt ashamed of yourself and yet sure it was their fault. You wanted to force them to see your point. You got stubborn and cold; you weren’t going to budge. Why should you apologise – they’re the one who should be saying sorry. You should apologise but it will only make them feel they were right – which they’re not. Maybe this is the end. Perhaps we’re no good together. Our inherited fantasy of the ideal relationship focuses on harmony. Rows expose areas of hostility and true fissures in the ideal of togetherness. But in their aftermath – as one cools down – various small pleasures emerge.

  One compensating satisfaction is realising you can only say such things to someone you are actually very close to. The capacity to be horrible to your partner is a strange – but genuine – feature of love. A relationship has to include the madder, more unreasonable parts of ourselves. If I can be overtly angry with you, it’s because you have made me feel safe enough to be so. I never slam a door at work, I never tell a colleague to their face I think they are a bastard or a bitch, but that’s not because I like them better than you, it’s because those relationships are wrapped up in layers of repression and fear – I’d lose my job, or I’d become an outcast in the office. The strange thing is, I am petulant and at times nasty around you because you have reassured me so much. I let the guard down and the more troubled parts of me feel safe enough to emerge. It’s sometimes only after a couple has made a public commitment to each other, when they’ve openly stated that they mean to stay together through thick and thin, that the most blazing and lacerating rows actually start to happen. The natural instinct is to think we’ve made a terrible mistake getting together. But a deeper part of the explanation of why we’re so upset is strangely positive.

  There’s also a satisfaction in having cleared the air. Between you, you have given voice (admittedly in a rather harsh way) to some things that were festering in the dark. It took a lot of emotional upheaval to state them. But now they are in the open. And potentially you can start to look at them in a slightly more sane and measured way. It’s a relief – at last – to be looking properly at a troublesome issue.

  And sometimes it happens that a row is the turbulent passage to a deeper reconciliation. It was important for the two of you to be able to say these difficult, genuinely painful and hurtful things to one another. By foregrounding for a while the points of conflict, you inadvertently set up the conditions for remembering the larger areas of closeness. Yo
u remember that they are very nice in other ways – the conflict occupies a smaller place in your mind.

  There are also, perhaps, the small pleasures of forgiving and of being forgiven. We’re not simply forgetting. What was done and said are still vivid, but they come to be seen in a larger, more benign and less frightening way. Forgiveness mainly comes from recognising the background of stress, worry and fear that frames the person’s behaviour. They were awful to you, but the reasons they were awful might have very little to do with you. In fact, the shouting, the swearing, the cold stares or the looks of disgust are fuelled by external factors – some of them perhaps originating long before this person came into your life. You are only the unfortunate lightning rod their anger flashes down on. We like forgiving, because, at its best, it means understanding better why this person got so upset – and when one understands, it feel less personally offensive. And similarly, being forgiven is nice when it implies that one’s problems are better grasped. We’re saying to each other, in effect: I’ve remembered now how hard it is to be you, therefore I’m less personally affronted by your conduct.

  Particularly difficult rows bring to light areas of opposition that, quite possibly, just can’t be resolved. You might, for instance, have thought you could run a business together, but a series of bruising rows convince you that it’s just not going to work. You used to always go to one person’s parents at the weekend, but it’s causing huge conflicts. You are turned off by some areas of sexuality that are important to your partner.