Whenever I hear the phrase ‘holiday of a lifetime’, I cringe. Same with ‘dream job’. You know they’re both going to disappoint. How can they not? Expectations have been allowed to build and build, way beyond the ability of reality to deliver. And even if your new job does make you happy for a while, it’ll soon go wrong. The job will change, or you will change, or both, and returns will diminish. No, forget the big stuff – you need to find your joy in little things.
One of mine is letting the steering wheel slide through my hands. Every time I straighten out from a corner, and catch the wheel at just the right moment as it spins back round, I make a point of enjoying the moment. OK, it’s not a massive thrill – but that’s the point. It’s reliable, it’s constant and it’s real. It comes with the added pleasure that you know you’d fail your driving test for it, which in turn reminds you that you never have to take your driving test again.
Another one on my list is the zipped compartment at the top of my bike panniers. I was happy enough with the panniers as they were, but a week or so after having them fitted I noticed there was an extra zip at the top of each one, providing even more storage space than I thought there was. This happened to be in the same week that I read the newspaper headline ‘Billionaire dies during penis enlargement operation’. What was I saying about huge pleasures?
We all have our own tiny treats. J.B. Priestley wrote a book about his – it’s called Delight, and has chapters such as ‘a new box of matches’, ‘the sound of an orchestra tuning up’ and ‘not going to a party’. My list includes:
- Finishing the process of drying your hands on a second, pristine towel, so that you don’t have to search for a dry bit of the first one.
- Turning the pillow over to get the cool side. For a larger dose of the same thrill, do the duvet as well.
- Pretending to be useless with technology so the 19-year-old in the phone shop will do everything for you. In particular I love watching them put a new screen protector on – the attention to detail is mesmerising, especially the final bit when they push the air out from between the screen and the protector, the pocket shrinking and shrinking until it disappears.
- Having a pint on your own in the pub, doing a sudoku, after arranging the table and chair in just the right position that your beer is there whenever you reach for it.
- Taking the small amount of effort necessary to do something properly – for example taking a throw off a sofa and putting it on back on from scratch, rather than constantly tugging it into place and hoping it’ll stay.
- Having a pee when you’re bursting. Frederick Forsyth called it the ‘second greatest pleasure known to man’. Also, saving the pee so that you are bursting. Walking through central London, I’ll often time things so that I’m passing a really nice hotel at the right time.
- Sub-section of the last one: if you’re a man, sitting down to pee even though you don’t have to. It’s a minute or so of taking the weight off your feet – the very definition of a tiny joy. Ryan Gosling sits down to pee. And there’s an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry David says he does it, quoting Winston Churchill: ‘Why stand when you can sit?’ His father replies: ‘I don’t think he meant the toilet.’
Asking my friends, I get suggestions like ‘the smell of vinegar on warm chips’, ‘the pop of a cork leaving the bottle’ and ‘Sunday morning, with the dog, the remote and a coffee, before the rest of the family wakes’. Related to the last one is ‘scrolling through annoying adverts on TV and hitting the exact moment when the programme starts again’. Another nomination is ‘sliding on a fresh pair of football socks – you know that after two washes they’ll shrink and be unmanageable’. This reminded me of the comedian Jerry Lewis, who wore new socks every day of his life, to remind him of his childhood when his socks always had to be darned.
So never mind money or possessions or status – as deliverers of true happiness, they’re doomed to fail. When it comes to joy, you need your doses small and perfectly formed.
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