I was reminded this week of an old joke that a colleague of mine used to tell.
A man goes into a branch of WH Smith and asks the young lady behind the counter, ‘Do you keep stationery?’ To which she replies, ‘Yes, until the very last minute when I go absolutely wild.’
It wasn’t the shop assistant’s bawdy response that caught my attention but rather the promise of buying stationery.
It’s probably an indication that much is right with the world if, as has happened recently, I’ve had cause to reflect on the misery of a disappointing pencil. Scratchy in use, uncomfortable to hold, and breaks more often than not when I put it through one of my myriad sharpeners. The little pink eraser sitting proudly at its end so hard it would probably have your eye out if thrown with significant force. It’s certainly no use for erasing.
But as disappointing as an uninspiring pencil can be, it serves a purpose as a point of contrast to something better.
On the day I’d been thinking about pencils, I’d also fallen down a rabbit hole watching too many videos about coffee by barista, James Hoffmann. It was his fault that I found myself writing out an intricate matrix of grind sizes, extraction times and optimal water temperature in an attempt to make good coffee in an Aeropress.
In one final clip, Hoffmann explains how bad coffee plays an important role in helping us to appreciate good coffee but it’s a rule that doesn’t just apply to coffee and pencils.
While none of us willingly invite underwhelming experiences they play a valuable role in our lives by providing context and contrast for the moments of joy and fulfilment we can’t get enough of.
Disappointment is a wonderful counterbalance to joy, a truth I was reminded of recently when I trudged my way through a rather mundane crime thriller and started instead on a book I look forward to so much that bedtime can’t come soon enough. This has proved useful because one of the dogs has taken to deciding it’s time for bed at 8.30 pm and wants me to go upstairs with her. She stands in front of the TV if I have the temerity to object.
Underwhelming experiences also help to build our resilience and ability to cope with adversity so that when, next spring, we once again find that the slugs and snails have eaten all the vegetables we painstakingly grew from tiny seeds, we won’t feel like curling into a ball and weeping but will instead enjoy with glee the 24 runner beans that have so far been harvested from the single surviving specimen. I’ve never enjoyed a simple bean so much
.
Our self-awareness and perception are sharpened too when things don’t go as we’d hoped or expected. We learn more about what we really value and the difference between that and what we thought we wanted but find we can do without.
An example popped up this week when I received a question from someone finding it hard to motivate himself due to the lack of progress he’s making in pursuit of a career as a DJ.
I told him that in the mid-80s I was enjoying moderate success as an amateur musician and actor and had concluded that it was only a matter of time before I had to decide which would make me famous. As it turned out, I spent the next decade or so working for a company that made toilet rolls.
What it taught me though was that doing something solely because of what I thought it could give me is not the same as doing it for the love of the thing itself. I think it was around this time that I started painting and a friend saw one of my creations on the fridge and assumed my toddler had done it.
Without the benefit of disappointment, there would be no motivation for growth, no need to reflect on areas for self-development, and no motivation to improve the conversational French that was insufficient to prevent me from spending 60 euros on two moderately sized pieces of cheese at a market in the pretty seaside town of Cassis some years ago.
Perhaps most of all though, an absence of disappointment and sadness would mean there was no counterpoint to joy. Everything that feels amazing does so because something else feels absolutely terrible. Death itself is, of course, the primary motivating force in our lives because if time were unlimited there would be no particular need to find an excellent pencil or make a reasonable cup of coffee, we could just leave it all until tomorrow, or the next day.
So the next time you find yourself drinking a less-than-adequate brew or writing with a hastily put-together pencil, it’s worth bearing in mind that, without them, there would be no need to spunk nearly £30 on a box of Blacking Palomino’s or buy yourself a Bodum Milk Frother and pretend that you’ve got an espresso machine but haven’t yet learned quite how to use the steam wand.
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