What I really want my son to know is that life, with all its striving and seriousness, its cerebral quests and spiritual yearning, is contained in crisp red apples and white-marble moons, furry caterpillars and leopard-spotted slugs, the slobbering of excitable dogs, laughter, the crashing of waves, the sighting of a seal beneath a cliff or of a cuttlefish on a reef, the scent of jasmine after a morning swim, a steaming bowl of fresh pasta, the smell of a just-baked cake — that all these jostling, bobbing moments sustain us, that they are the string that threads our days.
But if I am completely honest, this is what he is already teaching me.
SOCIAL SCIENTISTS REFER TO this enjoyment of happy moments as savouring. The crux of savouring is paying attention to pleasure. Fred Bryant, who wrote a book on the subject, describes it as ‘like swishing the experience around . . . in your mind’. Bryant, Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, has crystallised the research on how to savour around three recommendations: look forward to something; enjoy it when it occurs; and reminisce about it afterwards. I know, it sounds bleedingly obvious, but the point is that if you aren’t born a natural savourer, you can still cultivate the practice.
The actions are simple. Eat slowly. Don’t get distracted. Be present. Look for something beautiful on your daily walk. Don’t waste time fault-finding, or dwelling on mishap. Avoid negative people. (This is hugely important, and not a simple task — you have to actively work to root out people who see only shade in light from your life. Be careful before drawing them close.) Tell friends when you hear good news. (Alarmingly, some savouring researchers suggest allowing yourself to jump up and down when excited, but treat this counsel with caution: Tom Cruise comes to mind.) Throw a party to mark your achievements — or someone else’s. Explore meditation. Embrace imperfection.
The only time I was ever thrown out of a lecture at university was when I was having a tug-of-war with a jelly python in first-year economics with my friend Jeremy, a man with an unmatched love for life’s micro-pleasures. All Jeremy needed to be happy was food, beer and a decent swell. When we were housemates in Bondi, the first thing he would tell me about every day was his lunch. He’d walk in the front door and get straight to it: ‘Oh, Jule, I had the most incredible kebab. Unbelievable. I don’t know how they make it taste so good!’ He’d then describe the layers, textures, sauce and toppings, and I’d laugh. It was infectious. What I didn’t know then was that this tendency to keep talking about a meal for hours afterwards indicated a strong ability to savour, to hold on to a positive emotion long after it first takes hold.
Jeremy still does this, by the way. He has a young family now, and when I called recently they were out at dinner. ‘Jez! How are you?’ I said.
‘Oh, Jule, so good. I’m having a pizza. It has the most perfect crust, it’s amazing: half napolitano, half something else; it’s an Italian family and they make their own sauce, with this melted cheese — seriously, you have to try it.’ I guarantee he bounded into work and told his colleagues about it the next day. Others would eat it and forget it straightaway.
My mate Woody is similar. He has devoted his life to hunting awe — it is the DNA of our friendship. He has spent years researching in oceans, deserts and parks, and writing books about wombats, great white sharks, ancient pine trees, the Great Barrier Reef and dog fences. He dives, catches waves, rides bikes, runs for hours with his beautiful border collie, Ringo, and builds his own houses on huge, quiet stretches of land nestled between the sea and rainforest. Very often when I call him, he is perched on a tractor doing something on his property, short of breath. I regularly get text messages about the sighting of an owl, or the perfection of a bath he has placed in the middle of his woods, and he sends me photos of hatching turtles and sunsets, which I repay with shots of cuttlefish, my daft dog and various underwater adventures. And yet he is also a master of savouring the small things. The single part of every day that makes him happiest is the English Breakfast tea that he brews first thing in the morning with freshly grated ginger. He doesn’t need social scientists to tell him that this is a healthy sign of an ability to savour, which increases happiness; the early morning grin on his face gives it away.
A STRING OF STUDIES have examined the characteristics that make us more or less likely to be able to savour, with one such study even going so far as to posit the theory that determining what separates a person who savours good things from one who doesn’t may unlock some of the biological mysteries associated with depression.
One of the keys to happiness, it seems, is having a low bar. My younger brother Steve, an unflappable, gentle, much-loved man, had the following motto for his wedding: ‘Expect imperfection.’ If things go wrong, he said, so be it. And of course the wedding was glorious and if things went wrong I can’t remember them.
In a study conducted by the University of London in 2014, participants were given small amounts of money to gamble. Those who did not expect to win were the most excited when they did. ‘The secret to happiness,’ said psychologist Barry Schwartz, ‘is low expectations.’ Or at least realistic ones, erring on the low side.
The Danes have long known this. In 2006, epidemiologists from the University of Southern Denmark tried to ascertain the reasons the Danes regularly come top of the list of the most satisfied people in Western countries. Professor Kaare Christensen and his team concluded: ‘If expectations are unrealistically high they could be the basis of disappointment and low life satisfaction. While the Danes are very satisfied, their expectations are rather low.’ Take this Danish newspaper headline, for example, reporting the latest survey marking their good cheer in 2005: ‘We’re the happiest lige nu [just now]’. Professor Christensen described this as the sentiment ‘for the time being, but probably not for long and don’t have any expectations it will last’. Don’t assume this moment will happen again; relish it.
Conversely, driven perfectionists may struggle to savour simple pleasures. A 2014 study of how much undergraduates had enjoyed their last vacation found that Type A personalities were less likely to savour than Type B personalities, partly due to perfectionism. The authors reported: ‘Findings revealed Type As focus on how proud they are and [how] impressed others are, but are only moderately to weakly involved in actively storing positive memories for later recall, or in reminiscing about prior positive events.’ This may be, the authors suggested, because they are impatient to move on to new opportunities, or reluctant to spend time ‘encoding memories at the expense of striving toward future accomplishments’.
Another influencing factor may be a person’s practice of discipline. Not surprisingly, the concept of savouring has been frequently tested with one of the greatest of pleasures: chocolate. In one study, the group was divided into those who could eat chocolate any time they wanted, and those who had to abstain for a week. The fact the abstainers were so thrilled to be eating chocolate again was heralded as testimony of the merits of occasional self-denial. Asceticism, the authors concluded, has benefits for happiness, even in rituals like the Christian observance of Lent or New Year’s resolutions. Even just increasing a person’s subjective sense of how long it has been since they have eaten their favourite food can make them happier to eat it.