‘E.B. White wrote of his Scottish terrier’: ‘E.B. White’, obituary, The New Yorker, 12 March 1932, p.92.
‘Hemingway adored his cats’: Carlene Brennen, Hemingway’s Cats: An Illustrated Biography, Pineapple Press, Inc., Florida, 2005, p.155.
‘Kurt Vonnegut wrote’: Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!, Random House, Vintage Books, London, 2010, p.2.
‘William S. Burroughs called his cats’: James Grauerholz (ed.), Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs, Grove Press, New York, 2001, pp.xxi.
Part IV: Invincible Summer
Regarde: Look, and Savour
‘Regarde, little darling, the hairy caterpillar’: Colette, Earthly Paradise: An Autobiography, Secker & Warburg, London, 1966, p.28.
‘Colette spoke her last coherent word: “Regarde!”’: Judith Thurman, A Life of Colette: Secrets of the Flesh, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2000, p.498.
Chapter 17: Thoughts for My Son: The Art of Savouring
He has . . . a stubborn gladness: From the poem, ‘A Brief for the Defense’, where he writes, ‘We must have the stubbornness/to accept our gladness in the ruthless/ furnace of this world.’
Bryant . . . has crystallised the research on how to savour: Fred Bryant, Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience, Routledge, Philadelphia, 2006.
may unlock some of the biological mysteries associated with depression: Aaron S. Heller et al, ‘The neurodynamics of affect in the laboratory predicts persistence of real-world emotional responses’, The Journal of Neuroscience, July 2015, vol.35, no.29, pp.10503–10509.
‘The secret to happiness’: Barry Schwartz, ‘Are we happier when we have more options?’, TED Radio Hour, NPR, 15 November 2013.
The Danes have long known this: Robb B. Rutledge, Nikolina Skandali, Peter Dayan and Raymond J. Dolan, ‘A computational and neural model of momentary subjective well-being’, PNAS, August 2014, vol.111, no.33, pp.12252–12257.
‘While the Danes are very satisfied, their expectations are rather low’: Kaare Christensen, Anne Maria Herskind and James W. Vaupel, ‘Why Danes are smug: Comparative study of life satisfaction in the European Union’, BMJ, 2006, 333, p.1289.
‘striving toward future accomplishments’: Fred B. Bryant and Paul R. Yarnold, ‘Type A behavior and savoring among college undergraduates: Enjoy achievements now — not later’, Optimal Data Analysis by Optimal Data Analysis, LLC, 4 April 2014, vol.3, pp.25–27. See also J.L. Smith and F.B. Bryant, ‘Are we having fun yet?: Savoring, type A behavior, and vacation enjoyment’, International Journal of Wellbeing, 2012, vol.3, no.1, 1–19.
Asceticism, the authors concluded, has benefits for happiness: Jordi Quoidbach and Elizabeth W. Dunn, ‘Give it up: A strategy for combating hedonic adaptation’, Social Psychological and Personality Science, January 2013, vol.4, no.5, pp.1–6. In another study, by University of Michigan psychologist Ed O’Brien, fifty-two people were told they were participating in a taste test for Hershey’s chocolate. They were told to draw five chocolates in several flavours — milk, dark, caramel, almond, crème — out of a bag, then rate each out of ten. Some of the group was told before taking out the fifth chocolate that it would be their last one. All of these people rated the last chocolate as the best, and the entire experience overall as more enjoyable. See Ed O’Brien and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, ‘Saving the last for best: A positivity bias for end experiences’, Psychological Science, 2012, vol.23, no.2, pp.63–165.
‘entitlement is a toxic narcissistic trait’: Case Western Reserve University, ‘Entitlement may lead to chronic disappointment’, Science Daily, 13 September 2016. For source document, see J.B. Grubbs and J.J. Exline, ‘Trait entitlement: A cognitive-personality source of vulnerability to psychological distress’, Psychological Bulletin, 2016, vol.142, no.11, pp.1204–1226.
rich people ate more quickly and enjoyed less: Jordi Quoidbach, Elizabeth W. Dunn, K.V. Petrides and Moïra Mikolajczak, ‘Money giveth, money taketh away: The dual effect of wealth on happiness’, Psychological Science, 2010, vol.21, no.6, pp.759–763. As Quoidbach and Dunn have said, the relationship between wealth and happiness is ‘surprisingly weak’.
Gilbert coined the term ‘experience stretching’: Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, Knopf Doubleday, New York, 2006.
as Jordi Quoidbach puts it: J. Quoidbach et al, ‘Money giveth, money taketh away: The dual effect of wealth on happiness’, Psychological Science, June 2010, vol.21, no.6, pp.759–763. Quoidbach claimed his 2010 study provided the first evidence that money impairs an ability to savour everyday experiences.
‘one’s tendency to take the small pleasures of daily life for granted’: Michel Pireu, ‘How money can detract from the simple pleasures of daily life’, Business Day, 23 July 2010.
Chapter 18: Ert, or a Sense of Purpose
after hearing her talk on the radio . . . about her great love, jellyfish: Conversations, ABC Radio National, 2 May 2017.
‘I don’t think it needs to be jellyfish for everybody, but it is for me’: Ibid.
Whatever propels you forward: For millions, ert is spiritual practice. As Professor Vicki Grieves wrote, the beliefs and practices of the ancient Indigenous cultures of Australia can provide ‘community and connectedness with land and nature including proper nutrition and shelter’. Illustrating yet again how much we have to learn from this ancient culture, Grieves, who is of Warrimay and Tasmanian descent, says it also entails ‘feeling good about oneself, proud of being an Aboriginal person. It is a state of being that includes knowledge, calmness, acceptance and tolerance, balance and focus, inner strength, cleansing and inner peace, feeling whole.’ Vicky Grieves, ‘Aboriginal spirituality: Aboriginal philosophy — the basis of Aboriginal social and emotional wellbeing’, 2009, Discussion Paper No.9, Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health, Darwin, p.7.
Chapter 19: Growing by the Light of the Moon
‘The bud seemed to follow the moon’: Frank Crisp et al. (eds), Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society, Containing Its Transactions and Proceedings and a Summary of Current Researches Relating to Zoology and Botany (principally Invertebrata and Cryptogamia), Microscopy, &c., Royal Microscopical Society (Great Britain), 1883, vol.2, p. 534. See also Jacob Aron, ‘Moon’s gravity could govern plant movement like the tides’, New Scientist, 17 August 2015; Peter W. Barlow, ‘Leaf movements and their relationship with the lunisolar gravitational force’, Annals of Botany, August 2015, vol.116, no.2, pp.149–187; Marissa Fessenden, ‘Plants might move with with the moon just as the oceans do with the tides’, Smithsonian.com, 19 August 2015.