In Case of Emergency Break Glass

Even the smallest of steps point toward distant horizons.

Prague 2011

While stumbling through a few tedious days this week I was reminded of a George Orwell line:

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.

And that’s not at all because I felt like a failure, nor because I have taken to drink any more than is absolutely necessary, but because of how the quote points toward the cascades in life, with each step a trigger for another step, with even the smallest of steps pointing toward distant horizons. Orwell emphasizes the negative with his eyebrow a bit raised, but of course we recognize this same cascade during any upward, virtuous spiral, when nearly everything in life seems more than right, when even our unlucky breaks come with benefits. And the truth is that you’re always either heading up the stairs or falling back down; to remain stationary is the only impossibility. In a moment of triumph, however, there’s something wonderfully human about how it is tricky to envision even greater pleasures—a failure of imagination that never comes when the subject, such as Orwell describes, is negative, because our capacity to imagine joy comes with a ceiling while our capacity to imagine suffering has no floor. We don’t quite know how to laugh louder once we’re already howling, nor can we add more joy to a visceral moment of celebration, but we must smirk at our delightful ability to imagine how our most horrible moments can always, in fact, be made worse.

Explore writing, travel, and literature—with a new issue every Friday.

Subscribe to Desk Notes

Earlier this week I even had a moment when I decided that a jester with a vivid imagination for suffering was in control, and that seemed wholly appropriate and even a little satisfying. At least the absurd and ironic and slapstick arrives with a reward, even if that implies that I’m the punchline. On a morning when not much could go right and the walls seemed to be getting narrower and the options slimmer, I paused, thought for a moment, and then decided to brew some coffee, and, as I walked to the kitchen, I scraped and cut the bottom of my foot. The truth is that very few situations in life can’t be made worse without the sudden knowledge that the next few days are going to require an adjustment to your gait. But how could I not compliment the jester? In the game of life, it was a fabulous move, which sparked almost immediate laughter as I hobbled around the kitchen.

And because my mind was already prompted to think about Orwell, my slight limp reminded me of another of his lines, a more serious observation that comes from the essay A Hanging and describes a real man whom Orwell saw walk toward a gallows.

At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.

Now this man was having a bad day that—it shouldn’t really be necessary to add—exceeded mine. But there’s still something curious about that little sidestep to avoid a puddle in his final minutes. Orwell concluded that this flash of humanity from a man soon to lose his own humanity revealed the barbarism of capital punishment—that he witnessed a truly human instinct to avoid a puddle and then an inhuman punishment to extinguish that instinct. What I find notable about these lines today is how much they show that there’s always a little instinct left. You could argue that choice wasn’t involved, that the man avoided getting his feet wet without any conscious effort, and I would probably agree, though I would add that it also reveals how much surrendering amid suffering is what’s inhuman.

Although it is difficult to spot the jester amid the gallows, I do think that it is vital in your worst moments to ensure that the ironic mind overcomes the literal mind. In hospital rooms and funeral parlors you’ll find both the most intense silences and the loudest laughter; the cliché, it is worth remembering, is gallows humor for a reason. To be consumed by the facts of your immediate circumstances when you’re in pain and to abandon your powers of observation and detachment is to succumb to what’s most primitive: without wit, without a smirk, without an ironic perspective, you’re nothing but a bundle of reflexes. If you do capitulate during a bad situation, and see nothing but what’s factual and sullen and emotionless, you’ve lost all the worthwhile aspects of being human. On some days I do wonder whether nearly all problems are merely the expression of the literal mind defeating the ironic mind, and whether the solution is, as always, to combine a necessary persistence with a smirk and raised eyebrow and refilled glass.

For my trifling, prosaic few days—the specifics are honestly unimportant and surely distracting to my more general point—these are obscene comparisons. And comparisons are always obscene when it comes to relative pain, but that doesn’t prevent the person in trouble from wanting analogies, references, ways of thinking—the person having a bad day is, almost always, nothing but a bore, endlessly yammering about that day to anybody who will listen and to plenty of people who won’t. Literature is still where you look when you want comparisons, when you want to explain what’s unexplainable, but sooner or later even the most steadfast person struggles to find the ironic perspective and has a Hamlet-like moment, telling themselves that it is all words, words, words. The questions become stern and literal: Is this normal? Is there anything worse? How bad can it get? Somebody must have it worse? And very quickly you realize that Mel Brooks was right to say that “tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall down an open sewer and die.”

Yet it is worth remembering that bad days are a guarantee. To measure your days with any metric at all is to guarantee that some will hit the lower part of the ledger. And to forget that fact is certainly to tease the jester, who is always ready, once again, with another trick. Yesterday I found myself caught outside in a rainstorm—because of course it was raining—and I remembered probably the most fitting example for a cascade of bad days, Sisyphus, whom I certainly can’t compete against, a victim of real ingenuity from the jester, as best described by Albert Camus:

You may have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.

Camus concentrated on just one part of Sisyphus’ story in his brief essay. Not the laborious push of the rock. Not the endless repetitions. And not the injustice of the punishment. It was, for Camus, the walk back down the hill, in full knowledge that the struggle would continue, endlessly, which appeared most revealing.

All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols…The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing.

Now Camus’ endpoint is to declare Sisyphus happy with his labor—he becomes “the master of his days”—and that’s just a tad too far for me. Although I can get halfway and agree that Sisyphus recognizes the absurdity of his punishment, and also agree that this recognition is the first step toward dealing with any daily toil. It is a sensibility that’s only visible to the ironic mind—you can’t take that step if you’re consumed by bitterness, anger, or yelling about the injustice of your fate. Of course in a time of anguish and confusion and turmoil, this sensibility might feel insufficient, but we can still admire the determination of anybody who makes the attempt.

And it will be forever true that mistakes and errors and flubs have a way of accelerating. It is always a cascade. For the jester, this shows an artistic touch: the milk spills and that tips and shatters the glass and now the milk runs down the counter and onto the floor which sends come-hither signals to all the neighborhood insects so that straightening up this mess forces you to be late and because you’re late it triggers a bit of a rush and an eventual stubbed toe and then a bit of forgetfulness about important appointments in your day and that, of course, must, if you are to try again tomorrow, make you smile.