Contentment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Although I am basically optimistic about remaining well, I know my illness from enough different vantage points to remain rather fatalistic about the future. As a result, I know that I listen to lectures about new treatments for manic-depressive illness with far more than just a professional interest. I also know that when I am doing Grand Rounds at other hospitals, I often visit their psychiatric wards, look at their seclusion rooms and ECT suites, wander their hospital grounds, and do my own internal ratings of where I would choose to go if I had to be hospitalized. There is always a part of my mind that is preparing for the worst, and another part of my mind that believes if I prepare enough for it, the worst won’t happen. Many years of living with the cyclic upheavals of manic-depressive illness has made me more philosophical, better armed, and more able to handle the inevitable swings of mood and energy that I have opted for by taking a lower level of lithium. I agree absolutely with Eliot’s Ecclesiastian belief that there is a season for everything, a time for building, and “a time for the wind to break the loosened pane.” Therefore, I now move more easily with the fluctuating tides of energy, ideas, and enthusiasms that I remain so subject to. My mind still, now and again, becomes a carnival of lights, laughter, and sounds and possibilities. The laughter and exuberance and ease will, filling me, spill out and over and into others. These glinting, glorious moments will last for a while, a short season, and then move on. My high moods and hopes, having ridden briefly in the top car of the Ferris wheel will, as suddenly as they came, plummet into a black and gray and tired heap. Time will pass; these moods will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  47 Evagrius of Pontus (d. 399), one of the most influential monastic teachers, drew on Paul’s doctrine of kenosis and instructed monks to empty their minds of the rage, avarice, pride, and vainglory that tore the soul apart and made them close their hearts to others. By following these precepts, some learned to transcend their innate belligerence and achieved an interior peace that they experienced as a return to the Garden of Eden, when human beings had lived in harmony with one another and with God. The monastic movement spread more rapidly, demonstrating a widespread hunger for an alternative to a Christianity that was increasingly tainted by imperial associations. By the end of the fifth century, tens of thousands of monks were living beside the Nile and in the deserts of Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Armenia. 48 They had, wrote Athanasius, created a spiritual city in the wilderness that was the antithesis of the worldly city, supported by taxation, oppression, and military aggression. 49 Instead of creating an aristocracy that lived off the labor of others, monks were self-sufficient and existed at subsistence level, and whatever surplus they produced, they gave to the poor. Instead of the Pax Romana enforced by martial violence, they cultivated hesychia and systematically rid their minds of anger, violence, and hatred. Like Constantine, Antony was venerated by many as epigeios theos, a “god on earth,” but he ruled with kindness rather than coercion. 50 The monks were the new “friends of God” whose power had been achieved by a self-effacing lifestyle that had no earthly profit. 51 After the Council of Nicaea, some Christians began to fall out of love with their emperors. They had expected Christian Rome to become a utopia that would somehow eliminate the cruelty and violence of the imperial state, but they found instead that Roman belligerence had infiltrated the Church. Constantine, his son Constantius II (r. 337–61), and their successors continued the struggle for consensus, using force when necessary, and their victims called them “persecutors.” First, it was Athanasius’s “Nicenes” who suffered, but after the Council of Constantinople (381), which made Athanasius’s creed the official faith of the empire, it was the Arians’ turn. There were no formal executions, but people were massacred when soldiers invaded a church to break up a heretical gathering, and increasingly both sides complained far more about their opponents’ violence than about their theology.

• From Between Us

  As individuals from these two Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries, the United States and the Netherlands, we experienced emotions that were different enough that each party judged the other’s emotions negatively, as either “rude” or “fake.” People from the same national cultures arguably would not have condemned them. The emotional differences at first seemed random to me, but over time they gained meaning. I came to understand these emotional differences as serving divergent relationship goals. Pleasant emotions that would be appropriate in the Dutch context prioritize the connection between equals. At the end of a dinner party (or throughout, actually), you would emphasize the connectedness between people, referring to the get-together as gezellig, a Dutch word that has become a collector’s item of culture-specific emotion words. Derived from the word for “friend” (gezel), gezellig describes both the physical circumstances—being snug in a warm and homely place surrounded by good friends (it is impossible to be gezellig alone)—and an emotional state of feeling “held” and “comfortable.” Stressing the connection is prioritized over acknowledging the host’s efforts. In U.S. contexts, by contrast, appropriate positive emotions often prioritize the articulation of the unique efforts, talents, and contributions of another person. Friends and acquaintances contribute to each other’s sense of value or self-esteem. When my son’s teacher told my mom she was being appreciated as a grandmother, she emphasized that my mom was special to her grandchildren—a domain over which she could claim to have some authority, being the teacher of my son. This is not fake at all: it is just a feeling that comes from a focus on those features or accomplishments that would give the other person reason to feel good about themselves. You are a wonderful grandmother, or in the case of my colleague, your talk had some really novel ideas (“is brilliant”). In America, you praise and acknowledge each other whenever you can. This too could not be more different from the Dutch context, where no one should feel or act any better than another person. No worse, but certainly no better either, than another person. My mom used to tell me “that acting normal would be crazy enough,” usually in response to me doing something that—in her eyes—caught too much attention. Nobody should stand out. When I asked my mom, growing up, if she considered me pretty (hoping she would say yes, I guess), she answered: “I think you are about average.” She was telling me the truth, both grounding me and providing “real connection” between her and me.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  We visited one another in form, and mimicked, as near as we could, all the miseries, the follies, and impertinencies of the women in quality, in the round of which they trifle away their time, without it ever entering their little heads, that on earth there cannot subsist any thing more silly, more flat, more insipid and worthless, than, generally considered, their system of life is: they ought to treat the men as their tyrants, indeed! were they to condemn them to it. But though, amongst the kept mistresses (and I was now acquainted with a good many, besides some useful matrons, who live by their connexions with them), I hardly knew one that did not perfectly detest their keepers, and, of course, made little or no scruple of any infidelity they could safely accomplish, I had still no notion of wronging mine: for, besides that no mark of jealousy on his side started me the hint, or gave me the provocation to play him a trick of that sort, and that his constant generosity, politeness, and tender attention to please me, forced a regard to him, that, without affecting my heart, insured him my fidelity, no object had yet presented that could overcome the habitual liking I had contracted for him and I was on the eve of obtaining, from the movements of his own voluntary generosity, a modest provision for life, when an accident happened which broke all the measures he had resolved upon in my favour. I had now lived near seven months with Mr. H.... when one day returning to my lodgings, from a visit in the neighbourhood, where I used to stay longer, I found the street door open, and the maid of the house standing at it, talking with some of her acquaintance, so that I came in without knocking and, as I passed by, she told me Mr. H.... was above. I slept up stairs into my own bed-chamber, with no other thought than of pulling off my hat etc., and then to wait upon him in the dining room, into which my bed-chamber had a door, as is common enough. Whilst I was untying my hat strings, I fancied I heard my maid Hannah’s voice and a sort of tustle, which raised my curiosity; I stole softly to the door, where a knot in the wood had been slipped out, and afforded a very commanding peep-hole to the scene then in agitation, the actors of which had been to earnestly employed to hear my opening my own door, from the landing place of the stairs, into my bedchamber. The first sight that struck me was Mr.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Pressed to subscribe her contingent, she smiled, blushed a little, and thus complied with our desires: “My father was neither better nor worse than a miller near the city of York; and both he and my mother dying whilst I was an infant, I fell under the care of a widow and childless aunt, housekeeper to my lord N..., at his seat in the county of..., where she brought me up with all imaginable tenderness. I was not seventeen, as I am not now eighteen, before I had, on account of my person purely (for fortune I had notoriously none), several advantageous proposals; but whether nature was slow in making me sensible in her favourite passion, or that I had not seen any of the other sex who had stirred up the least emotion or curiosity to be better acquainted with it, I had, till that age, preserved a perfect innocence, even of thought: whilst my fears of I did not now well know what, made me no more desirous of marrying than of dying. My aunt, good woman, favoured my timorousness, which she looked on as childish affection, that her own experience might probably assure her would wear off in time, and gave my suitors proper answers for me. “The family had not been down at that seat for years, so that it was neglected, and committed entirely to my aunt, and two old domestics to take care of it. Thus I had the full range of a spacious lonely house and gardens, situated at about half a mile distance from any other habitation, except, perhaps, a straggling cottage or so. “Here, in tranquillity and innocence, I grew up without any memorable accident, till one fatal day I had, as I had often done before, left my aunt asleep, and secure for some hours, after dinner; and resorting to a kind of ancient summer house, at some distance from the house, I carried my work with me, and sat over a rivulet, which its door and window faced upon.

• From Between Us

  Emotions involve interruptions of life as usual: things happen that threaten or interfere with the person’s expectations, plans, and goals. Hasham in the Egyptian Bedouin was the recognition of a threat to their honor—for instance, for women encountering men. Hasham also meant to do anything to restore honor—for instance, by trying to hide, or by looking down. Alternatively, things may go exceptionally well and be of high relevance to a person’s expectations, plans, and goals. For instance, when I find myself perfectly in sync with others. Gezellig would describe an evening with friends when everybody seems attuned; it consists of further engaging with my friends, and settling where I am. What we call pleasant emotions usually involve the novel, the out-of-the-ordinary, the nearing of an ideal, the desired. Emotions are about important and personally meaningful events that are out of the ordinary, and they consist of meaning making as well as a reorientation, a preparation for action, or a realignment to those extraordinary events. Where does this definition leave the body? Everything psychological comes with bodily changes. Furthermore, by definition, emotional events require adaptation, reorientation, preparation for action, and realignment in the face of out-of-the-ordinary and relevant events, and they will recruit many body processes, often acutely. When I am preparing to resist or fight, as in some instances of anger, my muscles tense and my jaws clench. These bodily changes may themselves become part of our conscious experience within an emotional situation. Whether these bodily changes become part of the emotional experience may depend on your culture. When someone cuts me in line, my tensing muscles may be part of how I experience my anger, but it is equally possible that my conscious experience foregrounds the social implications of the event. I may experience that they are bullying me, and I am not going to let them take advantage of me; my focus may not be on bodily changes at all (more on this in chapter 2). The example makes clear that this definition of emotions as meaning making, reorientation, preparation for action, or a realignment does not leave the body out, but implicates it. Yet, bodily changes may or may not be center stage to emotions as they play out in our everyday interactions.

• From Between Us

  Her mother tells her she should have cleaned up her stuff before her brother had a chance to touch it. Her father comes into the room, tells Wenwen to calm down. He takes her little brother out of the room, but Wenwen is still whining, upon which her mom says, “I am not gonna care for you if you keep crying.” Here too, the norm is to be calm rather than emotional. But why would anybody want to be just calm? The Nso mothers in Heidi Keller’s research summarized it well: a calm child allows you to work, and others can take care of a calm kid. A calm child, in other words, easily adjusts to their environment. This is Jeanne Tsai’s theory as well: calmness is a preferred emotion in a culture that expects you to put the group’s needs above your own. It allows you to pay attention to what others want, do, or say. It allows you generally to observe the flow and follow it. In contrast, excitement (and movement generally) is more desirable in a culture that expects you to take control of your environment. It allows you to act first and influence others. Being a good experimental psychologist, Tsai tested whether her predictions would work in the lab. If she created a condition in which one participant influenced the other, would that participant seek to be more excited? And if she put a participant in a position in which they followed the other person, would this adjuster want to feel more calm? The short answer: Yes. Tsai asked pairs of students to come to the lab and perform a dyadic card sorting task. Both students received an unsorted stack of cards; the cards displayed unique figures. One student was instructed to be the influencer, and described each card one by one so that their partner could put their cards in the same order. The other student, the adjuster was asked to “get into the mindset” of their partner, and to sort their cards in the same order as the influencer’s pile. As Tsai predicted, influencers did in fact want to be more excited, and adjusters more calm. German mothers wanted their children to be emotionally expressive, because they hoped their children would grow up to confidently express their own preferences, and develop their personal talents; Nso mothers wanted their children to be calm, because their goal was to raise children who respect older people, obey their parents, and maintain social harmony. Similarly, Taiwanese parents admonished their toddlers to be calm rather than crying, and to adjust to (or prevent) undesirable events. In each context, children’s emotions were socialized to become socially valued adults in their cultures: autonomous movers or related adjusters.

• From Between Us

  Doesn’t the human body prepare us for emotions? It does and it doesn’t. Our brains and bodies do not come pre-wired for certain emotions, but they do prepare us each to have emotions that maximally serve us in our respective social and material lives—emotions that are adjusted to our communities and cultures. In the most up-to-date science, nature is no longer contrasted with nurture: it is equipped for nurture. Our brains are dynamically wired through our experiences in specific social and cultural contexts, and this brain plasticity allows us to live in particular communities. It is our nature to be social—to make meanings and act with others in our social world. The wiring of emotions happens through experience and learning. Different experiences make for different emotions, and so a firm definition that fits the wide range of variation is out of reach, at least for now. And yet, the outlines of the domain of interest are clear. Emotions involve interruptions of life as usual: things happen that threaten or interfere with the person’s expectations, plans, and goals. Hasham in the Egyptian Bedouin was the recognition of a threat to their honor—for instance, for women encountering men. Hasham also meant to do anything to restore honor—for instance, by trying to hide, or by looking down. Alternatively, things may go exceptionally well and be of high relevance to a person’s expectations, plans, and goals. For instance, when I find myself perfectly in sync with others. Gezellig would describe an evening with friends when everybody seems attuned; it consists of further engaging with my friends, and settling where I am. What we call pleasant emotions usually involve the novel, the out-of-the-ordinary, the nearing of an ideal, the desired. Emotions are about important and personally meaningful events that are out of the ordinary, and they consist of meaning making as well as a reorientation, a preparation for action, or a realignment to those extraordinary events. Where does this definition leave the body? Everything psychological comes with bodily changes. Furthermore, by definition, emotional events require adaptation, reorientation, preparation for action, and realignment in the face of out-of-the-ordinary and relevant events, and they will recruit many body processes, often acutely. When I am preparing to resist or fight, as in some instances of anger, my muscles tense and my jaws clench. These bodily changes may themselves become part of our conscious experience within an emotional situation. Whether these bodily changes become part of the emotional experience may depend on your culture. When someone cuts me in line, my tensing muscles may be part of how I experience my anger, but it is equally possible that my conscious experience foregrounds the social implications of the event.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The bedrock message of the Quran was not a new abstruse doctrine, such as had riven Byzantium, but simply a “reminder” of what constituted a just society that challenged the structural violence emerging in Mecca: that it was wrong to build a private fortune but good to share your wealth with the poor and vulnerable, who must be treated with equity and respect. The Muslims formed an ummah, a “community” that provided an alternative to the greed and systemic injustice of Meccan capitalism. Eventually the religion of Muhammad’s followers would be called islam, because it demanded that individuals “surrender” their whole being to Allah; a muslim was simply a man or woman who had made that surrender. At first, though, the new faith was called tazakka, which can be roughly translated as “refinement.”9 Instead of hoarding their wealth and ignoring the plight of the poor, Muslims were exhorted to take responsibility for one another and feed the destitute, even when they were hungry themselves.10 They traded the irascibility of jahiliyyah for the traditional Arab virtue of hilm—forbearance, patience, and mercy.11 By caring for the vulnerable, freeing slaves, and performing small acts of kindness on a daily, even hourly basis, they believed that they would gradually acquire a responsible, compassionate spirit and purge themselves of selfishness. Unlike the tribesmen, who retaliated violently at the slightest provocation, Muslims must not strike back but leave revenge to Allah,12 consistently treating all others with gentleness and courtesy.13 Socially, the surrender of islam would be realized by learning to live in a community: believers would discover their deep bond with other human beings, whom they would strive to treat as they would wish to be treated themselves. “Not one of you can be a believer,” Muhammad is reported to have said, “unless he desires for his neighbor what he desires for himself.” At first the Meccan establishment took little notice of the ummah, but when Muhammad began to emphasize the monotheism of his message, they became alarmed, for commercial rather than theological reasons. An outright rejection of the local deities would be bad for business and alienate the tribes who kept their totems around the Kabah and came specifically to visit them during the hajj. A serious rift now developed: Muslims were attacked; the ummah, still only a small segment of the Quraysh, was economically and socially ostracized; and Muhammad’s life was in jeopardy. When Arabs from Yathrib, an agrarian colony some 250 miles to the north, invited the ummah to settle with them, it seemed the only solution. In 622, therefore, some seventy Muslim families left their homes for the oasis that would become known as al-Madinat, or Medina, the City of the Prophet.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say. We both stopped messing with the keypad the day I spilled all that nonsense about Adam and Eve. “Maybe we should get back to breaking out of here,” I say. Then I run back to the bathroom and throw up. Later as I lie in my bed, still green-faced and queasy, I decide not to try to help anymore. It’s not my forte. I want to be left alone, I should therefore leave others alone. We pick up our code breaking again, for lack of anything else to do. To stave off boredom I try my hand at reading again. It doesn’t work; I have kidnapped ADD. I like the feel of paper beneath my fingertips. The sound a page makes when it turns over. So I don’t see the words, but I touch the pages and turn them until I’ve finished the book. Isaac sees me doing it one day, and laughs at me. “Why don’t you just read the book?” he asks. “I can’t focus. I want to, but I can’t.” He comes over and takes it from my hands. The sofa yields as he sits down next to me and opens it to the first page. He’s sitting so close our legs are touching. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. I close my eyes and listen to his voice. When he reads the words, “I was destined to be unlucky in life…” my eyes shoot open. I want to say Jinx. Maybe I’ll like David Copperfield after all. This isn’t the first time Isaac’s read to me. The last time was under very different circumstances. Very different and very much the same. He reads until his voice becomes hoarse. Then I take the book from him and read until mine gives, too. We mark the spot and set it down until tomorrow. [image file=image10.jpg] Nothing happens for weeks. We develop a routine, if you can call it that. It’s more of a day-to-day stay sane and survive kind of thing. I call it Sanity Circulation. When you’re caged up you need somewhere to send your hours, or you start getting prickly, like when you sit in the same position for too long and your legs get pins and needles. Except when you get them in your brain, you’re pretty much on your way to the nuthouse. So we try to circulate. Or, I do at least. Isaac looks like he’s two blinks away from needing Haloperidol and a padded room. He makes coffee in the morning, that’s consistent. There is a huge sack of coffee beans in the pantry and several industrial sized cans of instant. He uses the beans, saying that when we run out of juice in the generator we can heat water for the instant over the fire. When … not if.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In short, every thing that is generally unamiable in his season of life, was, in him, repaired by so many advantages, that he existed a proof, manifest at least to me, that it is not out of the power of age to please, if it lays out to please, and if, making just allowance, those in that class do not forget, that if must cost them more pains and attention, than what youth, the natural spring-time of joy, stands in need of: as fruits out of season require proportionally more skill and cultivation, to force them. With this gentleman, who took me home soon after our acquaintance commenced, I lived near eight months in which time, my constant complaisance and docility, my attention to deserve his confidence and love, and a conduct, in general, devoid of the least art and founded on my sincere regard and esteem for him, won and attached him so firmly to me, that, after having generously trusted me with a genteel, independent settlement, proceeding to heap marks of affection on me, he appointed me, by an authentic will, his sole heiress and executrix: a disposition which he did not outlive two months, being taken from me by a violent cold that he contracted, as he unadvisedly ran to the window, on an alarm of fire at some streets distant, and stood there naked-breasted, and exposed to the fatal impressions of a damp night air. After acquitting myself of the duty towards my deceased benefactor, and paying him a tribute of un-feigned sorrow, which a little time changed into a most tender, graceful memory of him, which I shall ever retain, I grew somewhat comforted by the prospect that now opened to me, if not of happiness, at least of affluence and independence. I saw myself then in the full bloom and pride of youth (for I was not yet nineteen), actually at the head of so large a fortune, as it would have been even the height of impudence in me to have raised my wishes, much more my hopes to; and that this unexpected elevation did not turn my head, I owed to the pains my benefactor had taken to form and prepare me for it, as I owed his opinion of my management of the vast possessions he left me, to what he had observed of the prudential economy I had learned under Mrs.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  We drink our coffee at the table. Usually in silence, but sometimes Isaac talks to fill the space. I like those days. He tells me about cases that he’s had … difficult surgeries, the patients who lived and ones who didn’t. We eat breakfast after that: oatmeal or powdered eggs. Sometimes crackers with jam spread on them. Then we part ways for a few hours. I go up, he stays down. Usually I use that time to shower and sit in the carousel room. I don’t know why I sit in there except to focus on the bizarre. We switch after that. He comes up to take his shower and I go down to sit for a while in the living room. That’s when I pretend to read the books. We meet up in the kitchen for lunch. We know it’s lunch by our hunger, not by the position of the sun, or by a clock. Tick-tock, tick- tock. Lunch is canned soup or baked beans cooked with hot dogs. Sometimes he defrosts a loaf of bread and we eat that with butter. I clean the dishes. He watches the snow. We drink more coffee, then I go to the attic room to sleep. I don’t know what he does during that time, but when I come downstairs again he’s restless. He wants to talk. I climb up and down the stairs for exercise. Every other day I jog around the house and do sit-ups and push-ups until I feel as if I can’t move. There are a lot of hours between lunch and dinner. Mostly we just wander around from room to room. Dinner is the big event. Isaac makes three things: meat, vegetable and starch. I look forward to his dinners, not just because of the food, but the entertainment as well. I come downstairs early and perch myself on the tablet to watch him cook. Once I asked him to verbalize everything he was doing so I could pretend I was watching a cooking show. He did, only he changed his voice and his accent and spoke in the third person. Isseeec veel sautee zees undetermined meat over ze stove veeth butter and…. Every few days when the mood is lighter I request a different Isaac cook me dinner. My favorite being Rocky Balboa, in which Isaac calls me Adrian and mimics Sylvester Stallone’s awful attempt at a Philly accent. Those are the better nights—little slivers in between the very bad ones. On the bad ones we don’t speak at all. On those days the snow is louder than the kidnapped houseguests.

• From Between Us

  I think laughing is healthy. Keller tells us that German middle-class babies and their mothers spend about 80 to 90 percent of their interaction time with face-to-face contact. In many of these situations mothers made eye contact, smiled, and made positive vocalizations. Of course, as much as German mothers value and stimulate positive emotionality, their children sometimes cry too, and even then, the mothers give room to their babies’ emotions. They try to find the reason for the babies crying, and rather than telling them to be calm, they try to find out how the situation needs to be changed or influenced on behalf of the baby. “Don’t you want to lie down anymore? Do you need your pacifier?,” one mother asked her crying baby. The baby cannot yet influence their environment themselves at this point in development, but the mother can help them moving away from the undesirable and towards the desirable circumstances: for example, by picking them up, or giving them their pacifier. In the process, German babies get prepared to be influencers. Nso are not the only adjusters and Germans not the only movers, it seems. When white U.S. preschoolers were asked if they would rather be like a picture of a face with a “big smile,” or like a picture of a face with a “small smile,” almost all of them told Jeanne Tsai, psychologist from Stanford, that they’d prefer to have the big smile. Yet their Taiwanese peers did not have the same preference for big smiles: just as many of them would have preferred the small smile as the big one. Being calm, in other words, was a much more favorable feeling for three- to five-year-old children in Taiwan than in the United States. This greater preference for calm was consistent, regardless of how the question was asked. For instance, when the activity was swimming, the majority of Taiwanese preschool kids preferred sitting and floating on an inner tube over jumping and splashing, but this was not the case for same- aged European American children. Taiwanese children preferred calm over active; European American children did not. Finally, almost all of the European American children found the big smile “happier” than the calm smile, but only about half of the Taiwanese children did; the other half found the calm smile “happier.” In their observations of mother-child interactions in Taiwan, Fung and Chen observed that many toddlers were shamed when they cried. Didi’s mom shamed him the next day for crying when he slipped on the wet floor of the bathroom and fell. “Didi is most annoying, simply loves to cry!” Didi’s sister echoes the sentiment: “Crying devil,” and makes a gesture of shame. Another toddler, Wenwen (three and one-half years old) sits down and sobs when her younger brother destroys her artwork.

• From Between Us

  Gezellig too would require more than one word to translate into English. It combines aspects of the situation—the fireplace, a living room, some hot drinks, a couch—and feelings of closeness to others, security, and relaxation. Having been trained as a psychologist, I might not list it as an emotion, but my Dutch respondents many years ago did. Amae is a final example of a culture-specific emotion. It refers to one’s “inclination to depend on or accept another’s nurturant indulgence, including one’s dependency wish, typically applied to the mother-child relationship”: the mother represents authority but at the same time acts as a servant. In an amae relationship, the dependent partner fully submits to the nurturing partner, giving up control; the nurturing partner is focused on meeting the needs of the dependent partner, without ever judging these needs; they just empathize. Receiving amae (i.e., being the dependent partner) is a bit like letting yourself fall backwards trusting that others will catch you: the nurturing partner catches the trusting, dependent one. Amae is so ingrained as an emotion concept in Japan that when Japanese psychiatrist Takeo Doi told one of his colleagues that there was no translation for this word in English, the colleague responded in astonishment: “Why, even puppies do it!” Leaving out these central emotion words in other languages may have led to an underestimation of the cultural differences in emotion lexicons as well. As illustrated by Doi’s astonished colleague, these words are at the very basis of emotional experience in other cultures, but were not in the list included in the Science article as they did not make it to the WEIRD agendas of emotion researchers. Emotion words play an important role in the socialization of emotions. Although emotion concepts are not limited to a word, emotion lexicons are good starting places to look for cultural differences in emotions. All we know points to the conclusion that different languages conceptualize the emotion domain differently. The category of emotion itself is differently understood across cultures, but moreover, emotion lexicons from different languages do not neatly map. This is one of the reasons that children in different cultures do not come to understand emotions in similar ways. Cultural Episodes

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I was now so bruised, so battered, so spent with this overmatch, that I could hardly stir, or raise myself, but lay palpitating, till the ferment of my senses subsiding by degrees, and the hour striking at which I was obliged to dispatch my young man, I tenderly advised him of the necessity there was for parting; at which I felt so much displeasure as he could do, who seemed eagerly disposed to keep the field, and to enter on a fresh action. But the danger was too great, and after some hearty kisses of leave, and recommendations of secrecy and discretion, I forced myself to send him away, not without assurances of seeing him again, to the same purpose, as soon as possible, and thrust a guinea into his hands: not more, less, being too flush of money, a suspicion or discovery might arise from thence; having everything to fear from the dangerous indiscretion of that age in which young fellows would be too irresistible, too charming, if we had not that terrible fault to guard against. Giddy and intoxicated as I was with such satiating draughts of pleasure, I still lay on the couch, supinely stretched out, in a delicious languor diffused over all my limbs, hugging myself for being thus revenged to my heart’s content, and that in a manner so precisely alike, and on the identical spot in which I had received the supposed injury. No reflections on the consequences ever once perplexed me, nor did I make myself one single reproach for having, by this step, completely entered myself into a profession more decried than disused. I should have held it ingratitude to the pleasure I had received, to have repented of it; and since I was now over the bar, I thought, by plunging head and ears into the stream I was hurried away by, to drown all sense of shame or reflection. Whilst I was thus making these laudable dispositions, and whispering to myself a kind of tacit vow of incontinency, enters Mr. H... The consciousness of what I had been doing deepened yet the glowing of my cheeks, flushed with the warmth of the late action, which, joined to the piquant air of my dishabile, drew from Mr.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In the mean time, if I may judge from my own experience, none are better paid, or better treated, during their reign, than the mistress of those who, enervate by nature, debaucheries, or age, have the least employment for the sex: sensible that a woman must be satisfied some way, they ply her with a thousand little tender attentions, presents, caresses, confidences, and exhaust their inventions in means and devices to make up for the capital deficiency; and even towards lessening that, what arts, what modes, what refinements of pleasure have they not recourse to, to raise their languid powers, and press nature into the service of their sensuality? But here is their misfortune, that when by a course of teasing, worrying, handling, wanton postures, lascivious motions, they have at length accomplished a flashy enervate enjoyment, they at the same time light up a flame in the object of their passion, that, not having the means themselves to quench, drives her for relief into the next person’s arms, who can finish their work; and thus they become bawds to some favourite, tried and approved of, for a more vigorous and satisfactory execution; for with women, of our turn especially, however well our hearts may be disposed, there is a controlling part, or queen-seat in us, that governs itself by its own maxims of state, amongst which not one is stronger, in practice with it, than, in the matter of is dues, never to accept the will for the deed. Mr. Norbert, who was much in this ungracious case, though he professed to like me extremely, could but seldom consummate the main-joy itself with me, without such a length and variety of preparations, as were at once wearisome and inflammatory.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But Mrs. Cole, in opposition to this, assured me, “that the gentlemen I should be presented to were, by their rank and taste of things, infinitely superior to the being touched with any glare of dress or ornaments, such slick women rather confound and overlay than set off their beauty with; that these veteran voluptuaries knew better than not to hold them in the highest contempt: they with whom the pure native charms alone could pass current, and who would at any time leave a sallow, washy, painted duchess on her own hands, for a ruddy, healthy firm fleshed country maid; and as for my part, that nature had done enough for me, to set me above owing the least favour to art;” concluding withal, that for the instant occasion, there was no dress like an undress. I thought my governess too good a judge of these matters, not to be easily overruled by her: after which she went on preaching very pathetically the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance to all those arbitrary tastes of pleasure, which are by some styled the refinements, and by others the depravations of it; between whom it was not the business of a simple girl, who was to profit by pleasing, to decide, but to conform to. Whilst I was edifying by these wholesome lessons, tea was brought in, and the young ladies, returning, joined company with us. After a great deal of mixed chat, frolic and humour, one of them, observing that there would be a good deal of time on and before the assembly hour, proposed that each girl should entertain the company with that critical period of her personal history, in which she first exchanged the maiden state for womanhood. The proposal was approved, with only one restriction of Mrs. Cole, that she, on account of her age, and I, on account of my titular maidenhead, should be excused, at least till I had undergone the forms of the house. This obtained me a dispensation, and the promotress of this amusement was desired to begin.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Ramon said that it was better to buy flowers from him: ‘I cut fresh from the garden when you want,’ he coaxed gently. He spoke even his broken English with the soft, rather sing-song drawl of the local peasants. ‘But aren’t they our flowers?’ inquired Mary, surprised. Ramon shook his head: ‘Yours to see, yours to touch, but not yours to take, only mine to take—I sell them as part of my little payment. But to you I sell very cheap, Señorita, because you resemble the santa noche that makes our gardens smell sweet at night. I will show you our beautiful santa noche.’ He was thin as a lath and as brown as a chestnut, and his shirt was quite incredibly dirty; but when he walked he moved like a king on his rough bare feet with their broken toe-nails. ‘This evening I make you a present of my flowers; I bring you a very big bunch of tabachero,’ he remarked. ‘Oh, you mustn’t do that,’ protested Mary, getting out her purse. But Ramon looked offended: ‘I have said it. I give you the tabachero.’ 3Their dinner consisted of a local fish fried in oil—the fish had a very strange figure, and the oil, Stephen thought, tasted slightly rancid; there was also a small though muscular chicken. But Concha had provided large baskets of fruit; loquats still warm from the tree that bred them, the full flavoured little indigenous bananas, oranges sweet as though dripping honey, custard apples and guavas had Concha provided, together with a bottle of the soft yellow wine so dearly beloved of the island Spaniards. Outside in the garden there was luminous darkness. The night had a quality of glory about it, the blue glory peculiar to Africa and seen seldom or never in our more placid climate. A warm breeze stirred the eucalyptus trees and their crude, harsh smell was persistently mingled with the thick scents of heliotrope and datura, with the sweet but melancholy scent of jasmine, with the faint, unmistakable odour of cypress. Stephen lit a cigarette: ‘Shall we go out, Mary?’ They stood for a minute looking up at the stars, so much larger and brighter than stars seen in England. From a pond on the farther side of the villa, came the queer, hoarse chirping of innumerable frogs singing their prehistoric love songs. A star fell, shooting swiftly earthward through the darkness.

• From Between Us

  A centuries-old story in Daoism is about the way the legendary Daygu managed a flood. Daygu did not try to stop the water; he did not build dikes as my Dutch ancestors did. Rather, he yielded to the natural force of the water, redirecting the flow by dredging new channels. He “adjusted to the flow” of the water. Psychologist Jeanne Tsai has found that calm and connected emotions are valued in many East Asian contexts. Hong Kong Chinese, and even Chinese Americans, reported that they would “ideally” like to feel calm, at rest, relaxed, and serene rather than the excited kinds of happiness, and these preferred feelings were related to their actual feelings. How do we know that this calm happiness relates to “adjusting to the flow”? In the same experimental task where some participants became influencers, Tsai told other participants that they would become “matchers.” The leader decided on the order of twelve tangram cards (cards with different geometrical figures), and the matcher tried to put the cards in the same order as the leader. A matcher’s task was to closely follow the instructions of the leader while trying “to think about the Leader’s frame of mind.” Matchers across cultures preferred to be calm and connected over energetic emotions. Calm and connected emotions presumably helped them be oriented to the leader, and adjust to their flow. Everyday East Asian practices produce calm happiness. Much like the Cameroon mothers described in chapter 3, Japanese and Chinese mothers soothe and quiet their babies, by rocking them, lulling them, having constant body contact, and producing soothing vocalizations. Bestselling children’s books in Taiwan (for ages four to eight) show many more protagonists with calm smiles and fewer protagonists with excited smiles than bestselling children’s books in the United States (for a similar age range). Taiwanese children’s books also describe fewer arousing activities than American storybooks. Very early on, children in East Asian contexts prefer calm over excited emotions. When asked which smile was happier, a calm or an excited smile, preschool children in Taiwan pointed to the calm smile. “Calm happiness” remains favorite among adults too. I still remember having an excellent dinner with my friend Mayumi Karasawa when she closed her eyes and seemed to doze off, all the while saying, “It is so good!” I had to remind myself that being completely relaxed was good, and not the result of my failure to entertain her in spirited conversation. The goal was calm, yes even sleepy, happiness—not energized excitement.

• From Between Us

  At the end of a dinner party (or throughout, actually), you would emphasize the connectedness between people, referring to the get-together as gezellig , a Dutch word that has become a collector’s item of culture-specific emotion words. Derived from the word for “friend” ( gezel ), gezellig describes both the physical circumstances—being snug in a warm and homely place surrounded by good friends (it is impossible to be gezellig alone)—and an emotional state of feeling “held” and “comfortable.” Stressing the connection is prioritized over acknowledging the host’s efforts. In U.S. contexts, by contrast, appropriate positive emotions often prioritize the articulation of the unique efforts, talents, and contributions of another person. Friends and acquaintances contribute to each other’s sense of value or self-esteem. When my son’s teacher told my mom she was being appreciated as a grandmother, she emphasized that my mom was special to her grandchildren—a domain over which she could claim to have some authority, being the teacher of my son. This is not fake at all: it is just a feeling that comes from a focus on those features or accomplishments that would give the other person reason to feel good about themselves. You are a wonderful grandmother, or in the case of my colleague, your talk had some really novel ideas (“is brilliant”). In America, you praise and acknowledge each other whenever you can. This too could not be more different from the Dutch context, where no one should feel or act any better than another person. No worse, but certainly no better either, than another person. My mom used to tell me “that acting normal would be crazy enough,” usually in response to me doing something that—in her eyes—caught too much attention. Nobody should stand out. When I asked my mom, growing up, if she considered me pretty (hoping she would say yes, I guess), she answered: “I think you are about average.” She was telling me the truth, both grounding me and providing “real connection” between her and me. Differences also show in unpleasant emotions. In the Netherlands, one way of making connection is to speak your mind. It is no coincidence, then, that Dutch people are known to be direct. To be able to identify and express your true feelings (and opinions) is considered both a virtue and a sign of maturity. Rather than making you feel special, a true friend tells you what they feel (about you), whether positive or negative. They say, “You are wrong about that” or “This does not look good on you.” You confront each other with the truth, even if the truth might not always be easy to hear. Being told the truth is always better than not, because it underlines that you have a relationship, as opposed to not. White lies are less acceptable in the Dutch context: They are not taken to mean that you protect your friend or relative, as they clearly are to some of my American friends.