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 On Beauty (2005)

  absolutely, and you know, we really need to thank you for helping Jerome with a place to stay in London – it was so generous of you. His hour of need and everything. I was so sad that everything got polluted by – ’ ‘I love a line from a poem: There is such a shelter in each other . I think it is so fine . Don’t you think it’s a wonderful thing?’ Kiki was left with her mouth open at being interrupted thus. ‘Is it – which poet is it?’ ‘Oh, I would not actually know that for myself . . . Monty is the intellectual in our family. I have no talent for ideas or memory  On Beauty for names. I read it in a newspaper, that’s all. You’re an intellectual too?’ And this was possibly the most important question Wellington had never honestly asked Kiki. ‘No, actually . . . No, I’m not. I’m really not.’ ‘Neither am I. But I do love poetry. Everything I cannot say and I never hear said. The bit I cannot touch?’ Kiki could not tell at first what kind of question this was or whether she was meant to answer it, but a moment’s pause proved it rhetorical. ‘I find that bit in poems,’ said Mrs Kipps. ‘I did not read a poem for years and years – I preferred biographies. And then I read one last year. Now I can’t stop!’ ‘God, that’s great. I just never get a chance to read any more. I used to read a lot of Angelou – do you read her? That’s autobiogra-phy, isn’t it? I always found her very . . .’ Kiki stopped. The same thing that had distracted Mrs Kipps distracted her. Just passing by the gate five white teenage girls, barely dressed, were going by. They had rolled-up towels under their arms and wet hair, stuck together in long sopping ropes, like the Medusa. They were all speaking at once. ‘ There is such a shelter in each other ,’ repeated Mrs Kipps, as the noise grew fainter, ‘Montague says poetry is the first mark of the truly civilized. He is always saying wonderful things like that.’ Kiki, who did not think this especially wonderful, stayed quiet. ‘And when I told him this line, from the poem – ’ ‘Yes, the poem line.’ ‘Yes. When I spoke it to him, he said that that was all very well but I should place it on a scale – a scale of judgement – and on the other side of the scale I should place L’enfer, c’est les autres . And then see which had more weight in the world!’ She laughed for some time at this, a sprightly laugh, more youthful than her speaking voice. Kiki smiled helplessly. She did not speak French. ‘I’m so glad we’ve met properly,’ said Mrs Kipps, with real fondness.  kipps and belsey Kiki was touched. ‘Oh, that’s very sweet.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  The Kippses aren’t under any obligation to me , but they asked and I accepted – gratefully. I’ve been in their place a week now, and still no mention of any rent, which should tell you something. I know you want me to tell you it’s a nightmare, but I can’t – I love living here. It’s a different universe. The house is just wow – early Victorian, a ‘terrace’ – unassuming-looking outside but  On Beauty massive inside – but there’s still a kind of humility that really appeals to me – almost everything white, and a lot of handmade things, and quilts and dark wood shelves and cornices and this four-storey staircase – and in the whole place there’s only one television, which is in the basement anyway, just so Monty can keep abreast of news stuff, and some of the things he does on the television – but that’s it. I think of it as the negativized image of our house sometimes . . . It’s in this bit of North London called ‘Kilburn’, which sounds bucolic, but boy oh boy is not bucolic in the least, except for this street we live on off the ‘high road’, and it’s suddenly like you can’t hear a thing and you can just sit in the yard in the shadow of this huge tree – eighty feet tall and ivy-ed all up the trunk . . . reading and feeling like you’re in a novel . . . Fall’s different here – much less intense and trees balder earlier – everything more melancholy somehow. The family are another thing again – they deserve more space and time than I have right now (I’m writing this on my lunch hour). But, in brief: one boy, Michael, nice, sporty. A little dull, I guess. You’d think he was, anyway. He’s a business guy – exactly what business I haven’t been able to figure out. And he’s huge! He’s got two inches on you, at least. They’re all big in that athletic, Caribbean way. He must be 6Ј 5Љ. There’s also a very tall and beautiful daughter, Victoria, who I’ve seen only in photos (she’s inter-railing in Europe), but she’s coming back for a while on Friday, I think. Monty’s wife, Carlene – perfect. She’s not from Trinidad, though – it’s a small island, St something or other – I’m not sure.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  As it turns out, people spend at least half their waking hours simulating rather than paying attention to the world around them, and this pure simulation strongly drives their feelings. 33 When it comes to managing your body budget, your brain does not have to go it alone. Other people regulate your body budget too. When you interact with your friends, parents, children, lovers, teammates, therapist, or other close companions, you and they synchronize breathing, heart beats, and other physical signals, leading to tangible benefits. Holding hands with loved ones, or even keeping their photo on your desk at work, reduces activation in your body-budgeting regions and makes you less bothered by pain. If you’re standing at the bottom of a hill with friends, it will appear less steep and easier to climb than if you are alone. If you grow up in poverty, a situation that leads to chronic body-budget imbalance and an overactive immune system, these body-budgeting problems are reduced if you have a supportive person in your life. In contrast, when you lose a close, loving relationship and feel physically ill about it, part of the reason is that your loved one is no longer helping to regulate your budget. You feel like you’ve lost a part of yourself because, in a sense, you have. 34 Every person you encounter, every prediction you make, every idea you imagine, and every sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell that you fail to anticipate all have budgetary consequences and corresponding interoceptive predictions. Your brain must contend with this continuous, ever-changing flow of interoceptive sensations from the predictions that keep you alive. Sometimes you’re aware of them, and other times you’re not, but they are always part of your brain’s model of the world. They are, as I’ve said, the scientific basis for simple feelings of pleasure, displeasure, arousal, and calmness that you experience every day. For some, the flow is like the trickle of a tranquil brook. For others, it’s like a raging river. Sometimes the sensations are transformed into emotions, but as you will now learn, even when they’re only in the background, they influence what you do, what you think, and what you perceive. 35 ... When you wake up in the morning, do you feel refreshed or crabby? In the middle of the day, do you feel dragged out or full of energy? Consider how you feel right now. Calm? Interested? Energetic? Bored? Tired? Cranky? These are the simple feelings we discussed at the beginning of the chapter. Scientists call them affect. * Affect is the general sense of feeling that you experience throughout each day.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  After attending to your body budget, the next best thing you can do for emotional health is to beef up your concepts, otherwise known as “becoming more emotionally intelligent.” People with a classical view mindset think about emotional intelligence as “detecting” other people’s emotions “accurately,” or experiencing happiness and avoiding sadness “at the right time.” With our new understanding of emotions, however, we can think about emotional intelligence in a new way. “Happiness” and “Sadness” are each populations of diverse instances. Therefore, emotional intelligence (EI) is about getting your brain to construct the most useful instance of the most useful emotion concept in a given situation. (And also when not to construct emotions but instances of some other concept.) Daniel Goleman, bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence, argues that higher EI leads to greater success in academics, business, and social relationships. “For star performance in all jobs, in every field,” he writes, “emotional competence is twice as important as purely cognitive abilities.” So you might be surprised to hear that science still has no generally accepted definition or measure of EI. Goleman’s books offer a lot of reasonable, practical advice, but they don’t properly explain why his advice works. Their scientific justification is heavily influenced by the outdated “triune brain” model—if you regulate your alleged emotional inner beast effectively, then you’re emotionally intelligent.11 Emotional intelligence is better characterized in terms of concepts. Suppose you knew only two emotion concepts, “Feeling Awesome” and “Feeling Crappy.” Whenever you experienced emotion or perceived someone else as emotional, you could categorize only with this broad brush. Such a person cannot be very emotionally intelligent. In contrast, if you could distinguish finer meanings within “Awesome” (happy, content, thrilled, relaxed, joyful, hopeful, inspired, prideful, adoring, grateful, blissful . . .), and fifty shades of “Crappy” (angry, aggravated, alarmed, spiteful, grumpy, remorseful, gloomy, mortified, uneasy, dread-ridden, resentful, afraid, envious, woeful, melancholy . . .), your brain would have many more options for predicting, categorizing, and perceiving emotion, providing you with the tools for more flexible and functional responses. You could predict and categorize your sensations more efficiently, and better tailor your actions to your environment. What I’m describing is emotional granularity, the phenomenon (described in chapter 1) that some people construct finer-grained emotional experiences than others do. People who make highly granular experiences are emotion experts: they issue predictions and construct instances of emotion that are finely tailored to fit each specific situation. At the other end of the spectrum, there are young children who haven’t yet developed adult-like emotion concepts, and who use “sad” and “mad” interchangeably to mean feeling unpleasant (as we discussed in chapter 5). My lab has shown that adults run the whole range from low to high emotional granularity. So, a key to EI is to gain new emotion concepts and hone your existing ones.12

• From On Beauty (2005)

  She tucked her tiny body into a cleft of Warren’s. Photographs elongated her, making her appear long and wiry, but in life this American poet was only five foot one and physically prepubescent, even now, at fifty-four. She was neatly made with the minimum of material. When she moved a finger, you could trace the motion through pulleys of veins that went all the way up her slender arms and shoulders to her neck, itself elegantly creased like the lungs of an accordion. Her elfin head with its inch of closely cropped brown  On Beauty hair fitted neatly into her lover’s hand. To Kiki they looked very happy – but what did that mean? Wellington couples had a talent for looking happy. ‘Incredible day, isn’t it? We got back a week ago and it’s hotter here than it was there. The sun is a lemon today, it is . It’s like a huge lemon-drop. God , it’s incredible,’ said Claire, as Warren softly palpated the back of her skull. She was babbling a little; it always took her a minute or two to settle. Claire had been at graduate school with Howard, and Kiki had known her thirty years, but never had she felt that they knew each other well. They did not quite gel as friends. There was a part of Kiki that felt every meeting with Claire was like the first time all over again. ‘And you look marvellous!’ cried Claire now. ‘It’s so good to see you. What an outfit! It’s like a sunset – the red, the yellow, the orangey-brown – Keeks, you’re setting .’ ‘Honey,’ said Kiki, moving her head from side to side in a manner she understood white people enjoyed, ‘I done set already .’ Claire made the jangle sound of laughter. Not for the first time, Kiki noted the implacable intelligence of her eyes, the way they did not indulge in the natural release of the act. ‘Come on, walk with us,’ said Claire plaintively, putting Warren between herself and Kiki, as if he were their child. It was a strange way to walk – it meant they had to talk to each other over Warren’s body. ‘OK – we got to keep an eye out for Jerome, though – he’s about.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Warren had clearly joined the list of things of which Claire approved – therefore they wanted him. A circle of strange young anthropologists Howard didn’t think he knew remained in the kitchen all night, hovering by the food, fearful of going anywhere where there was not an abundance of props – glasses, bottles, canapeś – with which to fiddle. Howard left them to it and adjourned to the garden. He walked the rim of the pool, happily holding on to his empty glass, as the summer moon passed behind blushing clouds and all about rose the agreeable animal sound of outdoor conversation. ‘Strange date for it, though,’ he heard somebody say. And then the usual response: ‘Oh, I think it’s a wonderful date for a party. You know it’s their actual anniversary, so . . . And if we don’t reclaim the day, you know . . . then it’s like they’ve won. It’s a reclaiming, absolutely.’ This was the most popular conversation of the night. Howard had had it himself at least four times since the clock struck ten and the wine really kicked in. Before that no one liked to mention it. Every twenty seconds or so, Howard admired a pair of feet as they thrust up through the skin of the water; the curved back that  On Beauty followed, and then the slim brown form in the water doing another speedy, almost silent lap. Levi had evidently decided that if he must stay at this party, he might as well get a work-out. Howard could not figure out exactly how long Levi’d been in the pool, but, as his own speech had ended and the applause faded, everyone had noticed at the same time that there was a lone swimmer, and then almost everyone had asked their neighbour whether they recalled Cheever’s story. Academics lack range. ‘I should have brought my swimsuit,’ Howard had overhead Claire Malcolm saying loudly to somebody. ‘And would you have swum if you had?’ came the sensible reply. Without any great urgency, Howard was now looking for Erskine. He wanted Erskine’s opinion on his earlier speech. He sat down on the pretty bench Kiki had installed under their apple tree and looked out on to his party. The wide backs and solid calves of women he didn’t know surrounded him. Friends of Kiki from the hospital, talking among themselves. Nurses, thought Howard definitively, not sexy. And how had his speech gone down with women like this, non-academic, solid, opinionated, Kiki supporters – for that matter, how had it gone down with everyone? It had not been an easy speech to give. It was, in effect, three speeches.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  mentis succuum pulmenta condita vapore mollibat. Unico illi contubernio communem vitam sustinebant meque ad vasa illa compluria gestanda praedes- tinarant, quae domini regiones plusculas pererrantis variis usibus erant necessaria. Adsciscor itaque inter duos illos fratres tertius contubernalis, haud ullo tem- pore tam benivolam fortunam expertus: nam ves- pera, post opiparas cenas earumque splendidissimos apparatus, multas numero partes in cellulam suam mei solebant reportare domini: ille porcorum, pul- lorum, piscium et cuiuscemodi pulmentorum largissi- mas reliquias, hic panes, crustula, lucunculos, hamos, lacertulos et plura scitamenta mellita. Qui cum se refecturi clausa cellula balneas petissent, oblatis ego divinitus dapibus affatim saginabar: nec enim tam stultus eram tamque vere asinus, ut dulcissimis illis relictis cibis cenarem asperrimum faenum. Et diu quidem pulcherrime mibi furatrinae procedebat artificium, quippe adhue timide et satis parce sur- ripienti de tam multis pauciora, nec illis fraudes ullas in asino suspicantibus. At ubi fiducia latendi pleniore capta partes opimas quasque devorabam et iucundiora eligens abligurribam dulcia, suspicio non exilis fratrum pupugit animos et quamquam de me nihil etiam tum tale crederent, tamen cotidiani damni studiose vestigabant reum. Illi vero postremo etiam mutuo sese rapinae turpissimae criminabantur, iam- que curam diligentiorem et acriorem custodelam et dinumerationem adhibebant partium. Tandem deni- que rupta verecundia sic alter alterum compellat : * At istud iam neque aequum ac ne humanum qui- 496 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  When asked how she was feeling, she did not respond with sufficient enthusiasm or say she was “fabulous” or “wonderful.” I once heard her give a talk on her experiences, and I nodded through the entire thing, clapped vigorously at the end, and then walked up to her, gave her a hug, and said “excellent job!” It took me a moment to realize I had just confirmed every one of her observations. 3 3 Batja’s experience is not unique. Our colleague Yulia Chentsova Dutton from Russia says that her cheeks ached for an entire year after moving to the United States because she had never smiled so much. My neighbor Paul Harris, a transplanted emotion researcher from England, has observed how American academics are always excited by scientific puzzles—a high arousal, pleasant feeling—but never merely curious, perplexed, or confused, which are low arousal and fairly neutral experiences that are more familiar to him. In general, Americans prefer high arousal, pleasant states. We smile a lot. We praise, compliment, and encourage each other. We give each other awards for all levels of accomplishment, even “Certificates of Participation.” It seems like every other week there is an awards show on television. I have lost count of how many books on happiness have been published in the United States in the last ten years. We are a culture of positivity. We like to be happy and to celebrate how great we are. 3 4 The more time that Batja spent in America, the more her emotions became attuned to the American context. Her pleasant emotion concepts expanded and became more variable. She became more granular, experiencing the American style of happiness as distinct from satisfaction and contentment. Her brain bootstrapped new concepts for American norms and customs. This process is called emotion acculturation. From a new culture, you acquire new concepts, which translate into new predictions. Using those predictions, you become able to experience and perceive the emotions of your newly adopted home. The scientist who discovered emotion acculturation is, in fact, Batja herself. She found that people’s emotion concepts not only vary from culture to culture but also transform. For example, situations that bring about anger in Belgium, like having your goals blocked by a coworker, in Turkey will also include feelings of (what Americans experience as) guilt, shame, and respect. But for Turkish immigrants in Belgium, their emotional experiences come to look more “Belgian” the longer they live there. 3 5 A brain that is bathed in the situations of a new culture is probably somewhat like an infant’s brain: driven more by prediction error than prediction. Lacking the emotion concepts of the new culture, the immigrant brain soaks up sensory input and builds new concepts. The new emotional patterns don’t replace the old ones, though they may cause interference, as was the case for my research associate Alexandra from Greece whom you met in chapter 5 .

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  It combines existing concepts to create your very first instance of a novel concept of emotion. 44 My friend Batja Mesquita is a Dutch cultural psychologist, and the first time I traveled to visit her in Belgium, she told me that we were sharing the emotion gezellig. Curled up in her living room, sharing wine and chocolates, she explained that this emotion means the comfort, coziness, and togetherness of being at home, with friends and loved ones. Gezellig is not an internal feeling that one person has for another but a way of experiencing oneself in the world. No single word in English describes the experience of gezellig, but once Batja explained it to me, I immediately experienced it. Her use of the word invited me to form a concept as infants do, but through conceptual combination—I automatically employed my concepts of “Close Friend,” “Love,” and “Delight,” with a touch of “Comfort” and “Well-Being.” This translation was not perfect, though, because in my American way of experiencing gezellig, I used emotion concepts that focus more on internal feelings than those that describe the situation. 45 Conceptual combination is a potent capability of the brain. Scientists still debate on the mechanisms responsible for it, but they pretty much agree that it’s a basic function of the conceptual system. It allows you to construct a potentially limitless number of novel concepts from your existing ones. This includes goal-based concepts like “Things That Can Protect You from Stinging Insects,” in which the goal is short-lived. 46 Conceptual combination is powerful, but it is far less efficient than having a word. If you asked me what I had for dinner this evening, I could say “baked dough with tomato sauce and cheese,” but this is much less efficient than saying “pizza.” Strictly speaking, you don’t need an emotion word to construct an instance of that emotion, but it’s easier when you have a word. If you want the concept to be efficient, and you want to transmit the concept to others, then a word is pretty handy. Infants can benefit from this “pizza effect” before they can speak. For example, prelinguistic infants generally can hold about three objects in mind at a time. If you hide toys in a box while an infant watches, she can remember up to three hiding places. However, if you label several toys with a nonsense word like “dax” and several more with “blicket” before hiding them—assigning the toys to categories—the infant can hold up to six objects in mind! This happens even if all six toys are physically identical, strongly suggesting that infants gain the same efficiency benefits from conceptual knowledge that adults do.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  z Is finis nobis et sermonis et itineris communis fuit: nam comites utrique ad villulam proximam laevorsum abierunt. Ego vero quod primum in- gressu stabulum conspicatus sum, accessi, et de quadam anu caupona illico percontor “ Estne" inquam * Hypata haec civitas?" Adnuit. * Nostine Milonem quendam e primoribus?" Arrisit et * Vere" inquit * Primus istic perhibetur Milo, qui extra pomerium et urbem totam colit." “ Remoto " inquam “Toco, parens optima, dic oro et cuiatis sit et quibus deversetur aedibus?" * Videsne " inquit * Extremas fenestras, quae foris urbem prospiciunt et altrinsecus fores proximum respicientes angiportum ? Inibi iste Milo deversatur ampliter nummatus et longe opulentus, verum extremae avaritiae et sordis infimae infamis homo, foenus denique copiosum sub arrabone auri et argenti crebriter exercens, exiguo Lare inclusus et aerugini semper intentus, cum uxorem etiam calamitatis suae comitem habeat, Neque praeter unicam pascit ancillam et habitu mendicantis semper incedit." Ad haec ego risum subicio: * Benigne" inquam * Et prospicue Demeas meus in me consuluit, qui peregrinaturum tali viro conciliavit, in cuius hos- 22 pitio nec fumi nec nidoris nebulam vererer," et cum dicto modico secus progressus ostium accedo et ianuam firmiter oppessulatam pulsare vocaliter incipio, 36 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK I pain at all, not so much by his back, as by mine own ears.” Thus ended both our talk and our journey, for they two turned on the left hand to the next village, and I rode up to the first inn that I saw, and I espied an old woman, of whom I enquired whether that city was called Hypata or no, who answered: “ Yes.” Then I demanded whether she knew one Milo, one of the first men of the city, whereat she laughed, and said : “ Verily it is not without cause that Milo is accounted first in the city, for he dwells altogether without the boundary.” To whom I said again: “I pray thee, good mother, do not mock, but tell me what manner of man he is, and where he dwelleth.” * Marry," quoth she, * Do not you see those bay windows, which on the one side look out upon the city, and the doors on the other side to the next lane: there Milo dwells, very rich both in money and substance, but by reason of his great avarice and covetousness he is evil spoken of, and he is a man that liveth all by usury, and lending his money upon pledges of silver and gold. Moreover he dwelleth in a small house and is ever counting his money, and hath a wife that is a companion of his extreme misery, neither keepeth he any more in his house than one only maid, and he goes apparelled like unto a beggar."

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  39 Western culture has some common wisdom associated with these ideas. Don’t be materialistic. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Sticks and stones. But I am asking you to take this one step further. When you are suffering from some ill or insult that has befallen you, ask yourself: Are you really in jeopardy here? Or is this so-called injury merely threatening the social reality of your self ? The answer will help you recategorize your pounding heartbeat, the knot in the pit of your stomach, and your sweaty brow as purely physical sensations, leaving your worry, anger, and dejection to dissolve like an antacid tablet in water. 40 I’m not saying this kind of recategorization is easy, but with practice it’s possible, and it’s also healthful. When you categorize something as “Not About Me,” it exits your affective niche and has less impact on your body budget. Similarly, when you are successful and feel proud, honored, or gratified, take a step back and remember that these pleasant emotions are entirely the result of social reality, reinforcing your fictional self. Celebrate your achievements but don’t let them become golden handcuffs. A little composure goes a long way. If you are interested in taking this strategy further, try meditation. Mindfulness meditation, just one type of many, teaches you to stay alert and present in the moment but to observe sensations as they come and go, non-judgmentally. * This state (which requires tremendous practice) reminds me of the quiet, alert state of newborn babies when they observe the world, their brains comfortably awash in prediction error, with no anxiety in sight. They experience sensations and release them. Meditation achieves something similar. This state may take years of practice to achieve, so the next best thing is to recategorize your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions as physical sensations, which are easier to let go of. You can use meditation, at least at first, to prioritize categorizations that focus on the physical, and deprioritize those that add more psychological meaning about you or your place in the world. Meditation has a potent effect on brain structure and function, though scientists have not sorted out the exact details yet. Key regions in the interoceptive and control networks are larger for meditators, and connections between these regions are stronger. This matches what we might expect, since the interoceptive network is critical to constructing mental concepts and representing physical sensations from the body, and the control network is critical to regulating categorization. In some studies, we see stronger connections even after only a few hours of training. Other studies find that meditation reduces stress, improves the detection and processing of prediction error, facilitates recategorization (termed “emotion regulation”), and reduces unpleasant affect, although the findings are often inconsistent from one study to the next because not all the experiments have been well-controlled.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  4 The Origin of Feeling Think about the last time you were awash in pleasure. I don’t necessarily mean sexual pleasure but everyday delights: gazing at a vivid sunrise, sipping a cold glass of water when you are hot and sweaty, or enjoying a brief moment of peace at the end of a troubling day. Now contrast this with feeling unpleasant, like the last time you were sick with a cold, or just after an argument with a close friend. Pleasure and displeasure feel qualitatively different. You and I might not agree that a specific object or event produces pleasure or displeasure—I find walnuts delicious whereas my husband calls them an offense against nature—but each of us can, in principle, distinguish one from the other. These feelings are universal, even as emotions like happiness and anger are not, and they flow like a current through every waking moment of your life. 1 Simple pleasant and unpleasant feelings come from an ongoing process inside you called interoception. Interoception is your brain’s representation of all sensations from your internal organs and tissues, the hormones in your blood, and your immune system. Think about what’s happening within your body right this second. Your insides are in motion. Your heart sends blood rushing through your veins and arteries. Your lungs fill and empty. Your stomach digests food. This interoceptive activity produces the spectrum of basic feeling from pleasant to unpleasant, from calm to jittery, and even completely neutral. 2 Interoception is in fact one of the core ingredients of emotion, just as flour and water are core ingredients of bread, but these feelings that come from interoception are much simpler than full-blown emotional experiences like joy and sadness. In this chapter, you’ll learn how interoception works, and how it contributes to emotional experiences and perceptions. We’ll need a little background first about the brain in general and how it budgets the energy in your body to keep you alive and well. That will prepare you to understand the gist of interoception, which is the origin of feeling. After that, we’ll discover the unexpected and frankly astonishing influence that interoception has over your thoughts, decisions, and actions every day. Whether you’re a generally calm person, floating unperturbed in a stream of tranquility, unaffected by the vicissitudes of life; a more reactive person awash in a river of agony and ecstasy, easily moved by every little change in your surroundings; or somewhere in between, the science behind interoception, grounded in the wiring of your brain, will help you see yourself in a new light. It also demonstrates that you’re not at the mercy of emotions that arise unbidden to control your behavior. You are an architect of these experiences. Your river of feelings might feel like it’s flowing over you, but actually you’re the river’s source. ... For the bulk of human history, the most learned members of our species have wildly underestimated the human brain’s capabilities.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  You’re handing them tools to regulate their body budget, to make meaning of their sensations and act on them, to communicate how they feel, and to influence others more effectively. They will use these skills their whole lives. As you teach your children about emotion, try not to limit yourself to essentialist stereotypes: smiling when happy, scowling when angry, and so on. (This may be difficult, as you’re competing with TV cartoons that stick to Western stereotypes of emotion. * ) Help them understand the variety of the real world, that a smile may mean happiness, embarrassment, anger, or even sadness depending on context. Try also to admit when you aren’t sure how you feel, when you’re guessing how someone else feels, or when you guess badly. Carry on full conversations with your young child, taking turns, even when she is a baby who cannot respond verbally yet. By the time a child is a toddler, the conversational pattern matters as much as the words themselves for building emotion concepts. My husband and I never used “baby talk” with our daughter but spoke to her in fully formed, adult sentences from the time she was born, pausing afterward to let her “respond” in whatever way she could. People around us in the supermarket thought we were crazy, but we did wind up with an emotionally intelligent teenager who actually talks to adults. (And she can torture me with three-decimal precision. I’m so proud.) 2 1 Do your children have screaming fits or throw tantrums? You can help them master their emotions and calm down by using social reality to your advantage. When my daughter, Sophia, was two and in her tantrum phase, telling her to calm down had no effect, of course. So we invented a concept called the “Cranky Fairy.” Whenever Sophia launched into a tantrum (or if we were lucky, slightly beforehand), we’d explain to her, “Oh no, the Cranky Fairy is visiting. She’s making you feel cranky. Let’s try to make the Cranky Fairy go away.” Then we directed her to a particular chair—a fuzzy red one with a picture of Elmo from Sesame Street—as her special place for calming down. (No, it didn’t have little fuzzy red manacles.) At first we carried her to the chair, and sometimes she’d pitch a fit and kick the chair over, but eventually she would walk to it unasked and sit until her unpleasant feelings subsided. Sometimes she’d even announce that the Cranky Fairy was on her way. These practices might sound silly, but they have tangible effects. By inventing and sharing the concepts “Cranky Fairy” and “Elmo Chair” with Sophia, we created tools to help her calm herself. To her, these concepts were as real as money, art, power, and other constructions of social reality are to us. In general, children with richer conceptual systems for emotion are poised for greater academic success.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  exfoliating. No shaving. I left the apartment infrequently. I had all my bills on automatic payment plans. I’d already paid a year of property taxes on my apartment and on my dead parents’ old house upstate. Rent money from the tenants in that house showed up in my checking account by direct deposit every month. Unemployment was rolling in as long as I made the weekly call into the automated service and pressed “1” for “yes” when the robot asked if I’d made a sincere effort to find a job. That was enough to cover the copayments on all my prescriptions, and whatever I picked up at the bodega. Plus, I had investments. My dead father’s financial advisor kept track of all that and sent me quarterly statements that I never read. I had plenty of money in my savings account, too—enough to live on for a few years as long as I didn’t do anything spectacular. On top of all this, I had a high credit limit on my Visa card. I wasn’t worried about money. I had started “hibernating” as best I could in mid-June of 2000. I was twenty-four years old. I watched summer die and autumn turn cold and gray through a broken slat in the blinds. My muscles withered. The sheets on my bed yellowed, although I usually fell asleep in front of the television on the sofa, which was from Pottery Barn and striped blue and white and sagging and covered in coffee and sweat stains. I didn’t do much in my waking hours besides watch movies. I couldn’t stand to watch regular television. Especially at the beginning, TV aroused too much in me, and I’d get compulsive about the remote, clicking around, scoffing at everything and agitating myself. I couldn’t handle it. The only news I could read were the sensational headlines on the local daily papers at the bodega. I’d quickly glance at them as I paid for my coffees. Bush versus Gore for president. Somebody important died, a child was kidnapped, a senator stole money, a famous athlete cheated on his pregnant wife. Things were happening in New York City—they always are—but none of it affected me. This was the beauty of sleep—reality detached itself and appeared in my mind as casually as a movie or a dream. It was easy to ignore things that didn’t concern me. Subway workers went on strike. A hurricane came and went. It didn’t matter. Extraterrestrials could have invaded, locusts could have swarmed, and I would have noted it, but I wouldn’t have worried. When I needed more pills, I ventured out to the Rite Aid three blocks away. That was always a painful passage. Walking up First Avenue,

• From On Beauty (2005)

  It was certainly true that this was an unreal place where nothing ever changed. But Jerome – on the brink of his final college year and he knew not what – had begun to appreciate exactly this quality. As long as Wellington stayed Wellington, he could risk all manner of change himself. He walked into a lively late-afternoon square. A saxophonist playing over a tinny backing track alarmed Murdoch. Jerome picked the dog up. A small food market had been set up on the east side, and this competed with the usual chaos of the taxi rank, students at a table protesting the war, others campaigning against animal testing and some guys selling handbags. Near the T-stop, Jerome saw the table his mother had described. It was covered with a yellow cloth embroidered with the words   . But no Levi. Jerome stopped at the newspaper concession outside  On Beauty the station and bought the latest Wellington Herald . Zora had sent three e-mails urging him to buy a copy. He stayed in the relative warmth of the newsstand and flicked through the paper, looking for a tell-tale Z. He found his sister’s name on page , heading the weekly campus column ‘Speaker’s Corner’. The mere name of this column aggravated Jerome: it smacked of that wearisome Wellingtonian reverence for all things British. The British flavour spread to the contents of the column itself, which, no matter the student who happened to be writing it, always retained a superior, Victorian tone. Words and phrases that the student had never before had cause to use (‘indubitably’, ‘ I cannot possibly fathom’) came from their pen. Zora, who had been in Speaker’s Corner four times (a record for a sophomore), did not waver from the house style. The arguments of these columns were always presented as if they were motions being put before the Oxford Union. Today’s title, ‘This Speaker Believes that Wellington Should Put Its Money Where Its Academic Mouth Is’, by Zora Belsey. Just below this, a large photo of Claire Malcolm in medias res , animated, at a round table of students, in the foreground of which photo was a handsome face Jerome faintly recognized. Jerome paid a dollar twenty to the guy in the newspaper booth and walked back into the square. Whither real affirmative action? read Jerome. That is the question I put before all fair-minded Wellingtonians this day. Are we truly steadfast in our commitment to the equality of opportunity or no? Do we presume to speak of progress when within these very walls our own policy remains so shamefully diffident? Are we satisfied that the African-American youth of this fair city . . . Jerome gave up and tucked the paper under his arm.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I didn’t answer. I spat the rice out and carried all the containers of Chinese food to the garbage. Then I opened each pint of melted ice cream and poured the contents down the drain. I imagined Reva would gasp if she saw all the food I was throwing out, as if eating it all and vomiting it back up wasn’t just as wasteful. I took the garbage out into the hallway and threw it down the trash chute. Having a trash chute was one of my favorite things about my building. It made me feel important, like I was participating in the world. My trash mixed with the trash of others. The things I touched touched things other people had touched. I was contributing. I was connecting. I took a Xanax and an Infermiterol, pulled my soggy coat out of the tub, and ran a hot bath. Then I went to the bedroom to find clean pajamas so that I could put them on right away and fall asleep to Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The furniture in my bedroom had been reorganized. My bed had been turned around so the head of it faced the wall. I pictured myself, in a drugged blackout, assessing my home environs, and using my mind—what part of it, I’m not sure—to make decisions for how to strategically improve the spatial ambiance. Dr. Tuttle had predicted this kind of behavior. “Some activity in sleep is fine just as long as you don’t operate heavy machinery. You don’t have children, do you? Stupid question.” Sleepwalking, sleeptalking, sleep-online-chatting, sleepeating—that was to be expected, especially on Ambien. I’d already done a fair amount of sleepshopping on the computer and at the bodega. I’d sleepordered Chinese delivery. I’d sleepsmoked. I’d sleeptexted and sleeptelephoned. This was nothing new. But my experience with the Infermiterol was different. I remember pulling out a pair of leggings and a thermal shirt from my dresser drawer. I remember listening to the rumble of the water filling the tub while I brushed my teeth. I remember spitting bloody suds into the crusty sink. I even remember testing the temperature of the bath water with my toe. But I don’t remember getting into the water, bathing, washing my hair. I don’t remember leaving the house, walking around, getting into a cab, going places, or doing anything else I may have done that night or the next day or the day after that. As if I’d just blinked, I woke up on an LIRR train wearing jeans and my old running shoes and a long white fur coat, the theme from Tootsie running through my head. Four DR. TUTTLE HAD WARNED ME of “extended nightmares” and “clock-true mind trips,” “paralysis of the imagination,” “perceived space-time anomalies,” “dreams that feel like forays across the multiverse,” and “trips to ulterior dimensions,” et cetera.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I used to take photographs when I was at Oxford, but they’re nothing special, I don’t suppose.’ ‘Hold on to them, William, hold on to them!’ he warned. ‘Never destroy a photograph, William; it’s a bit of life sealed in for ever. If you become famous, which I’ve no doubt you will, people will want to see them. I’m being rediscovered myself, and I promise you they’ll buy anything. To be honest, I’ve sold a lot of tat lately, but at Christie’s they like it. I’m a sort of period figure, you see, and put something in those bit photography sales and you find the aura of the famous names rubs off on you. Their catalogue person calls me “the unacknowledged master of postwar male photography in Britain”. I fetch a price, now, you know. But then, and this is what I’m saying, I feel absolutely awful about it, I just want to have them all back.’ ‘I’ve told William he must come and see your studio,’ Nantwich declared. ‘My dear, of course. Let me just get a bit straight and I’ll be thrilled to see you. I’ve got a big job of work on à ce moment , but when that’s finished. And who knows, I might do a few little pickies of you—fully clothed, needless to say. I think you’d make an interesting subject for me. It’s such a very English look, that, the pink and gold number and the long, straight nose. None of your Master Whitehaven anonymous stuff, though. It’s a character study I want.’ For the second time I had the sensation of being somehow professionally appraised. “Well, we’ll see,’ I said, pleased to think of sitting again, but not keen to be rushed into some shady deal. ‘How’s the big job of work coming on?’ Nantwich asked with suspicious casualness. ‘Wonderful to have met you,’ piped Staines, with a switch of conversational direction worthy of Nantwich himself. We shook hands again and he was already leaving us. ‘Take care, Charles,’ he advised. My host was silent for a moment or two. ‘Bit of a cunt,’ he said. ‘But still really frightfully good.’ He looked very weary now, and I too prepared to leave. ‘Thank you so much for lunch, Charles; I have enjoyed it.’ He turned a surprised gaze on me. ‘You like the old Club?’ he asked. ‘Not too bad, is it?’ Fine hair-veins branched merrily over his pinkish cheeks, but his dark eyes were sunken and his big head looked heavy with impending sleep. I thought how I had seen him dead on the lavatory floor. I felt quite fond of him, and was glad that I had belonged to him and not to the talkative, rather sinister Staines. ‘I do hope we’ll have another little chin-wag soon,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at the baths, of course.’

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  And then he called his maid which was named Fotis, and said, Carry this Gentlemans packet into the chamber, and lay it up safely, and bring water quickly to wash him, and a towel to rub him, and other things necessary, and then bring him to the next Baines, for I know that he is very weary of travell. These things when I heard, I partly perceived the manners of Milo, and endeavouring to bring my selfe further into his favour, I sayd, Sir there is no need of any of these things, for they have been everywhere ministred unto mee by the way, howbeit I will go into the Baines, but my chiefest care is that my horse be well looked to, for hee brought mee hither roundly, and therefore I pray thee Fotis take this money and buy some hay and oats for him. THE SEVENTH CHAPTER How Apuleius going to buy fish, met with his companion Pythias.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  Two teaspoonfuls landed in white puffs on top of the dry mixture. Finally she grabbed the cinnamon, which went into almost everything she baked, and tapped three brown splotches onto the powdered pile. Her thoughts returned to her husband as she picked up the eggs. The dispiritedness Terry had displayed since losing his job had included a lack of interest in many things he usually appreciated—including sex. While she didn’t take it personally, she suspected the degree to which Terry’s subconscious linked his perceived professional success with his sense of personal value was what had made losing his job seem such a staggering blow—and seemed to be threatening his entire self-image. It wouldn’t surprise her if a part of him was questioning whether he was still worthy of her affection. Kim opened the bottle of vanilla and inhaled deeply before tipping it over the bowl. She watched the thick brown ribbon swirl into the pale mixture and screwed the lid back on the small bottle. Frankly, she wasn’t interested in rebuilding that self-image back up in Terry. The fact was, he was far more than his professional success, and while she saw nothing wrong with taking pride in them, to her Terry’s reaction in the face of losing that perceived source of achievement indicated that it comprised dangerously too much of his appreciation and understanding of himself. The griddle began to hiss, and Kim lifted the heavy bowl of pancake batter and tipped it until a circle swelled on the sizzling surface. Upturning the bowl, she shifted it a few inches to start the next circle. After repeating the process twice more, she set the bowl back on the counter. The pale circles glowed like four full moons on the black iron background as Kim began to put the ingredients away, keeping one eye on the griddle. Right after her love of cooking was her love of a clean kitchen. She aimed for her kitchen to be less than immaculate only when she was using it. Ideally, by the time whatever she was cooking was ready, the kitchen was clean again too. Sparse bubbles began to yawn on the circles of batter like something just waking up. Kim slid the spatula under them and flipped them one by one, the bubbles receding back to the darkness of sleep. She opened a cupboard and reached toward the back. Not feeling what she wanted, she opened it further and peered inside. It took her a moment to remember they were out of syrup. “Shit,” she muttered as she shut the cupboard and tapped her fingers on the counter. She couldn’t leave to run out and get some; pancakes were still cooking on the stove. Waking Terry up to do so would defeat the purpose of surprising him with breakfast in bed.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I sat on the fragile, entirely unupholstered sofa. ‘Well, you must say when you want me to go.’ ‘It’s another of my icons.’ He looked from me to an oval portrait which hung above the fireplace. From its mandorla of gilded oak leaves a livery-clad negro turned towards us. A sky of darkening blue was sketched behind him, and the shadowy form of a palm-tree could just about be made out. He appeared to be an eighteenth-century colonial servant; evidently a favoured one. ‘It’s Bill Richmond,’ Charles explained. No wiser, I stood up to look more closely at the pugnacious brown face with its thick lips, flat nose and short curly hair. It frowned ironically from the crimson and gilt of the high-necked footman’s coat. ‘I’m afraid he’s not as pretty as the King Akhnaten,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t in a pretty business, poppet. Well … he was a man with several lives: first of all he was a slave, then he got brought back to England by a General whatsaname in the War of Independence. He found him in Richmond, which is where his name comes from. Bill was one of those big strong lads we like so much, so the General trained him up as a boxer. He became quite well known for a while—along with Molineux, of course, that Byron sparred with. They were the first of their kind to break out, really—they were good fighters, so they made a figure in the world. Don’t he look kind of sad, though.’ ‘Very sad. He don’t—doesn’t look much like a boxer, either.’ ‘No. You see, he became a valet or what-have-you to some Lord. When he’d done with fighting he just carried on in service. Hence the livery. It makes for a good picture but a sad story. I’m sure the artist must have scaled him down, too. Byron says, when he met him later in life, that he was a great strong fellow. I’ll look it up for you some time. I believe he used to work in Molineux’s corner too.’ ‘You don’t know who it’s by?’ But Charles seemed to have lapsed into reflection on the fate of Bill Richmond, and wore a nostalgic expression as though he had known him personally. As ever, I let it pass; I was learning not to worry about silences in the conversation. I was happy to ponder his treasured artifacts and the secret metamorphoses that they enshrined. ‘A last leg, and a question,’ he proposed. ‘Both rather special.’ I took his arm again and we went out into the hall. ‘Are you interested in boxing? That’s not the question, by the way.’ ‘I suppose I am,’ I said. ‘I boxed a bit at school.’ ‘Oho! You be careful.