Joy

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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  GREGORY. (Mor. 14. c. 55.) For in that glory of the resurrection our body will not be incapable of handling, and more subtle than the winds and the air, (as Eutychius said,) but while it is subtle indeed through the effect of spiritual power, it will be also capable of handling through the power of nature. It follows, And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet, on which indeed were clearly marked the prints of the nails. But according to John, He also shewed them His side which had been pierced with the spear, that by manifesting the scar of His wounds He might heal the wound of their doubtfulness. But from this place the Gentiles are fond of raising up a calumny, as if He was not able to cure the wound inflicted on Him. To whom we must answer, that it is not probable that He who is proved to have done the greater should be unable to do the less. But for the sake of His sure purpose, He who destroyed death would not blot out the signs of death. First indeed, that He might thereby build up His disciples in the faith of His resurrection. Secondly, that supplicating the Father for us, He might always shew forth what kind of death He endured for many. Thirdly, that He might point out to those redeemed by His death, by setting before them the signs of that death, how mercifully they have been succoured. Lastly, that He might declare in the judgment how justly the wicked are condemned. 24:41–4441. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? 42. And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. 43. And he took it, and did eat before them. 44. And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. The Lord had shewn His disciples His hands and His feet, that He might certify to them that the same body which had suffered rose again. But to confirm them still more, He asked for something to eat. GREGORY OF NYSSA. (Orat. 1. de Res.) By the command of the law indeed the Passover was eaten with bitter herbs, because the bitterness of bondage still remained, but after the resurrection the food is sweetened with a honeycomb; as it follows, And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and a honeycomb.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  “Sure. I love that stuff, man. Goin’ to visit people in the hospital, in nursing homes. That’s fun. I told you—my mother had this church? That’s what we used to do all the time when I was a kid. Go around and visit sick people. Man, that was the most fun I ever had in my life! They were real interesting, those people. Old people—they could tell some stories—” “My mom doesn’t talk any more,” I said. “That’s okay. It’s still fun. When you gonna go again?” “Uhh . . . ,” I said. “In two weeks. On Thursday. My sister goes every week. I’ve been trying to go every other week.” “Good,” he said. “You just tell me where you wanna meet.” So, two Thursdays hence, we met at my stoop and rode down to Fourteenth, transferred to the lonely L, and took the train to the end of the line to get out on the bustling Brooklyn avenue. On his single crutch, Arly lurched along beside me through the June sun to the Park Shore. In my mom’s room on the seventh floor, Arly became a one-legged whirlwind, straightening her pillow, putting things right on the table beside her bed—the crutch was left in the corner now: in such small spaces he found it easier to maneuver without it—telling her how well she looked, smoothing up her covers, reassuring her that she’d soon be well. Mom’s sluggishness over the first fifteen minutes of our visit gave way to a bright-eyed attention, as if by osmosis she absorbed his energy and his cheerfulness. Clearly she was enchanted with him, and grinned and nodded and followed him with her eyes. Several times she even laughed. We took her downstairs in her wheelchair and outside on a forty-minute tour of the neighborhood, stopping for ice cream, which, back in the grassy yard in the back of the Manor on our return, first I, then Arly fed her with a white plastic spoon. “She likes music,” I said. “Can you sing?” “Naw,” Arly said. “I play the drums, but I don’t sing too good—” then sang with me anyway: “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain,” “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” and “Jesus Loves Me,” Arly in Spanish, me in English, as, in her orange robe in the wheelchair, her paralyzed arm belted with white Velcro into its fiberglass brace, Mom “la-la-ed” along. If you’re looking for an analogue from literature, it’s not Gregor’s sister playing the violin outside her transformed brother’s door; it’s the young peasant who tells the meaningless jokes as he lets Ivan rest his feet on his shoulders, the only position in which the dying man can be comfortable, in The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  It turned out that other couples who’d signed up for the study didn’t have nearly as much fun as did Elaine and Art. By the flip of a coin, some couples got the same silly crawling assignment they did, whereas other couples were assigned to a far more mundane and slow-paced crawling task: Never bound by Velcro, each member of these couples took turns crawling very slowly across the mat, while rolling a ball ahead of them. Their snail’s pace was enforced by a metronome, no less! What the researchers hypothesized—and would find here and in their other experiments—is that couples who were at random assigned to the fun-filled task that required both touch and behavioral synchrony actually came to love each other more deeply; they reported greater relationship quality on the follow-up surveys and showed more accepting and fewer hostile behaviors in their follow-on discussions. Engaging in this silly, childlike activity together actually deepened loving feelings and strengthened bonds, even in long-standing intimate relationships. Experiments like these explain the observation I made back in chapter 2, that couples who regularly do new and exciting (or even silly) things together have better-quality marriages. At times, the impetus for sharing a positive emotion with a loved one might be some external activity, like a trip, or the silly assignment Art and Elaine were given in that laboratory study. Perhaps more frequently, however, there isn’t any jointly experienced external trigger at all. Instead, one or the other of you starts the ball rolling by bringing your own positive emotion to your partner. Suppose your partner comes home after a long day at the office with good news to share about a breakthrough at work, or some recognition he or she received for a recent accomplishment. Through the well-worn lenses of self-absorption, you might take such disclosures as simply your partner’s way of explaining his or her own good mood. Or more cynically, you might take it as bragging. Yet through the lenses of connection, you’re more likely to recognize disclosures like these as opportunities for positivity resonance, or new chances to stoke love and its benefits.

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  There are, of course, other functions and other forms of active sadness. We will say no more about anger, which we have discussed at length already, and which, of all the emotions, is perhaps the most evidently functional. But what is to be said about joy? Does it fit into our description? At first sight it would seem not, since the joyful subject has no need to defend himself against a belittling or dangerous change. But we must first distinguish between the joyful feeling which betokens an equilibrium, or a state of adaptation, and emotional joy. For the latter, on closer consideration, is characterised by a certain impatience. We mean by this that the joyful subject is behaving very much like a man in a state of impatience. He cannot keep still, makes innumerable plans, begins to do things which he immediately abandons etc. For in fact this joy has been called up by an apparition of the object of his desires. He has been told that he has won a considerable sum of money, or that he will shortly meet someone he loves and has not seen for a long time. But although the object is 'imminent' it is not yet there, it is not yet his. He is separated from it by a certain length of time. And even when it is present, even when the friend so long desired appears upon the station platform, he is still an object that delivers itself to one only little by little; the delight that we feel in seeing him again soon becomes blunted; we shall never get so far as to hold him there, in front of us, as our own absolute possession and to grasp him all at once as a whole (nor shall we ever realise all at once our new-won riches, as an instantaneous totality. It will yield itself to us only through numberless details and, as it were, by abschattungen). Joy is magical behaviour which tries, by incantation, to realize the possession of the desired object as an instantaneous totality. This behaviour is accompanied by certainty that possession will be realized sooner or later, but it seeks to anticipate that possession. The various activities expressive of joy, as well as the muscular hypertonicity and the slight vascular dilatation, are animated and transcended by an intention which envisages the world through them. This seems easy, the object of our desires appears to be near and easy to posses. Every gesture expresses emphatic approbation. To dance, or to sing for joy — these represent the behaviour of symbolic approximation, of incantation. By their means the object — which in reality one may not be able to posses except by prudent and, after all, difficult behaviour — is possessed at once, symbolically. It is thus, for example, that a man to whom a woman has just said that she loves him may begin to dance and sing. In so doing he turns his mind away from the prudent and difficult behaviour he will have to maintain if he is to deserve this love and increase it, to gain possession of it through countless details (smiles, little attentions etc.), He turns away even from the woman herself as the living reality representative of all those delicate procedures. Those he will attend to later; he is now giving himself a rest. For the moment, he is possessing the object by magic; the dance mimes his possession of it.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  The glue that positivity resonance offers isn’t just for connecting once-strangers at the start of new relationships. It also further cements long-standing ties, making them even more secure and satisfying. Art and Elaine, a married couple living in Long Island, New York, learned this fact in a surprising way. They saw a poster in town recruiting couples to join a study on the “factors that affect relationships.” Motivated more by curiosity than the promised thirty dollars, they called to sign up. They got more curious when the person on the phone asked them about a range of medical conditions that might prevent them from engaging in physical or aerobic activity. Their curiosity rose still higher when they met the researcher at the designated lab room on campus. It was set up more like a gymnastics room, with a large gymnasium mat rolled out across the floor, covering about thirty feet. Halfway down the mat, another fat mat was rolled up like a barricade, about three feet high. As part of the study, the researcher asked Art and Elaine to complete surveys and discuss a few topics together, like their next vacation and a future home improvement project, which she videotaped for later analysis. These tasks seemed simple enough and not altogether unexpected in a study of relationships. Yet they were flabbergasted when the researcher directed them to their next task. Indeed, their curiosity about the room setup erupted into outright chuckles of disbelief as the researcher used Velcro bands to tie Art’s and Elaine’s wrists and ankles together. She told them that their task was to crawl on their hands and knees as fast as they could to the far end of the mat and back, clearing the barrier in each direction. All the while, they’d need to hold a cylinder-shaped pillow off the floor without using their hands, arms, or teeth. If they could complete this absurd task in less than a minute, she told them, they’d win a bag of candy, something she said few couples before them had done. It didn’t take long for Art and Elaine to discover that they could only hold the pillow up by pressing it between their torsos, which made their bound-crawling all the more challenging. The whole event was hilarious. They toppled over several times, laughing uncontrollably. By their third attempt, they finally got their limbs into sync. They beat the clock and won the prize—all smiles and (once unbound) high fives!

• From My People (2022)

  We landed at the old airport, with its tiny, aging one-room reception area filled with people unhappily departing, and others like ourselves, happily arriving. The place was standing-room only, generating a closeness among friends and strangers alike, some of whom became friends right then and there. This is where I experienced my first Vineyard magic. (I love the new airport, but . . .) Our next stop was what was then Gay Head, with its mystical cliffs and dunes and fiercely compelling waves whose undertow once during our trip took my husband and Bill and Mimi Grinker a little too far out (they were rescued by two island teenagers on Styrofoam kickboards). My disappointment over my image of the vine-filled Vineyard was soon more than assuaged by the multifarious landscapes at every turn in the road after our visit with the Sviridoffs. Oak Bluffs was calling. So we rented a car and drove through the enchanting towns of Chilmark, West Tisbury, Vineyard Haven, and at last, Oak Bluffs. I’d never been there but had heard about the more-than-century-old, black-owned Shearer Cottage. We immediately set out to find it and spent a night there before we began our Oak Bluffs exploration, which took us to places I had heard about from Bobby, including the Inkwell. There I discovered (well, kind of like Christopher Columbus “discovered” America) one of the main arteries that was the heartbeat of Oak Bluffs: beautiful black bodies of all shapes, sizes, and ages frolicking freely in and out of the water they owned by virtue of years of occupancy. I was so excited about what I was seeing that I immediately got my editor at the New York Times on the phone and convinced him to allow me to extend my vacation by a few days so I could tell the world about something many would find hard to conceive, since even then in 1970, after the Civil Rights Acts abolished the last of the “separate but equal” lie in the South, there were still places in both the North and the South that were not welcoming to people of color. And tell the world I did, on the second front of the New York Times , illustrated with a picture of longtime Vineyarder Teixiera Nash in a huge sun hat. By this time, we had met Dr. and Mrs. Leslie Hayling, who graciously invited us to stay with them in their home with a beautiful grand piano and copious amounts of great food. Over the years and many more trips to the Vineyard with our children Suesan and Chuma and our friends and theirs who joined us, we put down roots—even though they were in the yards of other people. There was the legendary Lee Simmons, who knew (and would share) everybody’s business because everybody found in her a sympathetic mother confessor.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Hugh followed directly, pouring into her, flooding her with his joy and his love in a release so devastating, he knew he would never be the same again. “You shall marry me, Charlotte.” “Are you certain? I’m not suitable.” He snorted. “You are entirely suitable. And marriage has decided benefits you’re failing to consider.” Charlotte curled into him where they lay on the floor and stroked her hand across his chest. “Such as?” “The marital bed, for one.” “Ah, yes, a bed. That would be lovely. Perhaps with marriage, we will make it there more often . . .” Epilogue London, August 1815 Sebastian Blake, Earl of Merrick, took the steps of Montrose Hall two at a time. He rapped with the knocker and waited. A moment later the door swung open, and he was faced with a stooped butler sporting the largest eye he’d ever seen in his life. He blinked, quickly comprehending the reason his footman had returned to the carriage in a fright. “Aye?” the old man queried, in a gravelly voice. He held out his card. “I’ve come to collect Lord and Lady Montrose. They are expecting me.” The butler lifted the card to his oddly protruding eye, squinted at the lettering, and then dropped his hand with a grunt. The servant stepped aside. “Come in, gov’na, and I’ll inform ’is lordship yer ’ere.” He shuffled off, leaving Sebastian to carry his own hat and shut the door himself. Pausing by an open doorway, the servant gestured wildly and said, “Wait in ’ere.” Moving into a well-appointed parlor, Sebastian frowned. The Earl and Countess of Montrose never held social functions in their home, which he’d not thought untoward, considering their newly wedded status. The rest of the ton, however, found them mysterious, and their aloofness only fueled the rumors that they ran a bizarre household. The butler was an oddity, to be sure, but . . . An odd noise caught his ear, and Sebastian cocked a brow as it drew closer and increased in volume. The next moment a young serving girl appeared in the doorway, her slim arms weighted with a beautiful china tea service that wobbled horrendously. He’d never seen such a spectacle in his life. Every item was jumping and rattling—spoons clinking against each other, cups dancing in their saucers. Sebastian gaped for a moment and then moved to assist her, shaking his head in wonder. He would remember to speak to Montrose about this later. He definitely wanted an invitation to dinner. “The Merrick carriage has arrived,” Charlotte noted, looking down at the front drive from the upper-floor window. A moment later warm arms encircled her waist, and then her husband’s deep voice was purring in her ear. “Are you still excited?” “Are you jesting?” She spun in Hugh’s embrace and stared up into his handsome face. “Of course I’m excited.” “You seem pensive.”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “I miss Gwen,” she said with a sigh. “I know she’s having a wonderful time at the finishing academy, but still . . .” Hugh kissed the tip of her nose. “I miss her, too.” Wrapping her arms around his lean waist, Charlotte squeezed tight. “Thank you so much.” “For what, love?” “For arranging this treasure hunt. I know you believe it to be nonsense.” His mouth curved in a smile that stole her breath. “And you don’t?” “I’d like to think it exists.” “You’d like to believe in the romantic version of the tale as well.” Hugh’s large hands smoothed the length of her spine and cupped her derriere. “What happened to my pragmatist?” Charlotte laughed, her heart light and filled with love. “I’ve never been a pragmatist where you are concerned.” Hopelessly addicted, she wondered how she ever considered living without him. He squeezed her close before turning away, moving to the trunks that had yet to be taken downstairs. He was preparing to close one, then paused. Picking up a brown-paper parcel, he shot her an inquiring glance before untying the twine. A moment later his laughter, warm and rich, filled the air and warmed her heart. “What do we have here?” He held up an eye patch. “The journey is long I’ve been told.” Hugh’s mouth twitched. “So it is.” “It could become tedious.” “You and I alone in a cabin? Never.” “I have a fantasy,” she confessed, moving toward him with salacious intent. “Umm . . . I like the sound of that.” Hugh tossed the pirate costume in the trunk and caught her about the waist. She winked. “You’ll like the doing of it much better.” “Fetch your pelisse,” he growled. “I want to get to that ship.” Author′s Note The characters of Calico Jack and Anne Bonny, mentioned in “Her Mad Grace,” did indeed exist. However, their “treasure” is entirely fictional. If you love Sylvia Day’s historical romances, don’t miss Seven Years to Sin, available now in print and digital formats. “Mr. Caulfield,” the object of his obsession purred. “Did no one teach you to knock?” One long, slender, very bare leg stretched out over the rim of a copper slipper tub. Jessica was flushed from the heat of the bathwater and too much claret . . . if her slurred words, lack of modesty, and the bottle on the stool beside her were any indication. Her hair was piled haphazardly atop her head, giving her a disheveled, recently tumbled look embodying every carnal imagining he’d ever had about her. He was more than satisfied with the lush figure on display for him. She had lovely peaches-and-cream skin, breasts fuller than he’d pictured, and legs longer than he’d dreamed. Bloody hell, his decision to indulge her by storing extra barrels of water for bathing had been a stroke of genius. As his inability to speak drew out, Jessica arched one brow and asked, “Would you care for a glass?”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. But you will say, How does this concern me? Because thou also shalt be taken up in like manner into the clouds. For thy body is of like nature to His body, therefore shall thy body be so light, that it can pass through the air. For as is the head, so also is the body; as the beginning, so also the end. See then how thou art honoured by this beginning. Man was the lowest part of the rational creation, but the feet have been made the head, being lifted up aloft into the royal throne in their head. BEDE. When the Lord ascended into heaven, the disciples adoring Him where His feet lately stood, immediately return to Jerusalem, where they were commanded to wait for the promise of the Father; for it follows, And they worshipped him, and returned, &c. Great indeed was their joy, for they rejoice that their God and Lord after the triumph of His resurrection had also passed into the heavens. GREEK EXPOSITOR. And they were watching, praying, and fasting, because indeed they were not living in their own homes, but were abiding in the temple, expecting the grace from on high; among other things also learning from the very place piety and honesty. Hence it is said, And were continually in the temple. THEOPHYLACT. The Spirit had not yet come, and yet their conversation is spiritual. Before they were shut up; now they stand in the midst of the chief priests; distracted by no worldly object, but despising all things, they praise God continually; as it follows, Praising and blessing God. BEDE. And observe that among the four beasts in heaven, (Ezek. 1:10. Rev. 4:7) Luke is said to be represented by the calf, for by the sacrifice of a calf, they were ordered to be initiated who were chosen to the priesthood; (Exod. 29:1.) and Luke has undertaken to explain more fully than the rest the priesthood of Christ; and his Gospel, which he commenced with the ministry of the temple in the priesthood of Zacharias, he has finished with the devotion in the temple. And he has placed the Apostles there, about to be the ministers of a new priesthood, not in the blood of sacrifices, but in the praises of God and in blessing, that in the place of prayer and amidst the praises of their devotion, they might wait with prepared hearts for the promise of the Spirit. THEOPHYLACT. Whom imitating, may we ever dwell in a holy life, praising and blessing God; to Whom be glory and blessing and power, for ever and ever. Amen.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  She holds the hawk with cautious concentration, as if it were a pitcher full of some caustic agent. She stands straight-backed, still and composed, a small figure fifteen yards away in skinny black jeans, T-shirt and bright red sneakers. ‘OK!’ She turns, and Mabel bursts towards me, dragging the creance behind her, flying so low her wing-tips almost brush the turf. With each deep wingbeat her body flexes and swings but her eyes and head are perfectly, gyroscopically, still, fixed and focused on my glove. The silvered undersides of her wings flash as she spreads them wide, her tail flares, she brings her feet up to strike and she hits the glove feet-first like a kickboxer. ‘Was that OK?’ shouts Christina. I give her a thumbs-up, and she responds the same way: for a moment we are two traffic controllers on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. We do it again. And again. The next day brings heavy rain so we fly her loose between us in the front room of my house, back and forth from fist to fist, over the rug, past the mirror, under the light, wings sending up draughts that leave the lampshade swinging wildly. By the fourth day the hawk is flying twenty-five yards to me, will come without hesitation from the ground, from Christina’s fist, from tree branches, from the roof of the pavilion. ‘Thank you so much for your help,’ I tell her as we walk from the field. ‘You know, I think we’re nearly there. Once she flies a full fifty yards I’ll let her loose.’ The thought brings a squirmy, high-pitched joy. I mustn’t rush. I cannot wait.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  We’ve got the drains plugged with towels and the water is about six inches deep. Visibility is about a foot through the steam. The effect is strange. You hear shouts and splashing, but you seldom see anybody, except when they come up to use your shower and fall over you or when they go sliding by in a seal race. Two small white legs approach me through the steam. The kneecaps look me in the eye. At this moment I remember I’ve left my teeth in the soap dish. I see a blur above me as the small arm reaches. The legs turn and are gone in a splash. The Sausage Man’s cackle hangs in the mist. I’m up and whipping across the cold concrete floor after him, but Sausage is already out the locker room door. Last I see of him he’s dancing off across the park, naked, a pink Christmas cherub in black wrestling shoes, cackling and spitting little ice crystals that catch the light from the parking lot and shine like tiny falling stars. He knows if I chase him I’ll be late for work. XIHere comes Carla in our snowcapped DeSoto. The big old skinny tires squeak and crunch through the dry packed snow. The chrome and snow reflect the streetlight and for a second or two I’m blind. I’m rubbing my eyes as she pulls up to the curb. “I have a surprise.” She stops. “Are you okay?” “Fine,” I say. “Just blinded for a sec by all the snow.” “The smell of that room probably rotted your eyes,” she says as I walk around to the passenger side. The locker room is in shadow. She hasn’t noticed I’m toothless. I nearly sit on the surprise. “Watch out!” cries Carla. “Raaahrr!” cries the surprise. The surprise makes it out of the way, but I do catch Carla’s hands, pinning them under my fatigued butt. “Gotcha,” I say, looking fondly down into my lap, bubbling with red curls. “Hullock,” mumbles Carla into the mohair. “You almost squished our new Katzenburger.” An emaciated gray-and-black kitten roams the tops of the front seats. I loft it, give it a couple good rubs along the soft gray flannel headliner, and set it gently down on Carla’s head. “Nice Katzen.” Carla gasps affectionately. Mohair upholstery is all kinds of fun in terms of tactile sensation, but it’s hell to try to breathe through. I remove the kitten, scrutinizing it at arm’s length. The little critter is indeed undernourished. I check for gender. Her survival seems dubious. “Katzen B.!” squeals a freed Carla, grabbing the little beast and nuzzling it nose to nose. She hands the kitten back to me and notices that my visage has changed some. “Oh, my God—your teeth!” she exclaims, with a hand tender on my slackened mandible.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I close my copy of Bert’s Treatise of Hawks and Hawking with a snap, and as the cover falls my hawk makes a curious, bewitching movement. She twitches her head to one side then turns it upside down and continues to regard me with the tip of her beak pointing at the ceiling. I am astonished. I’ve seen this head-turning before. Baby falcons do it when they play. But goshawks? Really? I pull a sheet of paper towards me, tear a long strip from one side, scrunch it into a ball, and offer it to the hawk in my fingers. She grabs it with her beak. It crunches. She likes the sound. She crunches it again and then lets it drop, turning her head upside down as it hits the floor. I pick it up and offer it to her again. She grabs it and bites it very gently over and over again: gnam gnam gnam. She looks like a glove puppet, a Punch and Judy crocodile. Her eyes are narrowed in bird-laughter. I am laughing too. I roll a magazine into a tube and peer at her through it as if it were a telescope. She ducks her head to look at me through the hole. She pushes her beak into it as far as it will go, biting the empty air inside. Putting my mouth to my side of my paper telescope I boom into it: ‘Hello, Mabel.’ She pulls her beak free. All the feathers on her forehead are raised. She shakes her tail rapidly from side to side and shivers with happiness. An obscure shame grips me. I had a fixed idea of what a goshawk was, just as those Victorian falconers had, and it was not big enough to hold what goshawks are. No one had ever told me goshawks played. It was not in the books. I had not imagined it was possible. I wondered if it was because no one had ever played with them. The thought made me terribly sad.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  With this of course went considerable clowning. I not only invented the characters and events, I acted them out. And poor Mona exclaiming: “Are you really putting all that into the story? or the book?” (Neither of us, in such moments, ever specified what book.) When the word book sprang up it was always assumed that it was the book, that is to say, the one I would soon get started on—or else it was the one I was writing secretly, which I would show her only when finished. (She always acted as if she were certain this secret travail was going on. She even pretended that she had searched everywhere for the script during my periods of absence.) In this sort of atmosphere it was not at all unusual, therefore, that reference be made occasionally to certain chapters, or certain passages, chapters and passages which never existed, to be sure, but which were “taken for granted” and which, no doubt, had a greater reality (for us) than if they were in black and white. Mona would sometimes indulge in this kind of talk in the presence of a third person, which led, of course, to fantastic and often most embarrassing situations. If it were Ulric who happened to be listening in, there was nothing to worry about. He had a way of entering into the game which was not only gallant but stimulating. He knew how to rectify a bad slip in a humorous and fortifying way. For example, he might have forgotten for a moment that we were employing the present tense and begun using the future tense. (“I know you will write a book like that someday!”) A moment later, realizing his error he would add: “I didn’t mean will write—I meant the book you are writing—and very obviously writing, too, because nobody on God’s earth could talk the way you do about something in which he wasn’t deeply engrossed. Perhaps I’m being too explicit—forgive me, won’t you?” At such junctures we all enjoyed the relief of letting go. We would indeed laugh uproariously. Ulric’s laughter was always the heartiest—and the dirtiest, if I may put it that way. “Ho! Ho!” he seemed to laugh, “but aren’t we all wonderful liars! I’m not doing so bad myself, by golly. If I stay with you people long enough I won’t even know I’m lying any more. Ho Ho Ho! Haw Haw! Ha Ha! Hee Hee!” And he would slap his thighs and roll his eyes like a darkie, ending with a smacking of the lips and a mute request for a wee bit of schnapps…. With other friends it didn’t go so well. They were too inclined to ask “impertinent” questions, as Mona put it. Or else they grew fidgety and uncomfortable, made frantic efforts to get back to terra firma. Kronski, like Ulric, was one who knew how to play the game.

• From Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

  You will notice that there are two authors of this book: Jamie Pennebaker and Josh Smyth. We have each taken our own journey as it relates to this work. Our stories are quite a bit different, but they both point to the ways almost-random experiences can set up lifelong career paths. Both of us were originally trained as social psychologists—people who study, among other things, attitudes, behaviors, and everyday social relationships. A strong and persistent interest for both of us is how people choose to share their personal experiences with others. The Joy of Talking Early in his career, Jamie became fascinated by three seemingly unrelated phenomena: the joy of talking, the nature of lie detection, and the role of self-understanding in influencing the mind–body link (particularly as it related to health and well-being). Piecing together these observations laid the groundwork of an intriguing model that would help map out the nature and consequences of holding secrets and confronting emotional experiences. After graduate school, Jamie found himself teaching a class of 300 freshmen about basic psychology. One day, as part of a class demonstration, he split the students into small groups of people who didn’t know one another. Once in their assigned groups, the students were told just to talk for 15 minutes about anything they wanted. As you would expect, they talked about their hometowns, why they had come to college, what dormitory they lived in, friends they had in common, the weather, and related topics—the usual cocktail party fare. At the end of 15 minutes, everyone returned to their regular seats and estimated how much of the time every person in the group had talked, how much they liked the group, and how much they had learned from the group. Two rather surprising findings emerged: The more people talked, the more they liked the group. The more they themselves talked, the more they claimed to have learned from the group. In other words, as a group member, the more you dominate the conversation, the more you claim that you have learned about the others. In general, it seems we would rather talk than listen. Most of us find that communicating our thoughts is a supremely enjoyable learning experience. The Polygraph Confession Effect As you’ll see later in the book, both of us have long been fascinated by the links between people’s emotions and their physiological activity. An important formative experience occurred when one of us was introduced to the world of lie detection—in particular, the use of biological clues to determine when people were not being truthful. There is something frighteningly magical about the idea of lie detection. Machines that can accurately read others’ private thoughts have been the basis of dreams by police officers, poker players, and parents. A crude approximation of this magical lie detector is the polygraph—an instrument that continuously measures several physiological indicators such as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, and perspiration on the hand.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  Thus maki ng sense of my present action, when we are not dealing with such trivial ques tions as where I shall go in the next five minutes but with the issue of my plac e relative to the good, requir es a narr ative unders tan ding of my life, a sense of what I have become whic h can only be given in a story. And as I project my life forward and endors e the existing dir ection or give it a new one, I project a futur e story, not just a state of the momentary future but a bent for my whole life to come. This sense of my life as having a directio n towards what I am not yet is what Alasdair MacIntyre captu res in his notio n quoted above that life is seen as a 'quest' .27 The Self in Moral Space · 49 This of course connects with an important philo sop hical issue about the unity of a life, which has once mor e been brought to the fore by Derek Parfit's interesting book, Reaso ns and Persons. 28 Parfit defends some versio n of the view that a human life is not an a priori unity or that person al identity doesn't have to be defined in terms of a whole life. It is perfectly defensible for me to consider (what I would conventi onally call ) my earlier, say, pre adolescent self as another person and, similarl y, to consider what "I" (as we normally put it) shall be several decades in the future as still another person. This who le position draws on the Lockean (further developed in the Humean) understanding of persona l identity. Parfit's arguments draw on examples which are of a kind inaugurated by Locke, where because of the unusual and perplexing relation of mind to body our usual intuitions about the unity of a person are disturbed. 29 From my point of view, this whole conception suffers from a fatal flaw. Personal identity is the identity of the self, and the self is understood as an obj ect to be known. It is not on all fours with othe r obj ects, true. For Locke it has this peculiarity that it essentially appears to itself. Its being is inseparable from sel f-awareness. 30 Personal identity is then a matter of self-cons cious ness. 3 1 But it is not at all what I have been calling the self, something which can exist only in a space of moral issues. Self-perception is the crucial defining characteristic of the person for Locke. 32 It is the vestigial element corresponding to the four features which distinguish the self from an ordinary obje ct that I outlined in section 2.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Duck sex can be elaborately aesthetic or shockingly violent and deeply troubling, but it is a fascinating topic. It may not be the best subject for dinner table conversation among new acquaintances—perhaps that’s why we’ve never again been in the company of the woman who asked the question—but after all the disturbing details have been examined and understood, the story of duck sex actually concludes with a rather redeeming insight into the relationship between the sexes, the nature of desire, female sexual autonomy, and the evolution of beauty in the natural world. The drama of duck sex brings to mind the ancient Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, in which Zeus took sexual possession of the lovely young Leda after assuming the physical form of a swan. This mythic scene has attracted the interest of artists ranging from the Greeks to Leonardo da Vinci to William Butler Yeats. Although often referred to as “the Rape of Leda,” it has usually been depicted with a note of sexual ambiguity, there being an element of mutual desire mixed in with the suddenness of the act. Perhaps the Greeks intuited that something about waterfowl sex is intriguing. If so, they were right, for the full evolutionary implications of the social complexity of duck sex are only beginning to be unpacked. — On a cloudy winter day in 1973, when I was twelve years old, I embarked on one of my earliest birding trips to the ocean. I stood on the banks of the Merrimack River in Newburyport, Massachusetts, just upstream from where it widens out into the bay. With the proceeds from a paper route and mowing lawns, I had just purchased my first spotting scope for watching distant birds, and I was excited to be using it to observe ducks, gulls, loons, and other waterbirds at this famous birding locality. It was a cold February day, with chunks of ice on the riverbanks and in some of the calmer eddies, but I was euphoric. I could see several dense flocks of ducks churning away against a strong current on the falling tide. In my very first scan with the scope, I landed on a lifer!—a flock of a couple dozen Common Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula). The male ducks were crisp black on the back, snowy white on the sides, belly, and breast, and crowned with a shiny, iridescent green head. On each glittering green cheek was a large round white spot. As advertised, their eyes were brilliantly golden yellow. The females were drabber, with grayish sides and neck and a brown head, but they shared the same yellow eyes.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  It should not come as a surprise that science does such a poor job of explaining pleasure, because, as I discussed in the book’s introduction, it’s left the actual experience of pleasure out of the equation. The modern science of mate choice, in humans and other animals, has not been designed to address the question of sexual pleasure directly. Having grown out of the study of mate choice in other animal species, it simply can’t. There is no way it can capture the pleasure that a female lyrebird experiences while listening to a male lyrebird’s unremitting cascade of mimetic songs from his display mound or while watching the quivering veil of his gauzy tail feathers as he unfolds them over his body like half an umbrella. It cannot understand the aesthetic experience of a female Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock as she stands next to a screaming orange male sitting motionless on the bare dirt floor of his lek territory, the two of them surrounded by other screaming males lending their raucous cacophony to the courtship scene. The only thing we scientists can assess in these instances is the outcome—which mate did the female end up choosing? But by focusing solely on outcomes, biologists have obscured and ignored the richly pleasurable sensory and cognitive criteria that went into making the choice. When it’s our own human pleasures that we’re investigating, however, we have an opportunity to understand sexual pleasure much more fully, because humans, unlike other animals, can tell us what they’re experiencing. This ability to communicate can transform our analysis of the evolution of orgasm. It’s time for evolutionary biology to embrace this opportunity. Fortunately, the theory of aesthetic evolution is uniquely well equipped to help us do so. Aesthetic evolution explicitly addresses the subjective experience of the pleasure of mating preference. To understand the evolution of sexual pleasure, we need to create a corollary of the Beauty Happens hypothesis, which I will call the Pleasure Happens mechanism. In the Beauty Happens mechanism, the focus is on the coevolution of desire in one sex and the physical objects of desire in the other sex—in other words, the display traits. In the Pleasure Happens mechanism, we must focus on the coevolution of the subjective experience of pleasure with the features that elicit that pleasure. This means recognizing that the experience of mate choice is, in and of itself, pleasurable, something that is still rarely acknowledged in the scientific literature on mate choice. Darwin, however, proposed it.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Although Darwin was too proper, shy, or fearful of his audience’s responses to explicitly discuss the sexual pleasure of humans in The Descent of Man, he did discuss sexual pleasure in animals, proposing that the sexual displays of animals evolve precisely because of the profound sensory pleasures they elicit. By the same reasoning, because female sexual pleasure and orgasm are fundamental components of the experience of mate choice in action—including all the physical interactions involved in sexual behavior—the exercise of sexual evaluation is inherently pleasurable. The pleasures that are part of it, including and especially the experience of orgasm, are the data upon which mate choice, or more to the point remating choice (see chapter 8), is made. Which leads us back to the question of how these pleasures evolved. According to the Pleasure Happens hypothesis, female sexual pleasure and orgasm have evolved (that is, expanded in capacity and intensity since common ancestry with chimpanzees; evolutionary context 2) through indirect selection by women’s mating preferences for those male traits and behaviors that they find sexually pleasurable. Because human mating preferences are largely remating preferences, based on repeated sexual encounters, female mate choice can encompass aesthetic evaluation of the physiological, sensory, and cognitive experiences of sex itself. As selection by female mating preferences gradually transformed male mating behavior, females’ own capacity for subjective pleasure coevolved and expanded to become more complex, intense, and satisfying. To be as explicit as possible, the aesthetic proposal is that human female sexual pleasure and orgasm have evolved because females have preferred to mate, and remate, with males who stimulated their own sexual pleasure; females have thereby also selected indirectly for those genetic variations that contributed to the expansion of their own pleasure. By selecting on male traits and behavior that elicit orgasm more frequently, female mate choice has evolutionarily transformed the nature of female pleasure. In the Pleasure Happens scenario, female orgasm is not an adaptation to accomplish any extrinsic, naturally selected function—sperm upsuck or anything else that adaptationists might come up with in their search for rhyme and reason. Nor is female orgasm merely a historical accident, second fiddle to male sexual pleasure. Rather, female sexual pleasure and orgasm are the evolutionary consequences of female desire and choice, and they are ends unto themselves. — The Pleasure Happens hypothesis of orgasm evolution is consistent with much of the evidence on female sexuality and sexual response—for example, its inherent variability. I agree with Elisabeth Lloyd’s suggestion that the variability in female capacity for orgasm is an indicator that orgasm did not evolve by adaptive natural selection, because natural selection should result in much more reliable, highly functioning, and consistent experience. However, I disagree with the conclusion Lloyd then draws—that this means orgasm is simply a historical (but fortunate) accident. I think that human female orgasm is a highly evolved experience that is about something and has evolved for something. That “something” is pleasure, which evolves through the evolutionary action of their mate choices.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Although there is not yet enough comparative evidence about orgasm in various female monkeys and apes to support the conclusion that female orgasm has evolved or expanded in pleasure in humans since common ancestry with chimpanzees, I hope that proposing the Pleasure Happens hypothesis will lead to further investigations to test it. Until then, we can see that the Pleasure Happens hypothesis is congruent with lots of the current data. For example, the indirect sexual selection that drives the Pleasure Happens mechanism will be less efficient at evolutionary design than direct natural selection can be. In addition, female choice is not the only source of sexual selection in humans, so this mechanism may not predominate in determining the evolution of female sexuality. Thus, the Pleasure Happens mechanism is congruent with the fundamental variability of human female orgasm. The hypothesis, furthermore, is supported by the existence of many evolved features of human sexuality that are different from our ape relatives and that can only be explained as expansions of sexual pleasure. For example, copulation duration in gorillas and chimpanzees is measured in seconds. On average, human copulation lasts for several minutes and of course can continue for far longer than that. (Much to the frustration of many women, however, the extensive variation in male copulation duration skews toward the short, chimpanzee end of the continuum.) These longer bouts of intercourse would enhance female stimulation and create greater likelihood of orgasm, but they would serve no adaptive function, because extending copulation duration cannot by itself increase fertilization success or make a male a winner at sperm competition. Any evolutionary explanation for longer copulation times in humans is inherently about enhancing the pleasurable sensory experience of sex. Another piece of evidence that seems to suggest the primacy of female pleasure as the driving force in much of human sexual evolution is the diversity of copulatory positions. Male gorillas and chimpanzees generally mount the females from behind. Men and women are much more creative in their couplings, which is consistent with the aesthetic hypothesis that the evolution of our sexual repertoire is in service to the goal of expanding opportunities for clitoral stimulation and female pleasure. Likewise, the evolution of increases in copulation frequency, concealed ovulation, and the decoupling of sexuality from periods of female fertility all contributed to the expansion of the role of sexual behavior and sexual pleasure in the lives of human beings.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  All this focus on women’s sexual pleasure might have left the guys feeling left out, diminished, the magnitude of their own pleasure compared unfavorably with that of women, their orgasms denigrated to mere plumbing. But that doesn’t mean that men don’t have terrific sex. So why are men’s orgasms so pleasurable? Recall that the male orgasm has always been explained as an adaptation to encourage males to pursue sexual opportunities. Natural selection for any behavior will often result in the evolution of physiological pleasure in that act. Animals need to eat, so eating when hungry has evolved to be rewarding, satisfying, and pleasurable. However, most men would agree, I think, that the pleasure of orgasm is far greater, more intense, and more rewarding than the pleasure of eating. So, I think it’s fair to conclude that male orgasm is more pleasurable than it needs to be in order simply to ensure reproduction—that is, more pleasurable than natural selection alone can account for. This leads me to the conclusion that natural selection is not the only mechanism involved in the evolution of the human male orgasm and that aesthetic evolution has also played a significant role. Although this is pretty speculative, I think it is clear that male orgasmic pleasure in humans has undergone an evolutionary expansion since the time of our shared ancestry with gorillas and chimpanzees. While other male apes pursue sexual opportunities with a fervor similar to men’s, they certainly don’t seem to enjoy sex as much as men do. The orgasms of male gorillas and chimpanzees do not appear to pack the same punch as those of human males. There is little foreplay, minimal touching, or even eye contact. After a brief moment of rapid thrusting, it’s over and both male and female go back to sifting through the leaf litter. Consider also the fact that the length of time to orgasm in chimpanzees averages around seven seconds versus a few minutes in men. If the quality of orgasmic pleasure is correlated at all with the amount of time it takes to get there—a not unreasonable physiological conjecture—then men certainly experience more sexual pleasure than male chimpanzees.