The fan above my writing desk has been spinning all summer.
Most of the time, I’m not aware of it. But several times a day – more than several, if the writing isn’t going well – I’ll lean back and notice the irritating sound it makes, something like a faint, slow busy signal.
Or a robot cricket.
Or a tiny Japanese Zero circling my head.
It’s a constant, throbbing buzz. But only when I notice it.
I’ve always found the things people don’t notice to be just as interesting as the things they do. Even more interesting, actually, because not-noticing is often hard work.
The ability to ignore unpleasantness is a defining human characteristic. It can be something as trivial as a sink full of dirty dishes or as cosmic as our own mortality.
It’s easy to imagine why, as a species, we’d need the ability to ignore our impending doom. There’s a word for people who can’t get over their fascination with death: “morbid.”
Not to mention “brooding,” “macabre,” “bleak,” and “melancholy.”
In other words, everything you’d ever want in a teenage vampire. Then again, vampires are supposed to be immortal. If death isn’t a problem, what’s with all the brooding? No dental plan? Lighten up, vampires! It’s all good.
Of course, this capacity to block out the bad also works against us, at times, by blocking out the good.
Just yesterday, I was running a few errands. It was a sunny day, not terribly hot. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t thirsty. I hadn’t been up all night tending to the needs of a crying baby. I was in relatively good health – knock on wood. No creditors were pounding at my door. No barbarians were riding, shrieking and waving spears, through the streets. There was still plenty of oxygen in the air to breathe. Despite media reports to the contrary, our country, the richest and luckiest nation in the history of the world, wasn’t collapsing into a Socialist distopia…
But did I notice any of this? No!
I was fixated on a bank error I’d just discovered. As I drove down perfectly pleasant streets, I was fulminating against the sleepy bank bureaucrat who’d typed a single wrong number into his computer, with the result of sending my precious cash into the Banking Void – a dimension peopled by fat cat bankers and their minions who do nothing all day but cavort in huge piles of cynically misdirected hundred dollar bills.
Or something like that.
Outside, a lovely fall day was unfolding. Butterflies were flitting from branch to picturesque branch. I was safe. My basic physical needs were met. My little family was in fine shape.
Yet all I could think about was a problem that was both abstract and temporary. The bank would find the missing money. And if they didn’t, they were on the hook for it. That’s how the system works.
[By the way, I’m not going to name names, but rest assured this was not one of the fine, upstanding financial institutions of Perry County.]
Of all the possible things I could notice or not notice, my mind was fixating on something distant and unpleasant, and in the process, was ignoring ten thousand very pleasant things that were staring me in the face.
One of my favorite writers, the neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, has described consciousness as a river. I like that analogy. It matches the feeling I often have of an overwhelming flow of sense data. Sights, sounds, and smells — not to mention tastes and tactile impressions — are bombarding us all the time. And that’s just what’s coming at us from the outside. All the while, from the inside, we’re awash in memories, thoughts, and feelings.
Honestly, it’s a miracle that out of such a chaotic bouillabaisse, we’re able to form stable personalities. And I use the word “stable” advisedly.
The only way we can possibly manage this flood of information is by incorporating it into the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.
For example: “It’s a beautiful fall day. Big deal. I’m healthy, safe, blah blah blah. Forget all that. What I need to focus on is my role in the family as someone who doesn’t lose money!”
Every day, in countless moments like this one, we decide what matters and what doesn’t. Often, as in the case of the bank error, we’ll get stuck in an unproductive loop, to the detriment of seeing what’s actually all around us.
Which is why, from time to time, it makes sense to ask, “What am I not noticing right now?”
This is not always a happy question. You might find, for instance, that there’s a tiny kamikaze closing in on your head.
On the upside, you might realize that things aren’t anywhere near as awful as you think.
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 30 September 2010
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
