musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week?


Have you ever wondered why things like pleasure and happiness, are so evanescent? For some things, we accommodate to their presence and after a while cease to notice them even though they are still present; pleasure is fleeting as well, and yet it is not simply because we no longer notice it, but rather because it has gone. It is a memory.

But isn’t that just stating the obvious? We’ve grown up to assume that pleasure will be fleeting so although its disappearance may be unwelcome, it is still expected. We notice change more readily than consistency; you’d soon tire of candy if that’s all you ever had to eat. So, perhaps one of the reasons pleasure is so enjoyable is because it contrasts with what came before.

Is that, perhaps, why only some memories are emotionally-laden? I have long tried to puzzle out the thread that connects the retired man I am now, with the little boy petting a dog in the black-and-white photograph in a bedroom; it was taken by my parents when I was seven years old. I know it is me because my mother, in her unmistakeable style, wrote my name on the back. I think I have sketchy memories of Winnipeg of the time -not of the day the photograph was taken, but random things that happened in those days: of falling out of a tree; of shooting a fly with my BB gun in our back yard in Winnipeg; of being rowed up Maplewood Avenue by my father when the Red River flooded out our home in the 1950ies. But if you were to ask me to describe the events in greater detail than that -how I felt or what I was wearing- I would probably have to make them up as if I were writing a story about someone else.

At what stage, then, did I cease to feel what I did when I was that boy with his hopes and dreams, and whose emotions, at such a distance of years and experience, I could only guess? At what stage did I become an old man in his chair by the fire dreaming about how pleasant things used to be, when, in truth, I’m not at all certain they were? Were things really better in the old days? I just don’t know.

When you think about it like that, however, none of us are the same people we were a decade ago, a year ago, or maybe even a day ago; their pleasures have long since vanished. Not only do we look different than before, we also feel differently, and maybe expect different things than we used to. In a way, then, is it so surprising that we often rationalize and prefer novelty over continuity: a new phone, a new suit, a new hobby… a new feeling? Whatever it is, we can treasure the newness of it, because the pleasure of what it replaced no longer exists.

So maybe joy, or pleasure, is like that: it is enjoyable because it is a contrast with what came before. And because it is time-limited, we won’t have time to tire of it, to forget about its presence and hence no longer experience it. Of course, that’s old-hat to a child, it seems.

My daughter and I used to go for rambling walks in the forest near the house when she was small. And although we knew most of the trails, we sometimes discovered a new one with branches freshly broken and beckoning us to explore. These, of course, were the best kind, she used to say, and insisted she name them, so we would remember where they were. It was a curious logic, I suppose -that naming things, somehow fixed them both in time and place- but name them she did, nevertheless.

The one I remember the best, though, was the Raven Trail. We had heard a raven call out when we tried to follow the path of broken branches and trampled undergrowth deeper into the shadows. It had unleashed an impatient tirade as we approached the tree where it had been watching us, but whether as a warning to its mate, or because we had surprised it in a nap was hard to say.

The trail we followed, though, led nowhere special -although stepping in a little creek we’d never seen before was reward enough for Catherine. Perhaps I would have felt the same when I was her age, but I was more concerned with walking home in sodden shoes, than she was.

“But Daddy,” she exclaimed with arms folded over her chest as she stood ankle deep in the water, “We would never have known the creek was here if we hadn’t followed the Raven Trail…” I think she was disappointed in my attitude. “And the raven did warn us, you know,” she explained, trying to spot it in the tops of the trees that were crowded around us near the creek. It must have flown away at the disturbance, though, and so we headed home, promising ourselves we’d return another day to discover where the creek was going.

And yet when we returned a few weeks later, the trail we’d followed had repaired the damage of our passage, and neither of us could be sure quite where the Raven Trail had been. We listened for the raven all along the trail we usually took when we left the house, but other birds had taken its place: a pacific wren was chirpling out its tireless song, and robins were fighting over something high above -maybe they were angry at the woodpecker pounding at a tree nearby. Catherine didn’t seem to mind, however; she was delighted with the greeting we were hearing, and didn’t even mention the Raven Trail we’d come to find.

I shrugged and scanned the bushes for the vanished trail; I had come prepared with rubber boots and memories that had delighted us before. But, like Brigadoon, only stories remained and expectations unfulfilled for now. “Maybe we’re still at the wrong place, sweetheart,” I said, walking slowly further on, hoping for a break in the deep green bushes that lined the way. “The raven must have settled on a new tree somewhere,” I muttered to myself, and stopped to listen once again.

“It doesn’t matter, Daddy,” she explained, her rapt-eyes staring as usual at the branches high above as she followed a few steps behind. “I love it here! Listen to all the other birds today…”

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gozzter

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