The Small Stuff, by Ian Bogost, explores the delights to be found in everyday encounters with our sensory experience. A bit like viewing a plant through a macro lens, or a few seconds of ASMR, by tuning in to the sensory details suffusing our everyday lives, we can find delight in a simple texture, a sound, a sensation and increase the enjoyment of that moment, bringing ourselves small doses of gratification throughout the many micromoments of life.
In brief:
Every day, you sustain a huge volume of encounters with small stuff, which, for the purpose of this book, I’m defining as any and all of the things you encounter with your senses and control with your body (or with tools and equipment), and which inspire delight in so doing… Simple pleasures that are readily available and that can overturn the bland monotony of our overly optimized, anodyne world.
So many of those tiny, visceral encounters with the physical world have been lost, due to an increased emphasis on automation and efficiency. That process has dematerialized human life, disconnecting people from the physical world they inhabit
All you have to do is to give yourself permission to reconnect with the world, often and with earnestness. Let yourself take advantage of the joy offered by the small stuff of sensory experience…
Highlights
Without knowing them personally, I surmise that the mother and her son faced a problem that afflicts us all: Their lives, like mine and yours and everyone’s, are overwhelming. The mother, by the looks of it, is trying to maintain a relationship with her friend while also managing her kid, along with who knows what else I couldn’t discern from eavesdropping. The child, for his part, surely hopes to survive a boring errand with Mom without losing his mind or causing her excessive grief. This is big stuff, and heavy stuff: being a good parent, child, or friend. Those types of goals snowball into even bigger ones—finding and maintaining love; securing and advancing in a satisfying career; making a difference in the world (or at least in your community). Together, aspirations such as these define the ideal of happiness and contentment in contemporary life.
The uncertainty surrounding such questions can suffuse every day with anxiety. If you get the big stuff wrong, your life may be different—and worse—than it could be.
Be a good parent and friend while having a successful career, improving your physical health and mental wellness, and giving back to your community, we’re told. Sheesh; I’m just trying to get through the day
you risk missing out on a universe of itty-bitty fulfillment. You can keep pursuing big goals and meaningful relationships, while also enjoying every moment just a little more, and with greater deliberateness.
Something about the tactile nature of that experience stood out to him. Instead of trying to get through the work as quickly or efficiently as possible, Tom allowed himself to bask in the unusual-to-him, moment-to-moment encounter with the materials before him. Doing so allowed him to welcome gratification in. And you can do that, too
Every day, you sustain a huge volume of encounters with small stuff, which, for the purpose of this book, I’m defining as any and all of the things you encounter with your senses and control with your body (or with tools and equipment), and which inspire delight in so doing
Simple pleasures that are readily available and that can overturn the bland monotony of our overly optimized, anodyne world
So many of those tiny, visceral encounters with the physical world have been lost, due to an increased emphasis on automation and efficiency. That process has dematerialized human life, disconnecting people from the physical world they inhabit
Smartphones are certainly convenient, and they have surely made your life easier. But doing everything on your phone flattens out that life. Its rich tapestry has been replaced by endless taps instead
All you have to do is to give yourself permission to reconnect with the world, often and with earnestness. Let yourself take advantage of the joy offered by the small stuff of sensory experience
For millennia, happiness has been defined as a blend of two things: the pursuit of pleasure (or the avoidance of pain) and the overall feeling of a life well lived. In the fourth century BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle named these two things hedonia (from which we get the word hedonism) and eudaimonia (which literally means “good spirit” but is usually translated as “the good life”)
Reclaiming that sensory life won’t make you love a job you hate or solve the problems in your marriage. But granting yourself permission to commune with more stuff, more often, can yield greater contentment. Maybe not in the same way as the big-stuff happiness, but as a buildup of small interactions over time that make daily life more tolerable by connecting you with it more frequently and more deeply
Happiness is overarching, big-picture contentment.
Satisfaction is the pride in accomplishment.
Gratification is the sensory enchantment of everyday life.
Happiness is amorphous and abstract, but it is also prolonged, requiring a long time and a lot of work to build or rebuild
He allowed himself to enjoy that process, rather than scoffing at it, deeming it irritating, or overlooking it entirely. He gave himself permission to commune with the brick and the brush and the paint, as if they were old friends with whom he was catching up, rather than inanimate objects with nothing more to offer than their utility.
She let the steering wheel spin back through her fingers as the front wheels righted themselves to center. As it did, it released a tiny, delightful payload of gratification: The cool leather of the wheel whisked past the skin of Scarlett’s hands, and the gentle ribbing of the stitching underneath tickled the underside of her knuckles a little
But how to notice and accept those gifts? Start as Scarlett did, by remarking upon the gift.
Those good memories will make them more open to gratifying experiences when they arrive
Self-control and planning are important skills for reasoning beings. But gratification does not always—or even usually—involve a choice between the present and the future. The psychologists, economists, and happiness advocates have saddled the rest of us with an impoverished and incomplete picture of gratification and its distinctive delights.
For one part, it is both preposterous and oppressive to imagine that even the passing or idle moments of one’s life must be optimized for long-term goals. The very idea that a preschool child would need to maximize their ability to resist the treats an adult had dangled in front of them should offend you. The notion that you waste any moment not spent optimizing your life is scandalous
in between maximizing profit and succumbing to addiction, you find a universe of other encounters. Most of them are innocuous, momentary, and meaningful. The happiness scientists and positive psychologists seem to think that gratification is something that gets used up when it is encountered—usually through consumption, as in the case of literally ingesting a marshmallow (or downing a Manhattan, or drawing tar and nicotine from a cigarette, or just scrolling Instagram).