The Little Things

 

As a philosopher and philosophically-minded individual, I have, I realize, assumed for most of my life that there is An Answer … and, even as regards components of life, answers of broad generality. These are the Secret or Secrets of Life. The great sage meditates on the mountaintop for years, so that when he finally comes down from the mountain he can just float through life. He knows all that needs to be known to succeed at living. Ethics looks for so-called theories about what these secrets are. 

            But are there really such Secrets? As usual, now that I am a philosopher of yes and no, the answer is: It depends. In fact I think one of the Secrets is that one must look to the details for the answers and not to one or several big theories. 

            That is the bad news. There are no shortcuts to wisdom … other, perhaps, than the wisdom that there are no shortcuts. A trivial sort of example that is very much on my mind because I deal with it every day all day are – ironically enough – all the shortcuts I have learned for using my word processor and other programs on the computer. 

            In keeping with the experimental method of being one’s own doctor I have adopted from my friend Allan Saltzman, I discovered that a way to “treat” or “cure” the pain in my lower right arm was to stop using the computer mouse so much. I knew that there were keyboard substitutes (or so-called shortcuts, although they can actually take longer and involve more steps) for all the commands one might typically use the mouse for, so I began looking them up. These shortcuts are numerous because there are numerous commands and also different commands or shortcuts for different programs. This seemed like an onerous task, but my hypothesis that they would rid me of the pain motivated me to start learning them. 

            But a second Secret of life I have learned over time – this is the good news -- is that, once having jump-started this process with some brute memorization, the task becomes easier and easier because it arises out of simple use. Take for example the operation I just performed to save the text I just wrote. It turns out this can be quite involved when you don’t use the mouse.* 

            Thus, first I must know and use the command for Save: Control-S. Then, the way my system is set up, I have to hit “tab” three times (which, like all the rest, I had to discover by experimentation) to reach “More save options” and then hit “enter,” then hit “tab” 11 more times to reach a list of folders, then tap the down arrow until I reach the folder I want to save the file in, then hit “enter” to open it, then keep hitting “tab” until I’m back at the subject line where I can type in a title for the file, then hit “tab” a couple more times to reach “Save.” 

            That is only one way I know how to do it, and not the quickest but the one I generally prefer (don’t ask me why), and all of it had to be discovered by experimentation. But my point now is that it would have been deadly dull to learn, or try to learn, that from a book or set of instructions by memorization, whereas finding it by myself and then using it over and over cements it into my mind. So that a novice watching me at work who wanted to learn how to use shortcuts would both marvel at my facility and the presumed storehouse of knowledge I have, and be disheartened by the seemingly gargantuan task awaiting her, perhaps beyond her ability altogether. 

            Thus, yes, there is a Secret or set of Secrets of life, but, no, they do not enable you to live life by knowing them: You have to learn all the little things. That’s the Secret. (And, truth be told, I didn’t even learn that simple Secret from a book, but only after being obliged to learn so many little things that it suddenly dawned on me that that was the Secret.) 

* I gave such a complex example to make the secondary point that not only the knowledge of how to live but also the facility of applying that knowledge comes with practice. However, sometimes the knowledge, once acquired, does have a very simply application. Two examples: 

It dawned on me one day, after decades of observation and then at long last drawing this inference, that a more efficient and less tedious way of removing the lint from the filter in the dryer is to collect the lint first where it has most piled up and then use that lint in one’s fingers to collect the lint where it is thinly laid. 

Second example: In recent years I have suffered more and more dizziness from calcium particles dislodging or whatever in my inner ear – a natural consequence of ageing, saith my doctor, and simply something to manage when it occurs, such as by not turning my head quickly. Meanwhile I do exercises at home every other day, some of which involve turning my head around as I move from one exercise to another. It occurred to me one day that this could have something to do with the dislodging of the calcium particles. So thenceforward I made a point of holding my neck up when (slowly) making the turns so that my head did much less of a swivel. Lo and behold, I have had no dizziness for months.