The Littlest Thing

I bought a book the other week. Nothing unusual there. One of my regular treats early in my working life was to leave the office, head to a bookshop, buy a stack and then pop to the sushi place round the corner for an early supper and a quiet read. I have been a sufficiently good friend to the publishing industry over the years that it would only be fair for it to send a large wreath to my funeral.

But this time was different. I was on a train, not in a Japanese restaurant. And I didn’t want to read the book.

I had half an hour, I had a book on my lap, I was surrounded by strangers seemingly seeking mystical union with the contents of their phones. And I still didn’t want to read my book.

It scared me slightly, I realised.

Not because it was some occult text (although my trip had featured a detour into a New Age shop, the store I thought I was going to having radically changed its offering from that advertised on the internet. No book, just the offer of a tarot reading…).

No, the book I was proposing to read (L’estate fredda by Gianrico Carofiglio if you’re wondering) was the second book in Italian I was going to tackle. And it is very different from the first. The Leopard is a historical novel, full of lush descriptions of the elevated world of the Sicilian aristocracy. My new purchase was a police procedural. Rather more “street” – lots of bullet-proof vests, few if any tailcoats.

This was a conscious choice – Man does not live by high-end literature alone. Deploying the language of the Victorian Upper Classes in a bar in Rimini might raise the odd eyebrow.

But there was also a risk. For I had designed my learning to be able to read The Leopard and, having done so, I allowed myself to lay claim to some level of fluency in the language. But what if I cracked open my new purchase and saw not words and sentences, but just groups of letters signifying, no doubt, something to Italians, but nothing to me? Would I not then have to conclude that I didn’t read Italian at all? At best, I read “Leopard”.

Feel the fear and do it anyway they say. So I cracked it open and got off the train thirty pages later and slightly cockier.

Thinking about the incident, however, I realised that if I hadn’t been reluctant out of self preservation, it was self-image preservation which had held me back. I had come to see myself as an Italian reader, and I was keen to avoid anything which might puncture that bubble. My view was effectively a guess – if you can read one book, you can read them all – but nonetheless, it had become important to me that it was correct.

It shouldn’t have been. I’ve long thought that the Delphic Oracle’s exhortation to “Know Yourself” was a pretty good project for life – only you really can, nothing can prevent you and the natural changes of a human life give you a succession of “yous” to get to know. Whether I could read the book or not, I would have learned something about my abilities (and actually doing so, I certainly learned about Italian swearwords – stronzo).

But humans are most consistent in their inconsistency. Whatever principle I claimed to follow, it was less important at that point than preserving my self-image. Continuing to be able to think I was what I thought I was seemed a greater concern than finding out what I actually was. But if we are inconsistent about acting on our beliefs, we generally like our stories to be consistent. In this case, avoiding a potential narrative clash, in others, editing away episodes which add grey to our preferred black (other people) and white (us). However long we live, we prefer a short story – simple and direct – to a Victorian novel full of plot, counter plot and nuance.

Our stories, however, do not just describe our pasts. They describe our futures, or at least the futures we might like to have. We project them forwards, imagining the “us” of years hence. But these stories are every bit as partial as the others we tell. We see ourselves being happy and successful, not stuck in the same place doing the same thing. We put up with today because of what we tell ourselves about tomorrow.

Although they may operate on different timeframes, our future stories seem every bit as worthy of preservation as our present ones. If we avoid doing things which might alter who we are, we can also avoid things which might alter who we think we will become. If a course of action might run the risk of taking us away from our imagined destination, perhaps it is better to leave it alone. We will get there anyway – it is written in our story, after all – so why take the chance?

An odd way to behave, if you think about it. Giving veto power over our actions to something which is fictional and we know to be fictional. Knowing and acting on that knowledge are, however, different things. If we understand at some level that our stories are fictional, we do not behave as if they were, treating them instead as holy writ. They are us, we are real, so they are real.

Imagine, though, a world where we treated them as just what they are – stories. Confections with no strong relation to who we actually are, nor any certain connection to who we will be. What if we treated ourselves as readers, not writers or editors? Would we be so invested? Probably not.

If we were not, we would be freer. Not flinching at the thought that the story might be about to take an unexpected turn. Not trying to steer it, but happy to go where the plot takes us.

Freer, too, to behave in the moment without fear of what it might mean for the later chapters. Not constantly checking our present against our imagined futures and anxiously weighing whether the next step was in the right direction. Free to judge things on their own terms, not as waypoints in our desired journeys. We might, paradoxically, find it easier to get where we want, and we would be less concerned if we did not.

“The smallest minority on Earth,” wrote Ayn Rand, “is the individual.” And stripped back of all artifice and narrative, our awareness is smaller still. But it is the awareness which is always there. Unlike our stories, it does not twist or turn or change, it just watches. If we are to think of ourselves as something, it is a much better, more stable bet than the shifting fiction of our self-image. Whether we succeed or fail makes no difference to it. Just a perspective unique in time and space, it needs no labels or baubles.

Thinking of ourselves this way might remove the baroque (and Leopard-like) ornamentation of our selves, but no few noble families were crushed by the expense of maintaining their palazzi, their roofs and walls constantly in need of maintenance. A humbler dwelling needs less repair. And has more room for extension.

I’ll buy another book soon. An Aga-saga, I think. If the Italians do them. Got to keep stretching my vocabulary. Will I be able to read it? Who knows? But I’ll find out. That’s the important thing.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.

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