You Decide What Your Good Shit Is
The Specialness Spiral
Remember a week ago when I said it’s been a week? Yeah, well, here we are, a week later and it’s been another week. Last week I was decked out in full PPE sitting by my father’s bedside at Yale Hospital. He is finally on the mend, so I’ve returned to my house1 and have spent the bulk of this week in my bed, feeling like shit.
Someday I will find it very funny that in my haste to get to my family, I booked my itinerary backwards. I was so excited that I got my act together to arrive at the airport super early, only to discover I paid to fly from my ultmate destination to where I was standing. Someday I will find it funny that when I finally (after tears and a few hundred more dollars) landed in Connecticut, we had to stop to put air in the car tires at 1:49am.
That someday was pretty much while it was happening.
I’m not telling you this because I’m fishing for sympathy, far from it.2 I’m telling you because: humaning is hard—which is why we have to sharpen our joy-finding muscles.
Anywayzzzzzzz, back to using our good shit…
Jonah Berger is a super smarty-pants professor and researcher of language and human behavior. He explored how we alter our relationship with ordinary objects (i.e., not actual good shit) by not using them and imbuing them with an aura of too-good-for-ordinary-days.
“We all have this notion that certain things in our life just are special. There’s that heirloom china that your parents may have passed down to you. There’s that special suit that you might have worn at your wedding. These things are clearly special. But why would a $12 wine become special, or that pair of ordinary socks? Why do ordinary items become treasures? Why do we hold on to these things that started out having none of these associations?
This is what we call a specialness spiral. You take an ordinary item and forgo using it once. Because of that, you start to see it as a little more special. But because you see it as a little more special, at the next opportunity to use it, you say, “Well, maybe this is not a good enough opportunity,” so you pass up using it. It becomes a little more special. The next opportunity has to be even better, which means that it’s less likely to be used, so it becomes even more special. It’s this ratcheting upward of a specialness spiral where an item that started out very ordinary, through repeated lack of use eventually becomes quite special and seen more as a treasure.
–Jonah Berger
Ok, so, moment of self reflection:
What has gotten sucked into the vortex of my special spiral?
On a visit to Mexico with handsome husband, I bought a pair of big, perfect, chunky sterling silver hoops. Back home, I nestled among my other earrings box awaiting that undefined “special occasion.” For a few months I continued using my go-to hoops: a dull, anemic looking pair, sold to me as “sterling silver” from a semi-major US retailer. At best they were silver plated. More likely they went to some B.S. self-help seminar that taught them to look in the mirror and say “I’m sterling silver. You cannot tarnish me.”
One day I spied the two pairs of earrings side by side and had a wee epiphany. Well, that’s just stupid. Why am I wearing crappy looking jewelry when I have a gorgeous version of the same thing? Fuck those shitty fake silver bitches. I want to feel like a badass.
So, I pretty much wear them every day now. Except I took them out and placed them on the counter in my brother’s kitchen Sunday night before going to sleep to awaken for a very early flight.
I will not wear the crappy ones until I get them back. I have other beautiful earrings I love. In fact, I’m getting rid of the crappy ones.
Those big shiny hoops give me so much joy. I can’t believe I deprived myself the pleasure of wearing them because I thought they were “too good.”
You’re turn. Take a moment to consider for yourself:
What can you pull out of your black hole of a specialness spiral and bring into everyday use?
Tell me more! I want to hear your stories about an aha moment when you realized Duh! Why am I depriving myself of this joy that I already have access to? Or share with us what good shit you vow to start using. Or your specialness spiral story.
I’ll post a compendium of stories soon.
I’ll choose one submission at random to receive a package of stickers and other fun shit.
Click here to fill out a tiny little form.
Can we discuss how the use of the word home can be so confusing in these situations. Where I live (Savannah, GA) is my home. But I was raised in Connecticut, where my parents and siblings still live, so that is home in a sense. And when I am in Connecticut, I stay with my sister, Holly, so that is another sense of home. Just to name a few.
Dad is improving and is headed to rehab to get back on his feet, literally. I’ve tested negative for COVID twice, and feel like I’ve evolved from the my-head-is-so-stuffy-I-keep-turning-over-in-my-bed-like-a-lamb-on-a-spit-so-I-can-breathe to my nose is a full on goop-gushing faucet.
I died laughing a few times. This is now my homework for the weekend.