Psychology and Other Stories (15 page)

“You're looking well,” he said, sincerely and with a lack of malice that astonished himself. He noticed that she wasn't holding a copy of his book.

“You,” she said, “are looking like you're making a tremendous fool of yourself.”

After that, the self-help guru took his new career very seriously indeed.

MONDAY.

“Hi everybody, I'm—”

“Could you stand up for us?”

The girl stood awkwardly. “Well, I'm Sonja, and one thing about me is that I'm a waitress and a single mom.” She got it out in one breath and sat back down. Margo smiled and clapped softly, but no one joined in.

Be quiet
, she told herself.

“Now Sonja,” said Ethan, pressing the tips of his index fingers against his lower lip, “is waitressing something you
are
, or something you
do
?”

Not sure whether to stand again to answer, she hovered briefly, half-crouched, above her chair. “Something I do?”

And so it went. “Tell us, John, are your grandchildren something you
are
, or something you
have
?” “Now Lottie, do you think jogging is something you
are
, or something you
like
?” Everyone sheepishly agreed that what they'd thought they
were
was actually just something they did or had or felt or liked.

At first Margo didn't understand; surely “single mom” was not just something you
did
? But then she was reminded of an activity they'd done at Personal Pursuit, the “rock-bottoming” exercise. The instructor kept asking variations on the same question; the idea was to dig deeper, to evaluate your stock responses, to unearth what you really meant or really felt about something. This in turn reminded her of the Martian exercise they'd done at Best You: “I'm sorry, I'm from Mars, what do you mean by ‘single mom'? … What do you mean by ‘not married'? … What do you mean by ‘relationship'?” There, the point had been to peel away the layers of assumptions and conventions, to strip away the veneer of the self you presented to the world, and reveal the precious, if perhaps unlovely, self as
you
saw it. Maybe this was like that.

By the time Ethan pointed his praying hands at her, Margo had prepared and mentally recited what she felt was an unobjectionable introduction.

“Well Ethan, and everybody,
hi.
I'm Margo, though mostly folk call me Mar. In order of personal importance, I
am
… the proud mother of two wonderful and successful grown daughters, I
am
the co-owner and part-time manager of a flower arrangement and delivery business, I
am
an actor and a playwright, I
am
a novice watercolor painter, I
am
a hobby gardener, I
am
a former—”

Ethan cut her off: “Now, Margo, is painting something you
are
, or something you
do
?”

She'd known it was coming, but still the question perplexed her. “Well Ethan,
painting
is certainly something I do, but
painter
, I think, is something I
am
…”

“Are you a painter, or someone who paints?”

She saw his point, or thought she did: she was just a dabbler. But she hadn't claimed to be a professional. “Someone who paints, I guess.”

He accepted this as conclusively damning and shifted his attention to the next woman.

“Wait a second,” she said. (
Shut up
, her mind barked at her.) “Isn't what you
do
part of what makes you who you
are
?” She looked around the room for support, and found it: everyone was smiling mildly and nodding at her.

“Let me turn that around and give the question back to you, Margo. If driving home one night you—God forbid—ran someone over, would that make you a ‘murderer'?”

She was too flabbergasted to say anything more than “I guess not.” After a moment's reflection she wanted to ask if she'd run over this person on purpose, then realized that this was not the crux of the matter. Yes, she thought, if I killed someone, that
would
make me a killer—wouldn't it? But it was too late to argue. Everyone was already smiling and nodding at the woman next to her, whose name Margo had missed.

TUESDAY
.

He was fortyish, he smelled good, and his name was Bread.

She smiled her two-thirds amused smile. “Bread?”

“Bread,” he repeated.

She felt the smile going stale. “
Brett
?”

“Bread,” he said. “With a D.”

Finally it dawned on her. He had an
accent.

“Oh,
Brad
!” she almost shouted, then felt stupid: she sounded like she was correcting his pronunciation of his own name.

“Two minutes,” called Ethan, “starting …
now
.”

She had offered to go first. So she started talking.

One of the problems with self-help books is their smug, apodictic tone—the way they make sweeping declarations, as if these were established facts applicable to everyone at all times. But anyone who has cultivated the moral belief that we are all unique individuals with unique needs will bridle at the notion that one size of advice fits all. Reading these books' prescriptions, we quite naturally and instinctively start to imagine scenarios in which, or people for whom, this advice would be laughably inappropriate—or even disastrous. For example, I found myself, when reading John Gray's really quite harmless “101 ways to score points with a woman,” picturing all the women I knew who would be somewhat less than swept off their feet by your “offering to sharpen her knives in the kitchen” (#63), showing her that you are interested in what she is saying “by making little noises like ah ha, uh-huh, oh, mm-huh, and hmmmm” (#80), or “letting her know when you are planning to take a nap” (#23). It was also good cynical fun to dream up men for whom “treating her in ways you did at the beginning of the relationship” (#61) or “touching her with your hand sometimes when you talk to her” (#78) would be bad advice. Try it yourself.

This is just what William Gaddis does in his novel,
The Recognitions.
He lampoons the cult of Carnegie through one overearnest disciple, Mr. Pivner, who applies the principles of winning friends and influencing people even when being accosted by a crazy man on a New York City bus. Even “at this critical instant,” his training does not fail him: he recalls chapter six, “How to Make
People Like You Instantly,” which advises him to find something about the other person that he can honestly admire.

—What a wonderful head of hair you have, said Mr. Pivner. The man beside him looked at the thin hair on Mr. Pivner's head, and then clutched a handful of his own. —Lotsa people like it, he said. Then he sat back and looked at Mr. Pivner carefully. —Say what is this, are you a queer or something?

Mr. Pivner's eyes widened. —I … I …

This is funny, if not exactly convincing. Why, for instance, does Mr. Pivner want to make
this
man like him instantly? To blame Dale Carnegie or his book for this silly exchange is not quite fair.

Most of the criticisms of Jim Bird suffer from the same sort of straw-man irrelevance. It is all too easy to imagine people (serial killers and pedophiles are most commonly adduced) who perhaps should
not
be encouraged to accept themselves, or to stop striving to change who they are. But what about the average person? What does someone of average intelligence with average-sized problems get, or not get, out of a Healthy Self seminar?

What Margo had hoped to get was a little inspiration. This was her fourth self-improvement seminar. The first one, which she had attended nearly ten years ago, had helped her get over, or “get past,” her husband Bill's death. The second one had given her the courage to change careers—to give up acting. The third one, three years ago, had revealed to her that her daughters no longer depended on her and that she had the right to pursue her own happiness; that is, it had helped her to move out and remarry without guilt. Now, having left Bertie, her second husband, and moved back home, she knew only that she needed to change her life again. She was 55 and didn't know who she was or what she should be doing. She felt as though
she had forgotten her lines, misplaced her script. At night, in bed, she couldn't sleep, because she didn't know what to do with her teeth: if she held them together, she felt as though she were clenching her jaw; if she held them apart, she felt as though she were gawping. Nothing felt natural anymore. Nothing felt normal.

She told some of this to Brad, but found it difficult to concentrate with him staring at her. When it was his turn to speak, she found it even more difficult to listen. They were sitting, as instructed, facing each other, with feet flat on the floor, hands on knees, and backs straight. This posture did not make her feel “open,” “receptive,” or “attentive,” but stiff and ridiculous, and this sense of her own ridiculousness acted as a far greater barrier to receptivity than crossed arms or slouching ever could have. She was also not supposed to speak while he talked, but it took a conscious effort of will to suppress every syllable of encouragement or simple acknowledgement—every ah ha, uh-huh, oh, mm-huh, and hmmmm. But the worst was the enforced eye contact. It was simply not natural to stare steadily into someone's eyes while you talked at them. It was faintly aggressive, a sort of challenge: What do you think of
this
, hey?

You dummy
, she told herself. This was surely the point of the whole exercise. This was what they were supposed to discover: that communication was a two-way street, that listening was not passive but active, that body language was half the message, that trying too hard to listen was precisely what prevented you from hearing—that, in Jim Bird's terms,
striving
was what kept you from
living.
Of course! She smiled, then blushed, afraid that Brad would misconstrue her smile. He too, she now saw, was grappling with the eye contact: the effort of not looking away was draining his face and his voice of all expression. What he seemed to be telling her—with eerie, almost sinister dispassion—was that he was tired of hurting women.

“Time's up! Now who wants to share their insights on this learning?”

As usual, no one put up their hand right away. Margo, having solved the lesson, did not want to deprive the others of a chance to figure it out, and stayed silent.

Eventually they began cautiously to lift their arms, and Ethan lowered his prayer-clasped hands and pointed to them one by one.

“I really enjoyed that.”

“Me too.”

“Excellent,” said Ethan. “Can you tell me why?”

“I don't know. It was different?”

Ethan nodded, grimly encouraging, like a physiotherapist watching a car crash victim take their first painful steps. “
How
was it different—anyone?”

“It was more natural.”

“I felt that by not interrupting all the time I could really
hear
my partner.”

There was a general murmur of agreement.

“I felt that when I was
talking
I was really paying attention to what I was
saying.
I was worried I wouldn't know what to say, but by looking Lottie in the eyes, I was able to concentrate—and it just came to me.”

Ethan beamed. “Because your underself—your
true
self—was doing most of the work.” His gaze, like a camera zooming out, diffused itself across everyone in the room equally. “By not looking at the outfield or the dugout but keeping our eyes firmly on the ball, by not pushing ourselves towards anything or pulling anything towards ourselves, by not fighting the stream of the now but letting it carry us, we are able to
flow
—to
let go
—to
let it happen.
Excellent! Anyone else?”

“But I didn't get that at all,” Margo sputtered.

“Hands before ‘ands,' please.”

Annoyed, she lifted her hand minimally from her lap, then threw it up over her head, but Ethan only went on staring at her expectantly.

“By focusing so hard,” she said slowly, aware that she was plucking her words from nowhere, “by trying so hard to listen, to pay attention, I just … drowned myself out.”

There was another general murmur of agreement, identical to the first.

“Aha.” Ethan smiled imperturbably. “I think we're up against the difference between effort
ful
focus and effort
less
focus. Being in the now with your partner is not about
trying
to
listen
. It is … about …
listening
to
try.
Next time,” he said lightly, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, “relax.”