Hedonic Adaptation/Dai Fing and the Delicious Wine

Well... ha ha ha ha haaarrgghh!

If you go right back to the first entry in this, my new Canadian blog, you will understand the joke in that first word. "WORD" was actually a pretty good post. That was a year and two months ago. I've been in Canada well over a year now and it's time for me to take inventory. Am I doing what I promised myself I would do?

For me it was very important to do as many things as I could that I COULDN'T do in Korea, or at least things that were difficult to do or riDQlously expensive. Hah! No DQ in Korea. Been there, done that back in Canada! That's one example. I golfed several times last summer in Smithers and in Victoria. Already golfed once THIS year too! Broke 70 for the first time! I would not have been surprised if I had died an old man, (golfing right up till the bitter end, (in fact expiring on the golf course after getting my first hole-in-one at the age of 90)), never having shot a 69. But that ain't gonna happen! Got a 69 at Mount Douglas Golf Course. Now, it's a short and VERY forgiving course. I pulled several balls not one but TWO holes left and still had a shot to the green. And the par is 62, not the usual 72. So 69 is 7 over par instead of 3 under but I don't care a lick! I got a 69 dude! Golfing is something I told myself to do a lot of since it's even cheaper here than in THAILAND. So I'll give myself a check on THAT account.

As I write this I am enjoying a carrot muffin and a cup, (two cups and two muffins to be precise), of Red Rose Tea. Check and check. Yes, I'm muffin toppin' a bit back here in Canada. It's all this "hedonic adaptation" avoidance I swear! Carrot muffins and carrot cake were tough to find in Asia. I even BAKED a carrot cake since returning home! And as for the Red Rose tea, we all know it's "Ewnleh in Canader eh? Piteh!" I had to drink Lipton in Korea. And it wasn't always easy to find.

A recent study at the University of Missouri, one of a great many that in my opinion are done to verify the obvious and give it a more sciency sounding name, showed that we don't appreciate what we have. Well DUUUH! Glad they spent a holyshitillion dollars researching THAT little nugget of scientific fact! And what they came up with is called, "hedonic adaptation." This is the phenomenon of getting used to, and eventually, (or maybe not so eventually), taking for granted things that you once really appreciated. The cure, these grant-grabbing Missourian researchers tell us, is to appreciate what you have. "Get the most out of what you have before moving on to the next thing," says Kennon Sheldon, one of those jam sandwich researchers. That's a phrase I'm going to coin right here on my blog, folks. Use it frequently! It's a person who is researching something, (and being paid well to do so), that is unnecessary to research. Like those lucky folks who were, (and I'm not making this up), actually given government funding to see if a piece of bread with jam on one side actually DOES land face down when it's dropped more often than jam-side-up. They found that it DOES. Notwithstanding the Mythbusters having busted this as a myth, I still believe it and I still believe it to have been one of the more useless wastes of research money ever. "Jam sandwich research." If this goes viral and becomes a part of the parlance of our times my life will not have been wasted.

Appreciate what you have. I guess that's way too hippie or spiritual or abstract for a lot of folks. They need a good old concrete, factual, double blind study before the idea can be given credence. And much like our friend Mr. Christian, the jam sandwich researchers probably KNOW their studies are the exact opposite of why they became scientists, but what the hay, there's money to be made.

Anyway, this couldn't have been a spiritual truth. No, that's just kindergarten nonsense for the less intelligent. What happened was in my uninformed, unscientific ignorance I fortuitously, (not to say "randomly"), stumbled upon this hard scientific logic before it was researched.

Well, whatever. It was a goal of mine. And I think I'm doing okay. I still stop and smell the freshly cut grass and the million and one different species of flower we have in Victoria. I marvel at the fact that those two cups of tea I just had, (thinking of moving on to Chianti now), were made with water right from the tap. You probably have to do a little traveling before you can appreciate THAT again. If you live in Canada and never leave it you may not know what a privelege that is. The fresh air is something I relish pretty much daily. That's not in danger of hedonic adaptation. The lack of humidity, the different smell of the air, I have definitely not stopped appreciating the weather. Even though Victoria has too much rain and too much wind, I won't complain about the weather here. I haven't had the stifling heat/humidity that makes even naked people wish they could take off a layer of skin. And I am thankful for that every day I don't experience it.

You know what I'm gonna do here? I'm switching in mid blog entry. I was planning to talk about how hard it is to raise kids here in Canada, (I mean without the government forcing you to overprotect them), then say how I am so glad not to be doing it, but I actually lived a little bit of a Taoist allegory while typing this. I've been blogging about how I am trying to take pleasure and joy in the suffering life sends our way. This was going to be a largely positive, pleasure and joyful blog entry but I am just not destined to ever have one I guess. So now in the ilk of some of the greatest stories I've ever read, here is Dai Fing, (my Chinese name), and The Delicious Wine.

Dai Fing was a poor and honourable man. He was a member of the municipal guard. He worked most days at a marketplace in the city of Feng Tran in the prefecture of Bei Shi. Every day while he plodded along the perimeter of the marketplace patroling for man-eating tigers rumoured to be in the area, and climbed the 1001 steps to the top of the twin towers on its outskirts to spy approaching bandits so as to give market-goers early warning, he saw noblemen and wealthy women purchasing goods that would require at least a year of frugal rice rationing for him to buy. Here a man bought a fine golden hair comb for one of his concubines, there a nobleman's wife bought a length of silk redder than beet juice and with a thread count higher than the number of soldiers in the Emperor's service.

Dai Fing was happy in his station, but he often wondered at the cavalier nature with which a man, who in outward appearance was nowise superior to himself, could purchase such precious treasures. Could it be, he pondered, that even the finest Hunan noodle and oxtail stew could grow tiresome? Would even wine from the foreign vinyards to the south not scintillate the tongue after a time? Dai Fing purposed to find out for himself.

One day Dai Fing saw the wealthy land owner Lao Tsu on the market. He approached Lao Tsu carefully and with great respect did not say anything until asked. "What is the reason for your stalking, guard?" "Apologies Lao Tsu. I am a poor man seeking information that is beyond my station." Lao Tsu was pleased at Dai Fing's flattery but feigned annoyance. "And you think a humble man such as myself might help you?" "It is my hope," replied Dai Fing. "Very well, a humble man as myself will help you find what you seek though I fear I will not be of assistance," lied Lao Tsu.

Dai Fing was a lover of wine. He had tasted some of the local vintage and had made some swill of his own but that was all that was available to him. He longed to expand his palate. "What," he inquired of Lao Tsu, "is the most delicious wine in the land that I might buy some and taste of it?" "Guard, I fear you will never find what you seek. Oh find it, you may, but to taste of this wine I despair would require either payment beyond your means or thievery beyond your morals." Dai Fing said, "I thank Lao Tsu for this positive characterization, still may I impose on him to relate to me the name of this vintage?"

Lao Tsu gave Dai Fing the name of the wine. "Shian Ti" it was called. Distilled from the grapes of a far off land it was delectable, particularly with fava beans. After 17 months of careful rationing Dai Fing was able to buy a bottle of Shian Ti. His spirits soared as with half-closed eyes and carefully studied non-chalance he stroked a finger through the air as if chalking it up, then tabled the money while looking almost entirely away. Though the hawker of spirits knew Dai Fing and was aware of his occupation, Dai Fing sensed a superiority over him during the transaction that he had never experienced before. Many onlookers who had witnessed his purchase moved out of his way as he departed. Dai Fing felt the effects of the wine before he even opened it. It was surely a worthwhile expense!

At home Dai Fing found his corkscrew and carefully peeled away the cork covering and twisted the screw deep into the cork. He pulled and the corkscrew came out of the bottle. But there was a click instead of a pop. His locally manufactured corkscrew had snapped approximately a third of the way down the screw so that two thirds of it remained in the cork. The cork had not budged. This did not deter Dai Fing. He went to his box of tools and produced a screw with a Lo Fhat San head and twisted it into the cork. He pulled and the screw came out with small amounts of crumbled cork. He tried again with a more diagonal path of screwage. This time a larger chunk of the cork came with the crumblings but easily 4/5ths of the cork remained in the bottle. Dai Fing decided to try to work the broken corkscrew into the broken cork as far as it would go. It was a success. He pulled as carefully as possible and got another fifth of the cork. The broken piece of the corkscrew was exposed so Dai Fing got some plyers and tried to pull the cork out. This caused great strain on the glass bottle mouth since Dai Fing was using it as a fulcrum for the prying. The bottle mouth shattered on one side sending slivers of glass down to the cork and onto the kitchen floor. Dai Fing shook all the cork and glass out of the yet unopened bottle and into the trash. He tried the corkscrew and the screw several more times to no avail. Then he decided to use a longer, larger spike screw. It went into the cork pushing the corkscrew metal through the bottom and into the wine. The bottom of the spike screw went all the way through the cork and into the wine. When Dai Fing pulled on the spike only cork crumblings issued from the cork. He tried to pour the crumblings into the kitchen sink and a small amount of wine came out. There was now about 2 or 3 fifths of the cork remaining in the bottle. So Dai Fing reckoned, not incorrectly, that if he just pushed the cork down with the spike he could get the wine out of the bottle. It was a success!

His first glass of Shian Ti had cork crumblings around the edge of it. Dai Fing used a spoon to scoop most of them out. He then tasted the wine and it was indeed superlative! He enjoyed the entire bottle and never regretted the purchase.