The Marshmellow Test

In this week’s New Yorker is an article about Stanford Child Development research that looks at the ability to delay gratification. Children ages 4 and 5 were invited into a room and shown a tray with candy treats including a marshmallow. Asked to choose a treat the children were told that they could have one or if they could wait a few minutes they could have two. The researcher leaves the room but a camera follows the children’s actions.

Some children pop the marshmallow right into their mouth. Some stare at it and sit on their hands until the man returns but others cover their eyes or play under the desk until the researcher reenters and they can have the two treats.

At first researchers thought they were looking at desire but then realized that all the children wanted the treat. But some were able to wait. They could hold on or hold out so that they could have more by delaying gratification. The key the researchers discovered was whether these tots could manage their thinking. The ones who stared at the marshmallow typically could not resist but those who covered their eyes or hid under the table, or sang songs to themselves were able to wait—and benefit from the waiting.

The discovery was that some kids understood how to distract themselves so that they could delay gratification.

We talk about alcoholics as being unable to delay desire and its true, but again we see the wisdom of AA in the ways that we—adults yes, but not unlike the little kids—can be taught to not stare at the rink, to shift our focus, to distract our selves from our desires. We learn to “think through the drink” and to “change people places and things”.

I love imagining my constant desires—for shoes, food, comfort, whatever as the marshmallow test. Can I cover my eyes? Sing a song? Distract myself by calling another alcoholic? So that I can wait to enjoy my treat!

Desire and Expectations

We are concerned about the economy. We worry about the stock market, investments and retirement. We hesitate to open bank statements. We are told: It will get better. It will get worse. It will rebound. Some say it will be bad for another year and then it will improve.

How do we cope? We have to make do with less. Lots of articles offer advice: Eat at home. Take the bus. Rearrange don’t redecorate. At the heart is this question: Can we be happy with less? Can we do it when the American way is all about believing that we need and deserve more.

I keep thinking about is what it was like when I really did have less. In my 20’s I lived in Washington, DC and made $13,000. I had an apartment and a car. I packed my lunch and saved up to go out for dinner. Was I really as happy as I remember?

Yes, we all were. The reason isn’t complicated. We wanted less. I was proud to be paying rent. I wanted to drive instead of take the bus so making the car payment for my used 1971 VW Beetle was great. I bought clothes on sale or at consignment stores and when friends moved they passed along furniture they didn’t want. But over time, through reading and travel and meeting people, I learned about nicer cars, and better clothes. I began to want a real couch and a newer car and I began to fantasize about someday buying a house.

Later my hopes included owning a Subaru and –I laugh to remember this—I thought I’d have the perfect wardrobe when I could buy one (yeah, one) really good purse. Today, four houses later and many closets filled with shoes and purses, I can feel deprived simply by thinking about making my car last a couple more years. Everything I have now is nicer than what I had at 25 but it’s easy to feel poor. Why? Because I have seen --and imagined --better.

Wealth is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we can’t afford, we become poor--regardless of our resources. And when we are satisfied with what we have, we are rich. That second part is supposed to be true anyway. The hard part is to ignore knowing. We know there are nicer things and we know people who have them. In most cases we don’t really know those people but we think we do because we have seen them. For this you can blame television and magazines like Oprah and Vogue. We see what others buy and own and wear. Our appetites are continuously whetted. Every new thing whispers its promise of happiness then gradually slides into the background of everyday life. Then we notice that someone else has a different or nicer thing.

This is why many of us recall feeling better when we were younger. We felt like we had enough. We didn’t expect that we should have a lot more.

It’s our expectations that trip us up. We substitute one desire for another convinced each time that the next –whatever-- will make us happy. What we need is less desire not more money. The solution this year: Expect less and want less. It’s so anti-American, but so sane and so smart.

Wanting

It was a Wednesday afternoon at 5pm; I left the office early to get my hair cut. I arrive early and my hairdresser is late. I don’t mind. One of the perks of coming to this nice salon is the waiting room. It’s filled with comfy chairs and has a coffee bar and snacks and best of all, the latest women’s magazines. I get a fill of junk food in every sense. I hand my coat, and sit down with some tea and cookies and I pick up the new Town and Country magazine.

If, in that very moment, the second I crack open this glossy magazine, you could see me and see into me, you would see a woman who is happy and content. My day was busy but not too hard. I have an interesting job. My home life is good. All is well. In that moment frozen in time all I need is to get my hair cut and buy some milk on the way home.

But in the next 90 seconds my experience of myself changes. I open the magazine on my lap and I am looking at a photo spread of the actress Renee Russo wearing a pretty necklace. The necklace is distinctive. Rather than having a full strand of pearls this necklace is strung and knotted in such a way as to keep individual pearls about an inch away from each other. The effect is that it gives the appearance that the pearls are floating on the wearer’s skin. It is called “The Illusion Necklace”. By now you have seen these…the expensive and costume versions are ubiquitous but that day it was new to me.

What was different for me that day as I sat in the salon waiting room was that I was oddly aware of myself as I read about Renee and her necklace. Maybe because it was a good day, or because I was tired, but for some reason that day, in that moment, I was aware of my body and mind at once. And what I felt was a series of physiological changes as I was reading about The Illusion Necklace.

The article says that the necklace is also called the “Tin Cup” necklace, because Russo wore these pearls in every scene in that light romantic comedy. I remember the movie. Had I noticed the necklace? No, but I look at the photos in the magazine and it is lovely. Do I care? Well, yes, inexplicably and suddenly I do seem to care. What I feel however is my body changing; I feel my respiration and heart accelerating while I am aware of what is going through my head: “This is a great necklace; This is the best necklace; This is the perfect necklace, and then I hear myself think: I WANT THIS NECKLACE.”

Absolutely no more than three minutes have passed from sitting down content with my life, to reading a few words and now—Wham!-- I feel myself wanting this necklace. The message in my head is subtle but it’s there just like background noise that’s always there humming behind my thoughts and what it says is this: “My life will be better, improved, or fixed if I get THIS; and in this case the “this” is a few pearls artfully knotted on a silk string.

Now, you may be well ahead of me, but it was not until I sat to write this that it struck me: the name of this necklace is perfect. It is an ILLUSION.

I tell this story not because this was the first time my mood was changed by an ad but because this was the first time that I was aware of it while it was happening. I was conscious of the process as it penetrated my body and mind. I also saw that my response to this self observation was not necessarily “Oh silly me”. No, even as I watched myself discount my own good life I began to believe that I had to have this necklace. But I knew that something had just happened inside me.

I flipped through a couple of pages in this magazine, wanting to look as inconspicuous as possible. I felt like a prisoner awaiting interrogation who looks down to see the key to her escape at her feet. I was breathing hard. But, as if it was nothing, as if it were no big deal, I tore out the page and picture of the necklace, coughing to cover the sound of my theft.

A few days later at home I looked again at this photo. This was not about a necklace. But what was it and why did I want this then? I made a deal with myself that if I still wanted this necklace so badly in 30 days, then I would give myself permission to buy it. And so the illusion necklace became the beginning of my study of wanting.

I still have the magazine page. Every now and then I get it out and look at it closely. When I find myself NEEDING a certain new red purse or a special shimery gray eye shadow or the perfect—and one more--pair of shoes I first take a look at my photo of pretty Rene and the Illusion necklace.