Thursday 12 August 2004

Pic of the day: That's a picture of me, seemingly reading a small catalog. It's been some months since you've last seen me, I guess. The picture is of course arranged. I usually throw catalogs in the recycling bin on my way from the mailbox to the house. As if I don't get enough spam online!

Catalog happiness

I saw an advertisement and was amused. Of all things, it tempted the reader with catalogs. An ad promising more ads! That totally makes no sense when you think of ads as nuisances, somewhat like the good old house flies which we had in my childhood home: No matter what you do, there will always be more of them, distracting you for no good reason. But, I remembered, that's not how humans view catalogs.

Time passes, and as a proverb says around here, the cow forgets that she was a calf. But I haven't forgotten that I was born human, it just sometimes slips my mind. Actually I am still human, but I think I was even much more human back then, or that's how it seems to me. Now that I think about it, I enjoyed reading catalogs when I was a kid. I skipped the boring clothes stuff (although there would come a time when women's clothes catalogs were interesting too). But as a kid, it was the gadgets that interested me, or at least that is what I remember. And I can still recall that undercurrent of excitement. To look at merchandise to desire it.

Weird as it may seem, desire is pleasant to humans, no matter that the Buddha insisted it was the source of all suffering. (I agree with him on that, but it is kinda indirect.) In fact, for years the dopamine pathway in the brain was considered to be our pleasure center, while it has recently been found to be the center of desire. And I'm talking "desire" in its wider sense; it's not all about sex, you know. (More about that another day, I hope.) To plan and dream, to look forward to, to want something and get it ... those are things that make a human feel alive. (Not the only things, but way up there.) This ties in nicely with one of the early revelations in my journal, that the pursuit of happiness is happiness in itself.

So it makes sense that they enjoy catalogs, at least when there aren't more exciting things to do. I guess I forgot. These days, even computer magazines don't excite me. But City of Heroes still does, so I guess I am still not full of years (or "sated with days" as we say in Norwegian) and haven't reached the years of which I must say: "I find no pleasure in them." ^_^* There may still be some other pleasures as well, but I don't think I'd find any in catalogs, these days...