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Objects of Our Desire
By Salman Akhtar Random House
Salman Akhtar
All right reserved. ISBN: 1400054443
Chapter One
Acquiring and Using Things
Look around. What do you see?
Lamps, tables, chairs, flower vases, paintings, pillows, newspapers, magazines, books? Or, if you happen to be in your kitchen, perhaps your eyes move from the refrigerator to the stove and from the microwave to the dishwasher and finally to the pots and pans in the sink. If you aren't at home but at a bus stop or an airport, you can hardly avoid noticing the large number of things that are--or, shall we say, have become--part of our lives and inhabit all the nooks and crannies of our existence. Things play an important role in how we navigate the world, communicate with one another, connect with our pasts, and express our desires. The emotional significance of physical objects is unmistakably evident all around us.
You don't believe me?
Notice the inviting contours of that sofa, the glint of a knife's edge, the sparkle of a diamond ring. Feel the softness of the pashmina around that woman's milky shoulders. Look at the majesty of a large jet plane. Take in the somberness of a gravestone. Put on an old pair of shoes. Clutch a warm mug of freshly brewed coffee. Sit on a rocking chair. Feel the sumptuous leather seats of a new car.
We are surrounded by things. We are involved with them, indebted to them. We speak to things and things speak to us. To say that we are interdependent is banal. Let us be courageous. Let us admit it: we are lovers.
And, like lovers, we are inseparable, even though we are often unable to express our love of things in words. Here poets come to our rescue. In his poem "Ode to Things," the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda openly voices his attachment to and his delight in the emotional gifts of the material world:
I pause in houses,
streets and elevators,
touching things,
identifying objects
that I secretly covet;
this one because it rings,
that one because
it's as soft
as the softness of a woman's hip,
that one there for its deep-sea color,
and that one for its velvet feel.
Even in less joyous forms, things form an integral part of our lives. We constantly discover, or as Freud would have it, rediscover them. Things affect our emotions and impact upon our thoughts. The arrival of a dozen roses from a lover or a letter from a grandchild makes our day. And we express our emotions, or innermost selves, with their help. Welling with love, we offer gifts, tokens of our affection. Feeling sad, we may reach for an old photo album that offers us friendly faces and memories of good times. Bitter and enraged, we give vent to our suppressed emotions by reading a book about a serial killer and vicariously identifying with his cruel acts. Such "conversation" between us and things is of course affected by our cultural heritage, by our gender, by our knowing and unknowing emulation of (or rebellion against) our parents, by our economic status, and by the value we place on material acquisitions, but it is universal. As such, we must first ask ourselves a truly basic question:
Why do we need things?
Things satisfy all sorts of physical and emotional needs in us. To begin with, they offer us "instrumental" help. We enlist their prowess to accomplish the tasks of daily living. We use cars, planes, trains, and boats for travel; clocks and watches for knowing time; knives to cut; spoons to feed ourselves with; chairs to sit upon; and so on. Actually, if we are honest and humble, we will acknowledge that our very survival depends upon things. As naked apes, which is what the ethologist Desmond Morris called human beings, we are hardly capable of surviving the harshness of nature alone. Inanimate objects come to our aid and save our lives.
We need enclosed spacesmade of "things"--to live, clothes to cover our vulnerable furless skin, artificial means to travel long distances, and all sorts of cooking utensils to render digestible what we devour. Our dependence upon things is not merely life-saving and life-enhancing, it confers upon us the dignity of our human status as well. Try walking out of your house naked on the street and you will immediately bow to the profound role such plebian things as clothes silently play in your acceptance by the society. It is a pity that the discourse on the Garden of Eden waxes eloquently about God's injunctions, Adam, Eve, the forbidden fruit, and even the wicked serpent but pays little attention to the poor fig leaf, the primordial hint of the human civilization to come
.The progression from that "original garment" to haute couture is mirrored in the transitions from wooden spears to Kalashnikovs, from flickering oil lamps to incandescent lightbulbs, and from horse-drawn carriages to gas-guzzling SUVs. Necessity, the mother of invention, has indeed turned out to be a fertile woman. As a result, the world is full of useful things that, in Borges's words, "serve us like slaves who never say a word."
At the same time, it is obvious that our dependence upon things has something more than their utilitarian value at its base. From birth till death, we draw all sorts of emotional sustenance from them.
Things and our emotional growth
At the beginning of our lives, man, animal, and things are all the same to us. Differentiation between them develops gradually. Over time, we begin to react differently to human and nonhuman objects. Upon seeing our mothers, we give a "social response," but to a toy we give an "acquisitive response." The former consists of smiling, chuckling, and reaching out to a person. The latter consists of deliberate movements of arms and hands to grasp an object. By six months of age, we no longer accept an inanimate object in lieu of a person. And yet we continue to think of objects as being alive. Until we are about six or seven, we think that the sun and the moon move because they want to and toys have feelings that must be considered.
Meanwhile, the game of peekaboo teaches us that just because we can no longer see an object, it has not actually disappeared. Over time, our understanding of this concept shapes our understanding of the entire world of things. A tree, we learn, will remain a tree; a house, a house.
During this time, which spans from about six months to eighteen months of age, we are also beginning to psychologically separate from our mothers. To handle the resulting feelings of loneliness, we find our first real possession, usually a teddy bear or a blanket. Affectionately cuddled, it provides a sense of comfort and safety. Donald Winnicott, the British pediatrician turned psychoanalyst, emphasizes that the child's teddy bear or blanket helps create the experiential realm between the inner world and external reality. A possession of this sort is tangible but its importance lies in the feelings it produces, not in its actual use. As a result, such an object becomes the harbinger of the capacity to experience the world on a metaphorical level. Reality no longer appears juxtaposed to unreality; emotions that bridge the two in subtle and intangible ways begin to be experienced. With further development, such "intermediate area of experience" allows for the enjoyment of poetry, music, fiction, and movies (all being neither real nor not real; intangible yet perceived).
The fact that potential groundwork for creative thinking is laid by the early interplay between the mind and its physical surround is well captured in a 1926 poem by Julian Huxley:
The world of things entered in your infant mind
To populate that crystal cabinet.
Within its walls the strangest partners met.
And things turned thoughts did propagate their kind.
For, once within, corporeal fact could find
A spirit. Fact and you in mutual debt
Built there your little microcosm--which yet
Had hugest tasks to its small self assigned.
Still later in childhood, we notice how our bodies are either the same or different from our parents'. We notice gender roles as well, and physical objects help us to define ourselves. Little girls play dress-up with their mother's lipstick and jewelry, while little boys want to try on their father's shoes and raincoat. Not only do we learn the ability of objects to help create who we are--or who we want to be--but we feel a thrill from using "adult" objects. As clothing begins to help shape our personal identity, other objects help develop our social lives. Board games, sports equipment, video games, and other toys help us play with others and are the first ways in which we interact with our peers and begin to form friendships.
Puberty brings on an uncompromising need to forge our identities, and objects are critical to this undertaking. At this point, we almost become a thing ourselves, as how we look--our clothes, hair, makeup, tattoos--becomes the most important way we announce who we are and what we believe. Our rooms also take on profound importance as refuges and as another way to announce ourselves through the posters, banners, photos, and souvenirs we stock them with. Inanimate objects function in three different ways: first, as a reflection of our changing bodies (razors, bras, sanitary napkins, zit creams); next, from tongue rings to ripped jeans, they are a way to rebel against our parents; finally, there are the physical objects that help us disengage from our childhood self-image and are pathways to our future--the CD collection, the guitar, the posters and art that adorn the walls. These objects testify to our growing reliance on the value of our peers rather than our parents. As we did when we were children playing dress-up, we try on a variety of roles until we find the ones that best fit and we mature.
As we move out on our own, go to college, find jobs, and develop mature romantic relationships, the nature and meaning of the objects of importance change. For the first time, we can set our sights higher: on furniture, appliances, a car, an apartment, a home. To be sure, socioeconomic and cultural variables affect the extent to which we acquire such possessions, but the move into adulthood invariably involves a material dimension. Establishing a home of our own usually involves a wide array of things: stereo systems, microwave ovens, televisions, tables, forks and knives, couches and bookcases. The rituals of courtship, engagement, and marriage or commitment also have an extensive material component. The period of courtship, regardless of whether it results in marriage, is especially marked by the acquisition of new material objects. These include gifts for the beloved, additions to one's own wardrobe, and things one buys together as a couple.
This last category of things grows with leaps and bounds once we enter a marital relationship. Still later, raising children forces us to come into contact with our childhood objects again--stroller, high chair, tricycle, board games--an encounter that can have significant replenishing effects for our adult selves. Playing with our children's toys brings back happy memories of a bygone era. The pleasure is akin to the one felt upon meeting an old friend after a long time. It makes us smile, reminisce, and synthesize different phases of life in a harmonious way.
A time to "downsize"
Middle age changes our relationship to physical objects in enriching as well as unsettling ways. By now, most of us have acquired a lot of things. In addition to the purely useful--appliances, clothing, etc.--we've acquired a substantial cache of sentimental items: family photographs, souvenirs from past vacations, mementos from old friends, legacies from lost loved ones. These objects not only connect us to our history but also bond us to our loved ones. These items hold our memories and are the glue that holds us together, especially to our spouses. At this stage, financial security and more time for self-reflection may inspire the purchase of things previously unavailable to us or considered only dreams: a sports car, fine china, diamonds, a second home.
Gradually, however, we reach the limits of what we can acquire. We begin to sense the limits of our achievements, creativity, and most important, of our life itself. Bodily changes, children moving on, and parents passing away cause further strain on our minds. Time now enters the psychic domain in a powerful way. Death no longer remains merely a topic for courses in a community college. Less of life appears to be left, more spent.
As we age further, toward retirement and beyond, most of us become aware that material possessions are ephemeral. Novel and desirable at first, they gradually lose their glitter. A deep and satisfying experience of life hardly emanates from what we have acquired; it comes from the love we have given and received. Such knowledge alters our relationship to things. As a result, we enter into a gradual downsizing of material life, buying less but enjoying what we have more, and considering the fate of our possessions after we are gone. We write wills, think privately about our graves or the fate of our ashes.
Toward the end
In the waning years of life, our relationship with things returns to one of dependence. We rely on canes, wheelchairs, diapers, pillboxes, and dentures for our safety and well-being. Ultimately, we may find ourselves relying on machines for our existence. The end forces us to say good-bye to the world of things. Everything has to go. Or is it that we go away and "things" remain?
Throughout our lives, we need "things" not only for their actual usefulness but for their emotional value to us as well. Things help us express ourselves. An expensive car lets others know that we have "arrived," and a lovingly kept heirloom informs them of our affection for our ancestors. Things also contribute to our identity. Someone looking at our possessions can surmise if we are art lovers, Civil War buffs, bibliophiles, and so on. And the emotional purposes served by things keep changing as our lives unfold. At one point their role is clear, while at another point it is clouded in mystery. Some emotional purposes served by things are obvious, others hidden. An encounter with a serious collector drives this last point home.
Excerpted from Objects of Our Desire by Salman Akhtar Excerpted by permission.
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