Self Delusions

This is a linguist-in-chief/dog philosophy post and I won’t keep you too long from it, but a quick RR update first: I’m feeling better health-wise! I think we can say officially not sick anymore (I put away the humidifier and various meds) and while my rib is still injured, it hurts way less and I no longer have to think of a strategy if I want to stand up or sit down. Hooray. And now: Anne-Michelle!

There is nothing so human as deluding yourself about your own self. We are such mental circus performers, such loopy tricksy creatures of thought.

One particularly loopy path is that of a person who now identifies as older and wiser—who confides ruefully that when they were younger, they would pretend to be someone they were not, trying to be cool and fit in, such a waste of needless energy, but having reached the grand old age of 32 or 42 or 52 they have made peace with their true inherent quirks, and honestly it’s just so much easier to be yourself, you know? I mean, YOU might not know, you’re still only 31 or 41 or 51, but trust me, you’ll just grow into this place of acceptance and really it’s very liberating, I love being old! etc etc.

… I won’t spare myself from this savagery; I’m as annoying about my follies as the rest of us. Having experienced and survived exactly two camping trips in my life—one in northern Ontario in my early teens, one at Yosemite for a dear friend’s 30^th birthday, both resulting in cherished and harrowing memories—I am frequently that Woman Who Makes Not Going Camping her Whole Personality[1][editor’s note: this is a great personality to have]. But underneath all that self-knowledge: we are still telling ourselves stories about ourselves all day long, and anybody who says different is selling something[2].

You might remember I usually write here about the cognitive state of (my) dogs. Already many people will scoff at this enterprise, insisting that ascribing mental states to pets is a flight of anthropomorphizing fancy—so, to discuss the extent of dog’s beliefs about themselves, and then further their potential for self delusion, would truly be the height of human delulu. (Anybody who holds these beliefs has never watched Howard try valiantly to pretend he loves blueberries, only to spit each one out and then immediately demand another. But.)

So, last week we got a new bed. It is king-sized and it seems like an ocean of bed, a flat and serene platform for every human and dog in our house to sleep in unison. That was the point, of course, the potential to minimize continuous inter-species sleep contortions, and to that end we think it is working! But at the same time, this development sent two parts of my mind and body to war.

The first part is that I believe myself to be, in certain respects, very easy going. Both of our dogs enjoy their home very much, and when things change they show signs of concerns, confusion (Bagel) and even alarm (Howard)—whereas even by human standards I really AM unbothered by many changes to my physical environment. When the office kitchen runs out of spoons, I can eat my yogurt with chopsticks, and if a household renovation project takes a couple years longer than anticipated, I can handle cooking from an inside-out pantry for, well, quite a while now.

Except…except that it takes me a long time to get used to a new bed. My back and neck and shoulders, they are slow to accept change. They protest without mercy and groan and creak for weeks, until eventually they admit that in fact this is fine and possibly better. And I know this about myself! I have had many new beds in my life! And yet this time, last week, I thought somehow… it would be different?

It wasn’t different. I slept terribly at first, and only now am I returning to sleep normally. As I type, I’m sitting at a slightly odd angle to counteract some stiffness.

And the dogs? Zero worries. They watched the dismantling and remantling with nothing but impatience for when they could nap again, and as soon as the mattress was installed they were jumping up and bedding down. I feel stupid for believing that I could have somehow magically become a less princess/pea person, and the dogs don’t understand why I’m shifting so much at night. As always, I should keep trying to be more like them—even when I mostly know myself well enough to know I won’t succeed.

[1] If you are not familiar with the short videos of Laura Ramoso, on topics like “woman who makes wearing jumpsuits her entire personality,” please go investigate them immediately. She may be more famous for her impressions of her German Mother and Italian Father but do not sleep on her “woman who makes X her whole personality” gems as well. Also she has a sketch about the particular brand of insanity of the salesclerks selling shoes at Aldo which made me laugh for two minutes straight.

[2] Hopefully, NOT the shoes at Aldo, as their staff do not appear on the whole to be especially self-aware.