I am on holiday in Thailand. After eleven months of constant work I have managed to find 12 days where I can relax and forget about everything. I have been mainly sleeping, eating, drinking beer and lying in hammocks reading books or watching the sun set. It’s brilliant.
I have a beach front hut that faces out over the light green ocean, flecked with dark islands that I must get round to exploring, but for the moment I prefer to loll beneath a palm tree trying to pretend to myself that this is now my job from now on and I need never do anything involving moving my limbs ever again.
Alas the rested brain insists on thinking too deeply about life and love and what the point of everything is, but with practice you can shepherd these thoughts into seemingly meaningful, but ultimately meaningless areas.
Yesterday I was sitting on my balcony watching the world go by, when a three-year-old boy walked by, intently concentrating on the Cornetto ice cream that he was holding reverently in both hands. He pecked at it gently a couple of times, seeming as content as it is possible for a human to be.
And I realised that life doesn’t ever get better than that – being three and having a Cornetto in the sunshine. There’s no purer pleasure or indulgence in all that will follow on that journey from vaginal canal to hospice bed. But of course, you don’t realise that at the time. You won’t even remember. It seems a shame.
I could still eat a Cornetto now at 40 – and in fact, I have done several times in the last week, but it will never be as awe inspiring or perfect as the Cornetto you eat at 3. Indeed it will be nothing but a disappointment. It’s mainly because at 40, I could eat a dozen Cornettos a day if I wanted – and I guess that’s part of why it is special as a child. You have no actual control over what you eat and no power to choose beyond manipulating the adults around you.
So when a Cornetto comes along it is a wonderful and delicious surprise, an ice cream oasis in the dessertless desert of life. Plus it’s big and it’s yours and you don’t have to share it. You have no concept of it being bad for you and thus no guilt, no idea that there are better, more expensive, more delicious ice creams out there. You don’t even really realise that soon the Cornetto will be gone. You just have a Cornetto in your hands and it’s all for you and you are alive in the moment and nothing else matters. I could promise that child that there will never be such uncomplicated happiness in his life again. And the worst thing is that he had no inkling of the magnitude of this moment.
Yet I couldn’t grab him and shake him and shout at him, “Remember this moment! Hang on to it! Because life gets no better than this!” Partly because that would somewhat sour the indulgent pleasure but mainly because in this day and age a 40-year-old man, furiously buffeting a young boy that he doesn’t know whilst shouting feverishly into his face about pleasure is seen as some kind of crime.
Of course if the 3-year-old boy knew that the Cornetto was the best moment of his life then that would also spoil things a bit as well. He’d think, “I’m 3 and I’ve experienced the zenith of my existence with maybe 80 more years to go?!” It’s the fact you don’t know that ultimately makes the moment perfect. Ah perverse life, how you toy with us!
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