“Life is like an ice cream, you should enjoy it before it melts.” I read on the toilet door of a co-work place for entrepreneurs in the creative sector.
“Life is…”, one of those popular attempts, handy fill-in cliches, at defining life, in getting a grip, instead of life getting a hold on you. But to me, the R.E.M. lyrics says it more aptly, “life, it’s bigger, it’s bigger than you,…”.
Yet, someone seems to really have this as a life-supporting slogan, a mantra, a prayer. Before I annoy myself too much with the imperative “should” and the obstinate paradoxical must enjoy combo, I reformulate forgivingly:
Pleasure is like ice cream. It melts.
(The original Dutch word for enjoyment/pleasure used in the quote was “genieten”.)
So I get rid of “life” and “should”. Now I have a banal sentence. We all know that pleasure wanes in time. And what is interesting to trivial utterances is that they are not useless, but to the contrary, they have a use signified by the specific situation in which they are uttered. They don’t apply for a slogan, because slogans have universal quotability with no requirement for a specific context.
Now there is room to ask: why then does this person believes this utterance makes sense, and not only that, that it is about life and is worth sharing on the toilet door?
Once we have gotten rid of the veil of the big universal thing, the slogan status, made it trivial and specific, we can see the personal technique used here. The writer of the quote has a mantra and attitude towards the feeling of joy. When it is there, he does not contain it, or postpone it to a later time. Pleasure is allowed and has priority over other things, and moreover, however silently, pleasure is part of (the sanctity of) life. Because we have the obligation (hence “should”) to live life fully, we should not restrain, constrain, refrain from or postpone pleasure.
This is surely a wisdom. An even wiser wisdom is in the premise of the slogan, compared to its intended statement: pleasure is not only ephemeral, it is more short-lived than other things in life, although not necessary inimical to prudence and diligence, at least not in this utterance. There is an agreement in the ice cream metaphor that pleasure is really for the short-term, that it is about small things in life–as small as having an ice cream. Thus although it is a mantra, it is not grandiose and all-overshadowing except for its equalization with life. Surely, the author must have a small and airy life, however flippant, and be a proponent of such way of living.
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Once we open the words, look through the doors they put before us, delve into them, strip them off their mimetic effect and their familiar form, which serve immediate affective response (like myth in Roland Barthes’ understanding) and apparent credibility whatever the real substance, and when we bring into the equation the (imagined) author, we understand the wisdom of the sentence, its meanings.
P.S. Maybe some readers expect “original” and “innovative” conclusions and insights, and might think that I have said nothing ‘new’ after a ‘futile’ analysis. But what I look for in the analysis is something that is already there and is ‘inside’ the words. This is the character of critique which is there to serve understanding and ordering what already is. Critique contrary to invention yet serving it. Often we pass by experiences without being mindful of the quality and the wisdom of the experience and thus we do not learn. Both invention and criticism are necessary and serve growth. But if I were to invent anything in my critical analysis I would be disturbing my study. It would like Gordon Ramsey spicing up the dishes of his contestants and the taste and judge their cooking performance.
