The big scheme is Pleasure as Therapy: something I do for pleasure (or play or engaged curiosity) turns out to be excellent therapy, alleviating some affliction of mine or extending my life. These are unintended, but gratifying, consequences. Gravy.
Previously on this blog, the story of my singing Sacred Harp hymns in communities of shapenote singers, a practice that moves me deeply, sometimes taking me into an ecstatic state. That’s the pleasure. Then my pulmonologist — who had me using breathing apparatus to strengthen my lungs — discovered this and said that my singing full-out was much better therapy than his, and I should do it as much as possible, ideally some every day. I see this as getting a prescription to eat cake. Or, to pick a different metaphor, go for the gravy.
The gravy digression. From NOAD:
noun gravy: … 2 informal, mainly North American English something pleasing, especially money or success, that is unearned or unexpected
Live long. On to fresh territory. And Jean Berko Gleason. From Wikipedia:
Jean Berko Gleason (born 1931) is an American psycholinguist and professor emerita in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University who has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of language acquisition in children, aphasia, gender differences in language development, and parent–child interactions.
I have known JBG for so long that I can’t recall how we ever met in the first place.
Then, super-ager JBG (note her birth year, highlighted above), on Facebook on 9/5, cites a 2025 New York Times piece about “The one quality most ‘super-agers’ share” — which turns out to be maintaining social connections, getting together with other people. That’s the pleasure. Longer life is the gravy.
The Vulcan salute digression. Live long and prosper. The phrase and the accompanying Vulcan salute as performed by Spock debuted in the 1967 Star Trek episode “Amok Time”.
And I am once again engaged in doing the right thing, for pleasure and engaged curiosity. On a daily basis, getting people to tell me their life stories, tell me how they do their jobs, tell me how they structure their daily lives. (And then I blog a lot of it) I would do some version of these things just because I’m fascinated by the amazing variety of people’s lives, but I also do it, enthusiastically, as research. And it’s all getting together with other people.
I’m stunned by the idea that I might be reaping a longer life through these labors.
Leave a Reply