by Hazerl Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Blog
We are insatiably curious about how other people live. On April 7th, 1952, after we’d read the newest issue of Life Magazine, we collectively rushed to buy Chanel No.5, because Marilyn Monroe had revealed it as her perfume of choice. Perhaps because we thought that owning something that existed within the life of someone like Marilyn, someone whose private world we could only guess at, might afford us some small glimpse, a sensation, of a life under the spotlight, a life destined to endure the cruel hands of time.
Fear of death lies at the root of so much we do and think, and with it the desperate desire to optimize the precious duration we have been allotted, to lead life to the full and accomplish something of enduring value.
– Paul Davies, ‘About Time’, 1995, pp. 27
We read biographies with vigour, those of big names and smaller names alike; we read domestic fiction, with its portrayals of the minutaie of strangers’ lives, the works of Anne Tyler and John Updike and Raymond Carver; in these modern times, we watch What I Eat in a Day videos, and A Day in My Life videos, and we clamour to watch reality shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Big Brother.
What is it we find so fascinating about the mundanities that exist in another person’s world? Is it to justify the way we live our own lives, to understand a little more about what it is to be alive, or is it pure, unadulterated curiosity, plain and simple? Social media has merely fascilitated our evolution from the brothel hole-looking voyeurs of mid-19th Century Paris to eyes fixed on the 6.5 inch screen of a smartphone. Are we hoping to find that there is something more to life, to this ‘precious duration’ we’ve been given, on this tiny blue-green planet under a blue-black cloud of stars? Is it, as many things are, a manifestation of our fear of death? The time-stamps on a minute-long video of someone’s day, the fixation with which we replicate other people’s lives, their routines, how obsessed we are with ‘rationalizing and measuring time in our everyday lives,’ (Paul Davies, ibidem), in the hope that, perhaps, we might be able to replicate other people’s successes, and in doing so, leave behind us ‘Footprints on the sands of time’ (H.W. Longfellow)?
Social comparison is how we understand the world around us, how we build community, how we learn social cues and recognise changes in our societies. It is how we relate to other people, how we determine our own belief systems, how we entertain ourselves, how we stifle ourselves. Because it is stifling, the breadth of social comparison that we have been subjected to since the advent of the smartphone. I cannot help but wonder, when I was very young and impressionable, whether I would have continued to pursue the advancement of my skills in classical piano if I had been exposed to millions of videos of other children playing better than me. Would it have spurred me on, or crushed me flat in my tracks? When I engage with social media, I am flooded with videos of other people, people more successful than me, going about their daily lives, and it is all I can do to quickly shut it down before it leads me, unsurprisingly, to despair.
I, too, am fascinated by other people’s lives, make no mistake. But the fascination I hold is more of a nostalgic one, looking back with delight at how others lived in time gone by, time before the technology became God, time in mountains and by seas that I have never known. I find this pasttime greatly fulfilling, and, oftentimes, inspiring. So, for my own pleasure (and, I hope, for yours), let us delve into the lives of peoples past, present, and future, and watch how time goes by.
An Okinawan Woman (approx. 1910s)
I awake in my ashagi [annex] and sit up on my tatami [sleeping mat]. It is dawn. Sleepy waves lap the blanket of deep blue that is slowly withdrawing from the sky as it is flooded with white sun. I look across at my eldest daughter’s tatami, but she is not there. She left, just after her fourteenth birthday, to go and work at Tōyō Textile Mill in Wakayama Prefecture. She has been gone for three years. Her contract finishes in two more years. I wonder how much she will have grown when she returns.
My other daughter is still asleep. She’s curled up like a flower. I wake her, and, together, we pray to our ancestors. She has a loud voice.
I am now making a tofu miso soup, sweet potato, and green tea for our breakfast. We eat it outside. It is going to be a warm day. Already, my hair is sticking behind my ears.
We go together down to the beach. There is almost no wind. The sea is a flat wide mirror. My daughter puts her feet in the gentle slapping of the water. I do too. The fishermen are already out with their spears and nets over to the West.
We leave the sea, and go together to work in the fields with the other villagers, tending to the sweet potatoes and sugar cane. There is a lot more sugar cane around now than when I was little, because there is lots of demand for sugar on the mainland.
After a few hours, we sit and take green tea with my friends, and a lunch of bitter melon, tofu, kelp, and some sweet potato. Then, me and my daughter take a nap before I go and meet with my moai, my group of friends I meet with daily to talk about our social, financial, and personal needs. We drink some sake and laugh a lot.
In the evening, I make a vegetable stew, and eat it with my daughter. Then we do some sewing while the sun sets over the wide sea, and I drink a cup of mugwort sake before I go to sleep.
A Woman in Mongolia (Qing Dynasty, approx. 1700s)
I awake before sunrise, to the cold black, and I raise myself out of my furs to go and stack more argal (dried dung) in the dim embers of the fireplace.
I tie my leather boots onto my feet, and my skins over my back, and I go out to see my goats. They greet me with whinnies and bleets, and butt their heads upon my legs. I milk them with my cold hands, then take the milk inside. I set the milk upon the fire in a boiling pot and boil it, then take the previous tarag (yoghurt) from beside the fireplace and put a scoop into the pot, then leave it to cool beside the fireplace. I take the tarag from yesterday and pour it into two dishes, which I set upon a mat on the floor near the fire. I then make boortsog (fried dough) by mixing a small amount of arvain guril (roasted barley flour) and wheat flour together with some water, and fry it on a pan with butter over the stove. My husband is up now. He is sharpening his weapons beside me, ready for hunting.
We eat together, then he embraces me, and leaves. I set about mending a pair of his shoes, and sweeping the floors of the house, then I go out and tend to the goats, feeding them and clearing out their dwellings.
Just before my husband returns, I go and bring some tarag to my neighbour for her and her children. I am to have a child soon. We drink süütei tsai (salted milk tea), and then I go home. It is bitterly cold.
When I get home, I made buuz (steamed mutton dumplings) from the mutton my neighbour gave to me, and fry up some wild onions in butter to go alongside. My husband returns with two hares, and after we have eaten, I skin them, then cut the meat and string it above the fireplace to dry. He tells me of the hunt, and I tell him of my day.
A Man Working in Finance at Canary Wharf, London (approx. 2020)
I wake up at 4.30am, check my emails and review the financial news, then do a few quick correspondences on Instagram, and scroll a while. I then get up and make a bulletproof coffee [coffee blended with butter/ghee]. I drink it, then get into my workout clothes and head down to the gym in my apartment building.
When I get back up to my apartment, it’s 6.30am. I take a quick shower. I then cook up a breakfast of eggs, turkey bacon, and avocado, and drink a chocolate protein shake alongside. I also take supplements: BCAAs, L-Theanine, Magnesium, Taurine, Iron, and a Multivitamin Tablet. I check my phone again, then get dressed into my suit. I leave the house at 7.30am.
I use my keycard to get through the turnstiles at my office, then head up to the tenth floor, where my office is, with a view over the city. I spend the morning analyzing company cash flow, then go out for a 10-minute sprint before having a lunch delivered of beef salad and another protein shake. The afternoon is spent on calls and meeting with clients to try and close some deals.
In the evening, I have some calls with international clients in different time zones, then head out to meet some clients at a restaurant. I eat Wagyu steak with a side of salad. The meeting goes well, and we head out to a bar, where I talk through some investment strategies with them over a few martinis.
I get home at 11.00pm, and watch an episode of a TV show I’m enjoying, while catching up on messages on my phone. I go to bed at 12.30am.
A Child in Iceland (approx. 2000s)
My mama wakes me up to get ready for school. I get dressed, then go downstairs for breakfast. Mama has made hafragrautur (thick oatmeal) with berries and some skyr (yoghurt). I eat it, then she gives me my lunchbox and I walk to school.
It’s snowing, and I can hardly make out the house of my friend Ingvaar, but it’s okay, because he’s waiting outside for me. We walk together, and throw snowballs.
School is nice and warm, and my first lesson is Science. I love science, especially the science about space. At breaktime, we got out and have some more snowball fights, and make snowmen too. Then I have a reading lesson, which I don’t like as much, but I like the book we’re reading.
Lunch is a sandwich with hardfiskur (dried fish) and butter, and a kleina (fried dough) for dessert, which I share with Ingvaar. School finishes early, after Maths, because it’s getting darker in the evenings. Me and Ingvaar go up to the mountain behind the school to find long rocks with dead animal bones inside, then we go to the hot water pool that’s heated from deep in the ground, and we go swimming. It’s so hot in the pool but the outside is so cold, but it’s okay because we’re not far from home.
When I get back, I do my homework with my dad while mama prepares some fish with potatoes and carrots and onions. We eat dinner together, and I tell them about the book we’re reading at school, then I go upstairs and check on my science experiment, which is a little dead mouse I found which I put into a jar. Then I go to bed.
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This Carl Kruse Blog homepage is at https://carlkruse.at
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel include: The Art of Well Dressed People, My Eye, the Death of Analogue.
Also find Carl Kruse on Goodreads and on KRUSE PINTEREST.
