Many people think inanimate objects exude certain auras, instill feelings and emotions within us. This is a terribly inconvenient belief. Imagine feeling empathetic for your poor socks which have sweat and stink forced upon them, or feeling sorry for belittling the ground on which you walk, or what about that tennis ball that you repeatedly slap across the court, or how degrading it must be for a toilet to eat shit. I try to avoid empathy even for the meat I eat at dinner. It’s not worth feeling sorry for everything.
I can see why people think objects emit emotions because I’m aware of my own habitat affecting me. A notable example is the state of the water pitcher in my fridge which, throughout the day, changes states several times because it is used by two people with conflicting ideologies. Person A refills the water pitcher each time a glass is poured, and Person B waits until the jug is empty.
In our household, the pitcher is of that classic BRITA design, two-tiered, gravity-filtered, capacious, sturdy. From a top-down perspective, the jug is elliptical. Its profile of transparent plastic is broad-shouldered and narrow-based. The only two moving parts are situated on the jug’s detachable navy-blue lid: a hatch near the middle that flips back for refilling, and a flap on the spout that flops open when you pour. And there’s a digital timer that’s there to advise you when you’re supposed to replace the filter, but generally, I just reset the timer up to six times consecutively to avoid comment from guests. Inside the jug, there is a top compartment (1.1 L) and a bottom compartment (1.5 L). When filled, tap water filters from high to low like a leaky cistern. As a whole, the Marella by BRITA is elegant, reasonably aesthetic, with few moving parts. But it has one primary problem: that damned filtering rate.
With the bottom section empty and the top section full, it takes an average of 4.23 minutes for all top-level liquid to reach the stomach below. Whilst that all-important first glass (250 mL) has the advantage of maximised head pressure (meaning it filters through faster than the subsequent litres) it still takes a whopping 0.55 minutes, minimum! And when my mouth is pasty, when I’ve come home drunk, when I’m back from a stroll, or when dinner is ready, this wait-time is unacceptable, onerous, emotionally taxing. As such, I am Person A. I have developed a habit of refilling the top portion each time the jug is used, so that I'm never waiting and watching that dribble. Seeing the pitcher with at least one glass of water in the base makes me happy. It similarly makes me happy to know that there will be filtered water ready for consumption when I go to use the pitcher next. My partner’s attitude is not the same.
Jess prefers the bulk-effort route. She will drain the pitcher dry, even return it to the fridge empty (a sin) because she’s got her glass of water for now and that’s all she needs. Pfft, she doesn’t need to refill the jug because she doesn’t need a second glass at this moment, there’s already one in hand. Clean, crisp, 4℃ water is already soothing her tonsils and inner cheek and tongue. Her now-self is far more important than the ones on the horizon, temporally way out there, so it is better for her to just relax and drink and not think about the future—this is what makes Jess happy. Eventually, however, she will open the fridge and find the pitcher bone dry, and at this point she is forced to be considerate of several of her future-selves. Jess’ bulk-refill method involves placing the empty pitcher in the sink, hatch open, and tap on at a dribble to match the dribble of water from top tank to bottom. She leaves the jug in the sink for several minutes until both compartments are brimming—a full 2.6 L ready for multiple thirst-quenchings.
I see merit in this method (the ability to leave the jug and do something else for a time, the sheer quantity of water prepared), and I see merit in mine (never a dry jug). It’s not my place to say which method is better (although mine is obviously better), because each of us has a different mindset and personality.
We each receive specific levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction from the “auras” of objects around us based on our inherent temperament, prior experience, and mood. When I pour a glass of cold and filtered water, the satisfaction I receive outweighs the dissatisfaction generated from having to shuffle to the sink and fill the top portion and return it to the fridge. Whereas the cumulative dissatisfaction Jess would receive from having to do this is greater than the dissatisfaction she receives from encountering an empty pitcher one time in every ten. We each interpret the state of the water pitcher differently. And the same is true for every object or scenario that enters our conscious and subconscious minds.
So, I argue: objects don’t have auras. They’re not emotional emitters that vibrate or sing or fill a space with energy, because then everyone would feel the same emotions when in the same space, everyone would prefer to refill the water pitcher glass-by-glass. Instead, I see objects as having some encoded data inherent within them, an identifier, a static chip, a barcode, an emotional label, an e-tag if you will. And we, the humans, are the signal emitters, the ones who throw out energy to interact with the surrounds and interpret the interference on the bounce-back. And because we’re all different, and because we all process data in a slightly different way, the information of the objects generates different thoughts, emotions and different levels of emotions within us. Our five (or more) senses are our emotional bluetooth. Our conscious is the software on which we run.
Obviously, the home is a sacred space because we have a greater level of control over the objects affecting us. In the home we can tidy a bookshelf, hang paintings on the wall, set the brightness of our light globes, organise the spices, grow infinite plants—we can add or remove or re-format e-tags to generate more frequent satisfaction within ourselves. I’ve struck my balance with the water pitcher, formed a routine that maximises satisfaction for me. Jess has struck her balance too. But, the interaction of our balances is inequitable.
I read an empty water pitcher as: REFILL!
Jess reads: Joel will do it for me.
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