Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee

Author:Ingrid Fetell Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2018-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

PEEKABOO

While I love the outdoors, I am not a huge fan of carrying a large backpack, so when Albert said he wanted to go spend a week in the woods my reaction was “Have fun!” But when I realized we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other at all during the trip, I burst into tears. We had been married for less than a year, and I knew I would miss him badly. I went to sleep the night he left feeling lonely and unsettled.

The next morning I opened the fridge, and on a bright pink Post-it note were written the words “I love you so much!” I nearly burst into tears again, this time from joy, at the surprise of feeling Albert’s presence in a moment of absence. Later, I went to get my scarf from the rack, and as I was arranging it around my neck, I heard a crinkling sound. I felt for the nape of my neck and pulled off another pink Post-it, this one with a heart drawn on it. I yelped with delight. Every day that week I seemed to find another pink love note. One fluttered out of the pages of the book that was sitting on my nightstand. Another was tucked inside the cover of my notebook. It was a joyful way to make me feel like he was with me, even though he couldn’t be there physically.

Albert’s sticky notes were incongruous little surprises that popped up in places I’d never expect them. But they also made use of another technique for creating surprise, one that underpins many children’s games and toys, from peekaboo to scavenger hunts to the jack-in-the-box: hide-and-reveal. We tap into this pleasure when we wrap presents in colorful paper and ribbons and when we buy scratch-off lotto tickets. Many holidays include rituals centered around revealing something previously hidden. At Passover seders, a piece of matzo known as the afikomen is hidden for the children to find. Many people use Advent calendars in the days before Christmas, counting down each day by revealing a small sweet or trinket. The breaking of a piñata and the search for the baby figurine in a piece of Mardi Gras king cake are other well-known hide-and-reveal holiday traditions.

Hide-and-reveal taps into our innate human curiosity, which spurs us to explore our world. When we see windows, we peek into them. When we come to doors, we open them. When we find containers, we look inside them. Though to my knowledge no scientist has studied this, it must be adaptive. Nature is full of hidden treasures: oily nutmeats concealed in thick shells, eggs laid in camouflaged nests, fruits sheathed in inedible wrappers. Surely we must descend from inquisitive ancestors for whom the impulse to look around, under, and into things meant a better chance at a good meal.

One of the great joys of the surprise aesthetic comes when we surprise others, and hide-and-reveal is a fun way to do this. Annie Dillard writes that

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