A Really Good Day(54)
My therapist is very young, and very beautiful. (Her beauty is irrelevant to either her competence or this story, but I cannot help mentioning it, because this is the kind of beauty that makes it difficult to concentrate on one’s own minor desperations.) She is also very sensible. She practices cognitive behavioral therapy—none of that wishy-washy, self-indulgent analytic crap for her. Or for me, frankly. I prefer to take my self-indulgence with a bracing dose of pragmatism.
Today I complained to her about my shitty workday. I am not blocked, I assured her, just lazy. I kept getting great ideas, starting to write, and then fizzling out, losing interest, and binge-watching episodes of Jessica Jones. This has happened to me before, I told her. I’m a terrible procrastinator. Or is it that I’m a great procrastinator? Possibly the actual best procrastinator.
My poor, long-suffering therapist listened to this for as long as she could, then stopped me and posed the following hypothetical:
Imagine you have a closet full of Ayelet robots. These robots are the idealized version of you. They are every bit as competent as you at your best. No, they are more competent! They are better than you. They can write better than you can. They can produce prizewinning novels, insightful and incisive essays, dazzlingly thrilling screenplays. They can wow audiences with mind-blowing lectures. They are better mothers than you. They can cook glorious meals for your children, create exciting and thrilling experiences for your family to enjoy. They are better wives than you. They are ever ready with a supportive ear. Sex with the Ayelet robot is consistently earth-shaking.
My therapist is no nerd, and so she wasn’t even aware that she was presenting me with a Superman hypothetical. In a classic DC Comic, Superman had a closet full of robot surrogates about which he said, “Each is designed to use one of my super-powers when needed! I send out the robots when Clark’s absence would be suspicious! Or when I suspect that criminals are waiting to use kryptonite against me!” Superman’s robots were labeled “X-Ray Vision,” “Flying,” “Super-Strength,” “Super-Breath.”*2 Mine might be labeled “Plotter,” “Empathetic Listener,” “Metaphor Generator,” “Trenchant Social Analyst,” “Tough but Fair Disciplinarian,” “Fictional World Creator,” “Imaginative Game Player,” “Character Creator,” “Chef,” “Public Speaker,” “Math Whiz” (my kids always need help with their homework, and my math skills stalled out somewhere around fifth grade), “Travel Agent,” etc. And those are just the G-rated robots. I’ll spare you the others.
Imagine you have a closet full of robots at the ready, my therapist said. Which of your various obligations would you assign to a robot? Which tasks and activities would you reserve for yourself, because you enjoy them too much to delegate them even to a robot who’s better than you?
Her question brought me up short. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
Would I let my robot make dinner? Hell, yeah, though I kind of do that anyway (if by “robot” you mean “husband”). I love family dinner, and my husband’s an amazing cook, so no robots at the actual table. Homework? Definitely. Carpool? It depends. I hate driving, especially in the early morning, but the kids are their most voluble in the car. I don’t want the robot to have those important and revelatory conversations with them. Would I ask my robot to write my novels for me? If she really could do it better, then I might. I wouldn’t let her do my writing every single day, but I’d definitely let her take over on days like today. I wonder how many mornings a week I would consider the prospect of a day spent hunched over a keyboard, sweating myself into a self-hating misery only to produce a constipated paragraph of crappy prose, and then decide to whistle up a robot and take myself out for a walk? Too many, I fear. Would I assign a robot the task of writing screenplays? Not the first draft—those are fun to write—but definitely the rewrites. Robot Ayelet will be in charge of all Hollywood notes calls and revisions. But I wouldn’t cede to her these pages. I’m having too much fun writing them.
What about leisure activities? I’d read my own books and watch my own movies and TV, but Robot Ayelet is headed for the gym. I’d be happy never to waste another minute of my life lifting a hand weight or squatting. (I’m not sure how her fitness would transfer to me, but robotics is a young science, and I’m sure we will figure it out!) I guess I’ll do my own hiking, but not every day. Robot Ayelet and I can split the forest walks down the middle. I wouldn’t let Robot Ayelet near my husband, especially since she’s such a sex goddess.*3
It’s remarkable how clarifying it is to contemplate which parts of my life I’d turn over to Robot Ayelet. We all lead lives of obligation, some of which we can’t avoid. Back to School Night and Pilates are necessary evils. But I work, after all, for myself. If I’d just as soon assign a task to a work robot, maybe I shouldn’t be doing it at all.
Robot Ayelet would never need to microdose. Every one of her days would be really good. She’d be perpetually cheerful, focused, centered. Oh God—the thought suddenly occurs to me—am I microdosing in order to turn myself into Robot Ayelet? No! That can’t be. I don’t want to be a soulless, perpetually cheerful robot!
There is, however, a way to consider the robot question that’s relevant to my experiment. If the point of microdosing is to look at things in a different way, to learn how to respond to life’s mundane adversities with equanimity rather than irritability, then part of that must be to figure out what things in my life I need to approach differently. The robot dilemma poses the question of what in your life do you value, what gives you satisfaction or joy. Microdosing has given me the space in my mind to consider that question in a way I don’t believe I would have otherwise. I should talk this over with my therapist. I’m going to have to tell her about the experiment. I just hope she doesn’t grade me down.