Count them

Wanting something you have decided not to want. Anger. Grasping — at money, at credit, at the last word. Clinging to one particular person or outcome as though you would not survive its loss. And being right.

Five. That is the list, and it is shorter than you were expecting. You can argue about the edges and people have for a very long time, but you will not get it past about five, and everything on it was on your sheet of paper last night, in the handwriting you use when nobody is going to read it.

The list is not the finding. If it were, this would be a short book and a useless one, because you have been told you are prone to anger before and it changed nothing.

The finding is what one of those five does in the space of a second.

Go back to twenty past nine last night.

One thing was wrong. Precisely one: a remark, or a tone, or something not done that you had asked twice to be done. Small enough to name in a sentence.

Now count what you actually said.

Why is it always me who has to ask. — And what about last Thursday. — How am I supposed to run anything in this house. — It's fine. It's fine. — No, I'm not being like that, you're being like that. — Do you know what, this is exactly what you did at your sister's.

However many you can remember, count them, and notice that every one was delivered with real conviction. And not one of them was the thing that was wrong.

Here is the mechanism, and once you have seen it you will not be able to stop seeing it.

One difficulty arrives. It immediately grows heads. Not five different vices — one thing, with one head for every form it can take, and the heads come up so fast that they appear to arrive together. Ten things in the intellect at the same moment, each one with its own face, its own tone of voice, its own apparently reasonable question.

And they are always questions. That is the signature. Notice how little of last night was statements and how much of it was interrogation: why, what about, how am I supposed to, and what happens when.

A question is the perfect weapon, because it cannot be refused. A statement can be answered. A question demands an answer and reserves the right to reject it.

Then watch what happens when somebody actually answers one.

They do. People in your house have been trying for years. They explain about last Thursday — and there is a half-second of silence in which the whole thing could end, and then:

That's fine. But what about—

The head you cut off is replaced before you have finished exhaling. Solve the why and the how raises itself. Settle the how and a third one is already up, and it is slightly off the subject, and by the fourth you are discussing your sister-in-law's wedding in 2019.

You are not being difficult on purpose. You would stop if you could. You are inside something that regenerates faster than it can be addressed, and the speed is not a failure of your reasoning — it is the thing's design. A grip that could be argued with would not hold anybody.

So here is the question that ends the chapter, and it is the most uncomfortable one in the book.

Last night — was there an answer that would have satisfied you?

Sit with it, and answer it about last night rather than in general. You may find there was no sentence anybody in that room could have said that would have ended it — that you would have found the next head. If so, you were not asking questions; you were producing them, and the two activities feel identical from inside and are nothing alike.

If no answer would have done, then you were not in a disagreement. Nobody was. One person in that room was having a conversation and the other was being operated.

This is why your own decisions cannot get any purchase on you, and it is worth being precise about it, because it explains chapter one.

You made a decision at the kettle. By twenty past nine, the decision was simply one more voice in the room offering a reasonable statement — and the thing with ten heads does not accept statements from anybody. Not from the person you live with, not from your brother, and not from you.

It will not co-operate. Not in large matters, where you might expect a struggle, but in trivial ones, which is the tell. Somebody asks you to move a chair and there is a why. That is the measure, far more than any dramatic row: how small a thing can be asked of you before a head goes up.

Now notice how differently a capable person is built.

When you want to describe somebody who is genuinely good to have around in a crisis, you reach without thinking for the same image: she has her hands full, she had a hand in it, he put his hand to it, they lent a hand. Arms. You give the people who help you arms, as many as you can, and nobody has ever in the history of the language praised a man by saying he had a great many heads.

Arms do. Heads object. The two are not on a spectrum, and this is the clearest diagnostic in the book: in any difficulty, you are either growing arms or growing heads, and you can tell which within about four seconds. An arm asks what would help. A head asks why should I.

One last thing, and then tonight's ten minutes.

Somebody noticed all this a very long time ago, and drew it. When they wanted a picture of whatever it is that takes an ordinary person at twenty past nine and makes him unreachable, they did not draw a monster, and they did not draw a devil with a weapon.

They drew a man with ten heads.

Which is a strange thing to settle on, unless you had sat in a room with it and counted.

Tonight

Ten minutes, with a pen. Still no system, still nothing to keep up.

Take the last disagreement you had — not the worst one, the most recent. Last night will do.

One. Write, in one sentence, what was actually wrong. Just the one thing. If you cannot get it into a sentence, you have not found it yet; keep cutting until you can.

Two. Underneath, list every separate objection you raised, in the order you raised them, as near to your own words as you can manage. Do not tidy them up, and do not stop at three because three looks more reasonable written down.

Three. Against each one, write Y or N: was it about the thing in your first sentence?

Most will be N. That is the finding, and it is not a moral failure — it is a count.

Four. At the bottom, write the answer to this: was there any sentence they could have said that would have ended it? Write yes or no, and if it is yes, write the sentence out, because that is genuinely worth knowing and you can say so next time.

Then put the pen down. Do not apologise to anybody tonight. An apology made on the back of a ten-minute exercise can be the same grip, wearing a better coat, going round again — and tonight you have no way of telling which one you are making.

What this is worth, exactly:

You will not have fewer of these this week. You may well have one tomorrow and only recognise it afterwards, with the pen, which is the normal order and not a failure.

What you are building is a count. In a few weeks you will be mid-objection — the fourth or fifth head, something about a wedding in 2019 — and a quiet part of you will think: that's four.

Not I shouldn't be doing this. Shame puts another head up. Just: that's four.

It will not stop you. It is not meant to stop you. It is meant to make the thing countable, and a thing you can count has a size, and anything with a size turns out to be smaller than the fog you thought you were.

So far this book has described what holds you, which rather assumes something is being held. The next chapter is about whoever that is: the one who was standing at the kettle, making a perfectly good decision, and was not consulted at twenty past nine.