I have a new mantra. Live your life, kids. Sure, have the chocolate muffin for breakfast. Wear the nice shoes on the playground. Use the fine china. Eat the marshmallow. Life is short. You might not get another marshmallow, despite what people tell you, so enjoy what you have while it lasts.
My older daughter has a favorite washcloth, a favorite shirt, a favorite pair of leggings, a favorite pair of shoes, a favorite water bottle — you get the idea. The minute these items are clean and available, they are back in use. I know, because I do all the laundry, and sometimes I do it early so she will have renewed access to her favorite stuff.
I also have a favorite shirt, pair of boots, ice cream flavor, tea mug, tea type — you get the idea. I know, because I usually save them for last. I make myself wear the scratchy fleece or the pinchy boots first, and drink the tea I don’t like, because … I don’t really know why. Because it will even things out, or something? I should suffer first to enjoy the good stuff later? I want to save my favorite things to make them last longer. But this inevitably means they don’t get used as often.
I don’t know how this happened. But I now think my daughter is onto something, and that I’m doing it wrong. (This is often the case.) I thought about one of the most famous examples of delayed gratification, the so-called marshmallow test.
This was a simple test designed to examine how and at what age kids learn the concept of delayed gratification. In its most basic outlines, kids between the ages of 4 and 6 were offered a marshmallow in a research setting, and told they could either eat it now and call it good, or wait to eat it for 15 minutes and get a bonus second marshmallow. The test was meant to understand the age and maturity level at which kids figure out that waiting is okay, maybe even better, despite how hard it can be. But the test truly became famous after the researchers revisited these same kids years later. They apparently found a correlation between the kids’ ability to wait for the second marshmallow and their relative success in adulthood. For a very thorough breakdown, read this Vox article.
But in 2018, psychologists revisited the famous study and found there was no real correlation. Turns out that a kindergartener’s ability to delay her own satisfaction can’t actually predict her success in adulthood. Rather, there are far more pervasive, frustrating forces at play—for instance, the successful kids in the original study all had wealthy, successful parents.
I feel like this is obvious, especially in retrospect, but I also feel like the very notion of delayed gratification is … well, I’ll just say it. It’s dumb. I don’t like it or the notion that it’s something we should aspire to. The marshmallow test’s supposed correlation to excellence is toxic, but it’s also sometimes just the wrong way to live.
Screw delaying gratification. Seize the day! A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Carpe diem. YOLO. Tempus fugit! Burn the candle.
Use your favorite washcloth. Wear the fuzzier, nicer fleece. Who knows how many times you’ll get to use it at all, anyway? Why wait for happiness to come later, when your very life is happening before you, and you don’t even know how long it will be?
Life is short, babies. Eat the first marshmallow you are offered. Eat it immediately, and have no regrets.
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image: Wikimedia Commons
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This resonates with me SO HARD. Being sick for so long, watching everyone else live life, and wondering if mine was in fact over made me wonder if I had actually enjoyed life so far and wtf I was waiting for. You’ve said it so much more eloquently. Carpe marshmallow*!
*doesn’t actually know latin
No one else is living your life. Take responsibility and be grateful for the life u have…It’s working for me most of the time…https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/548857-comparison-is-the-death-of-joy
WOW! Does this ever bring back childhood memories. Mom instructed me not to charge more that 35 cents and hour for babysitting when I knew as a fact that all other babysitters made 50 cents. Think small. Take the smaller piece in deference for your sister. All that sh*t! While I don’t have much respect for people who shove ahead in line or blast down the highway to be first at the red light, but holding yourself back as a courtesy to others all the time is why some people succeed and others don’t. It’s a tricky balance between being mercenary and not selling yourself short. And not eating that marshmallow is selling yourself short.
Forty some years ago, I was one of 3 RNs working the overnite shift in an ICU. It was a particularly bad night, with too many deaths and some very sick people to care for. During a short break, one of the nurses went down to the hospital kitchen and nabbed three cherry popsicles. Handing each of us one of the treats as we watched over our patients, she declared, “If I want me a popsicle at 2 in the morning, I get me a popsicle at 2 in the morning. You never know if it may be your last chance for one.” I have never forgotten it.
This is a totally new way of living for me, but I now am wondering how its beautiful simplicity never occurred to me. Fantastic! Amazing! Realistic! I’m in.