Shaking Hands with Humans
L was right: I am, by nature, a person who trusts easily. He brought this up while talking about when we first met. We were in Abu Dhabi together for the NYUAD Candidate Weekend. That year’s pool of Asian applicants was not large; he was from Afghanistan, and perhaps for that reason, on the bus back from the restaurant, we ended up sitting together. I suspect he is not, by disposition, a gifted conversationalist; neither am I. But that evening, possibly because we had eaten well, I managed (looking back, it really was unusual) to start a conversation. I said, L, you’re from Asia? He said yes, you? I said China. He said that he was from Afghanistan. I asked which city. He laughed and said that I would not have heard of it. I said fair enough. He asked me. I said Guangzhou, though at the time, introducing Guangzhou to foreign friends, one would instinctively reach for ‘Canton’ first. Only recently did I discover that most people now know ‘Guangzhou’ and not ‘Canton’.
L messaged me last night. He said that he was coming to Cambridge for some kind of summer exchange programme and asked whether Pembroke was a decent college. I said of course, and that when he arrived I could show him around Magdalene. Within about ten minutes L had moved on to his ex-girlfriend. He asked if I remembered a Japanese girl from the Abu Dhabi weekend. I said mm-hm. He said that they had been together since.
This is the peculiar magic of social contact. I am, apparently, constitutionally incapable of initiating conversation, yet the moment someone is willing to talk properly, I seem to want to tell them everything. We moved from relationships to studies, then from politics to that year’s book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
I am indeed a person who trusts easily, and I do not consider this a fault. L said that he had not planned to talk for so long but found my life terribly interesting. I said that I had not planned to talk for so long either but found my life terribly sad. Around seven he said that he had to sleep. I asked if he was in Afghanistan. He said that he was in Hong Kong, doing a legal consultancy internship. I said good luck, man. He sent a thumbs-up.
Then I went out for dinner. At the hotel restaurant I ordered fish and chips and a cider of negligible strength (the brand was called Pink Floyd, so I felt I owed it a taste). The waiter asked for ID. I showed my student card. He said that would not do; it had to be a driving licence or passport. I said I had brought neither and could he make an exception. He thought for a moment, then said the photo did not look like me: my hair was not that short. I said, trust me, man, that is me. He smiled and said, well, to be honest, we don’t do trust here.
I did not know what to say. I said fine, just bring me water. The restaurant lighting was dim amber. Past eight, the last of the sunset showed above the hill. Clouds drifting apart carried a faint pink flush.
There had been a stretch in first year when my mood would plummet every evening. I had thought that period was behind me, but last night, perhaps because of the accumulation of small troubles, when the last sliver of gold was swallowed by the hilltop I suddenly felt profoundly sad. A large contributing factor, admittedly, was that the fish and chips had not been filling. I bought a Kinder chocolate bar from the vending machine and returned to my hotel room to rest. Regrettably, the chocolate bar had no discernible effect. I was still a sad person; only now a full and sad person.
Having eliminated various possibilities, I began to suspect that the sadness stemmed from trusting too easily. Trust has an indirect consequence: expectation. Expectation of the trusted, expectation of at least some trust, some sympathy, in return. Much of the time, sadness seems to arise from the feeling that such expectation has been ‘betrayed’. But thought through to the end: trusting others is one’s own choice; unrealistic expectation of others is one’s own choice; and if both are choices, these ‘betrayals’ are ultimately choices too.
A koi that leaps from its bowl ought to die without regret.
A fortnight ago I was reading Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds. He writes about his underwater encounters with octopuses off the Australian coast, about how astonishingly curious and trusting these animals are towards humans. He describes a dive at ‘Octopolis’, a settlement built by a group of octopuses, during which a curious octopus, instead of retreating at his approach, extended one arm and attempted contact.
Reading that passage, I thought: if I were that octopus, I would probably fall, with some irony, in love with the sensation of shaking hands with a human being. I imagined all the exchange made possible by trust, all the care sparked by curiosity on a lonely planet.
Godfrey-Smith writes that after the first touch, the octopus withdrew its arm. He supposes it only wanted to determine whether he was food. I think the octopus must have felt terribly wronged. If it knew that was what Godfrey-Smith thought, it would probably lie awake at night, just as I do.
Originally published in Chinese as 「与人类握手」 on 阿莫東森的無聊生活.
