Ashleigh Young
Ashleigh Young on the unbearable lightness of being unflappable
It was when I was moving into a new flat and the truck got stuck on the narrow, vertiginous road I was moving to and the moving company had to bring in a little van and then transfer everything from the truck into it bit by bit and then my desk got stuck in a doorway and one of its legs bent up like a banana that I realised: the people I admire most are those who cruise through stressful situations with their brains in full working order, with a sort of pure, shining composure. As the irritations swell around them, they rise up like a lighthouse in a wild sea. “Let me just make some calls, won’t be a moment,” they say, and “I’ve seen a lot worse than this” and “No biggie,” as they jog up three flights of steps with bookshelves and fridges carried lightly on their backs, while hungover.
It’s an Antipodean cliche, I guess, this profound unflappability, for which we can blame all New Zealand sporting heroes. But when it manifests itself in an everyday context, this quality is much more compelling to me. More compelling than any sporting victory or lovely bicycle or bach by the sea. I wish so deeply that I was the sort of person who could bring this sense of order and ease to a difficult situation. In a short story I’ve just read called What Sort of Man ,by Breton Dukes, a man has a very bad day. Thing after thing goes wrong; at one point he ends up covered in poo. Then he comes across a postie whose car has run into a hawk on the road and pinned it beneath a wheel. As the postie hovers haplessly nearby, the protagonist jacks up the car and frees the bird. At this success, the postie starts crying, “You did it, mate.” The moment speaks to both the triumph of being useful and the sense of gratitude we feel when someone saves us from our own incompetence. On both sides, it’s magnificent.
This morning, a tiny but essential bit of plastic fell off my bike pannier. Without the bit of plastic, my pannier wouldn’t attach properly to my bike rack. But I couldn’t get it back on. “Why don’t you work?” I hissed at the plastic, as my fingers waited to be told what to do. In this moment I saw a ghost of the person I might be if I was good at keeping my cool and fixing things — I saw myself clicking the plastic smoothly back into its groove, saw myself hopping back on my bike and scything through the headwind like a needle through a sock being expertly darned. Sometimes when I’m cycling in strong winds, to force some perspective I think of the record-breaking longdistance swimmer Diane Nyad, who was stung by swarms of box jellyfish as she attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida but insisted on continuing the swim and I think of her medical technician who jumped in to sweep the sticky tentacles away and administer shots of epinephrine. I love the story of Nyad. But if I had the choice between being as accomplished as Nyad or her medical technician, I would choose the medical technician every time. Diving into the waves, clutching the life-saving antidote.
Not panicking is an obvious element of unflappability. My brother told me that when my dad was teaching him to drive a Cortina, they once stalled on the railway tracks and were stuck there for ages, while Dad provided level-headed instructions from the passenger seat. Eventually, the old car lurched forward, off the tracks. It was a masterclass in not panicking. Not panicking is only part of it: unflappability also springs from a bedrock of serious competence. The ability to do one thing at a time and to know exactly what that thing is and how it should be done. When I mournfully present my ancient broken necklace to the jewellery repair guy for the hundredth time, he bends his head-mounted magnifier towards it and says, without judgement, what needs to be done. “You’ll get another 20 years out of this, I reckon.” When I take my cat to the vet clinic, the vet is calm and methodical. As she gently squeezes some terrible ooze from an abscess on Jerry’s head, she says things like, “It’s all just par for the course with the fighters,” which makes me feel, somehow, a little better and she listens patiently as I tell her about Kevin, the muscular, weirdly tall cat in my (now former) neighbourhood.
Which brings me to the most crucial point about unflappability — at its core is normal kindness. Sure, vets and moving companies are paid to get a job done properly. But they’re not paid to be so nice about it; to notice our fears and reassure us that things can be fixed. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to jack up a car or carry a fridge on my back or dive into a sea of venomous jellyfish — but maybe I could, if Diane Nyad was really depending on me. Maybe I could.
NEXT WEEK: Steve Braunias