• CHAPTER EIGHT •
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
—E. E. CUMMINGS
Day One: Friday, August 23
Hollywood, California, to Cedar City, Utah: 472 miles
I wake at 3:00 AM, certain I’ve slept less than an hour since I turned out the light. The adrenaline has been too much. It’s been rousing me every few minutes. I keep thinking about what I may have forgotten or worrying yet again about some far-flung-but-certainly-pending tragedy I cannot possibly control but which, if I worry about it hard enough, I hope to avert.
Without turning on the light, I dress in my armored textile riding pants and jacket and gather my things that have been packed, waiting by the door, for days.
Creeping down the steps of my studio apartment and past the California-perfect pool shaded by citrus trees and bougainvillea, I lug everything I hope to need for this journey. The night is black and utterly silent—amazing considering the place is only a few blocks off Hollywood Boulevard. I move past the main house, the home of friends who gave me shelter when I separated from J nine months ago. Their dogs bark from inside. I was hoping not to wake anyone, to make as little fuss as possible.
I’ve been striving to make as little fuss as possible my entire life. But there’s something about this trip – about being seen and heard on a motorcycle—that I hope will make me more comfortable with spreading out and genuinely owning my life.
I pull up to Rebecca’s house at three thirty. I’ve been parking my motorcycle at her place since the separation, as I don’t have safe parking in Hollywood. Working by the beams of our headlamps, I strap down my T-bag, a smallish soft-sided piece of luggage that slides over my sissy bar. My tank bag attaches with magnets and allows me to read driving directions through the clear plastic sleeve. I check my tire pressure and figure out how to use the Bluetooth device that will let me communicate with Rebecca on the road. I put on extra clothes, worried I’m not dressed warmly enough. It’s chilly now and at speeds of seventy will be even colder, yet the day will be in the hundreds by the time we hit Vegas.
We sip coffee, exchanging few words. This five-thousand-mile journey has been a year in the making.
During these final preparations, I’m heartened to realize I know a thing or two about what I’m doing. This aptitude surprises me. I can’t help acknowledging that this entire journey has been basically a fluke. Even my friendship with Rebecca is a coincidence. I was the head room parent at the K–8 parochial school both our kids attended and talked her into being the room parent for one of the grades. I knew her to say hello on the schoolyard, but not much else. One day, I emailed a few friends to see if anyone wanted to trot around the high school track with me. One of them was also named Rebecca. “I don’t think you meant this for me,” the motorcycle Rebecca wrote back. “But I’d love to join you for a run.” Soon, we were meeting three and four times a week to run together, but as novices, we couldn’t jog and talk at the same time for lack of breath. We wore headphones for at least a year while we pumped our arms and legs around a track. Eventually we turned off the music and started talking.
I initially thought we had little in common. But there’s something about sweating next to someone who is struggling just as hard as you, breathing heavily, working intensely, one of us feeling strong one day, the other feeling strong the next, that opens up a kind of willing vulnerability. If you don’t have to at look someone, you say things you might keep hidden in a face-to-face setting. We gradually talked of ever-deeper things, exploring ourselves and our lives. We told each other just about every secret we might otherwise hold closely.
• • •
Our motorcycles are finally balanced and packed. We nod at each other and fire up the bikes. Rebecca takes the lead. The first stop is a gas station near the 210 freeway in Pasadena where we meet Edna and George, who will accompany us on part of our journey.
Originally, Rebecca and I had planned to do this trek alone. But George and Edna asked if they could ride to Milwaukee with us. We agreed, knowing that we might be grateful for their help on the road. We have a lot to learn. But by the time we turn our bikes back west and head home some nine days from now, we had better know what we’re doing. We’re going to be all alone by then.
“Do we know where gas is at each stop?” I quiz George under the jaundiced fluorescent light of the gas station. Since I am on the bike with the smallest tank, I need to ensure we stop every 120 miles or so. The others are on much bigger bikes with ranges of 200-plus miles and may forget that I will run out long before them. I carry a siphon tube in my tank bag in case. If I were to siphon a little gas from Rebecca, we might both make it to the next station. I’m praying we won’t need to use it.
George has done much more cross-country motorcycling than the rest of us and is a small, sinewy man, with a long salt-and-pepper ponytail and weathered-brown skin, a stunning blend of Native American and Japanese heritage. He smiles at Rebecca and me with wrinkled, kind eyes, nodding at my question.
“We’ll stop in Barstow,” he tells me. I am comforted to have this one bit of information.
The plan for today will take us through Las Vegas and then up to Cedar City, Utah, where we’re expected by friends of Edna and George who will give us hospitality for the night.
“But first we’ll stop for lunch at Whiskey Pete’s in Primm,” Edna says, referring to the little Vegas-wannabe town populated with low-rent casinos just over the California-Nevada border. We’re going to meet up with an Australian couple there, also part of Edna and George’s extended two-wheel coterie.
I knew Edna for a number of months before I realized she was George’s wife. She’s model tall to his compact stature, platinum blonde to his weathered brownness. They’ve been together for more than four decades, since Edna was fifteen. George is riding a big, older Harley Ultra Classic. Edna’s ride is just a bit more petite, a custom-built Barbie Harley. A Barbie doll is embedded on each side of the sparkling Pepto-pink gas tank. Edna’s glitter-pink helmet and bubble gum–colored leather gloves are perfectly matched. She loves when little girls in cars see her, point at her, and wave. She always waves back. Over the course of this trip, countless men will ask to take a picture with her and her bike. She will accommodate them, but it’s waving to the little girls who don’t know until they see her that they can grow up to ride Barbie Harleys that will give her the most pleasure.
I am a woman who plans things down to the most microscopic detail. I have long believed that if I worry enough about something, I can keep it from happening. As a kid, my mother’s chaotic behavior startled and often frightened me. My response was to try to manage my surroundings, to be as certain as possible as to what was to come.
This trip, I begin to see, is going to be an uncomfortable exercise in letting go, in welcoming the unknown.
Still, what surprises me most is the fact that I’m here in the first place. As I have explored my new obsession with motorcycles, I’ve tried to sculpt this passion into some kind of coherent narrative, to find a way that it might add up and finally make sense. So far, I have failed. One thing I have learned, though, is that I am a novelty seeker, and in life, that’s a good thing.
I imagine a twelve-step meeting in which those who share this trait tell our stories to each other, trying to understand how we got here and how to make sure this trait serves us rather than destroys us.
Hi. My name is Bernadette and I am a neophiliac.
Defined as a personality type characterized by a strong affinity for novelty, neophilia is at one end of a continuum experts call novelty or sensation seeking. It’s a subset of what psychologists have named “The Big Five” inventory of personality traits. These five include (1) openness to experience, whether one is inventive and curious, or more consistent and cautious; (2) conscientiousness: one’s inclination for efficiency and organization, as opposed to being easygoing and careless; (3) extraversion: whether one is outgoing and energetic or solitary and reserved; (4) agreeableness: how friendly and compassionate versus analytical and detached one is; and (5) neuroticism: one’s degree of sensitivity and nervousness compared with feelings of security and confidence. You can take the Big Five personality test here: www.outofservice.com/bigfive/.
Risk taking and sensation seeking are part of openness to experience. This trait is characterized by an appreciation for emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, and art; unquenchable curiosity; and a draw toward a variety of experience.
When it comes to the terms risk taking, sensation seeking, and novelty seeking, a number of psychologists and psychiatrists all seem to be studying the same attribute, calling it by slightly different names and considering the trait in different ways in relation to overall personality studies. No matter what we call it, neophiliacs have a tendency to seek varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences and often take physical risks for the sake of having them. These experiences may take the form of extreme adventure activities such as skydiving, snowboarding, and mountain-climbing. But the trait also expresses itself in unsafe drug, alcohol, or tobacco use, gambling and stock market speculation, and reckless sexual exploits. Men generally score higher than women for the trait, with sensation seeking typically increasing during childhood, peaking in the late teens or early twenties, and thereafter decreasing steadily with age.
Interestingly, researchers have found that those who demonstrate this openness to experience trait often align with liberal ethics and politics and enjoy thinking in abstractions and symbols. Those on the other end of the spectrum hew to conventional and traditional interests. Generally, they prefer that which is plain, straightforward, and obvious over the complex, ambiguous, and subtle. Closed people prefer familiarity rather than novelty and are resistant to change.
“Novelty seeking is the fundamental trait, and risk taking is one of its manifestations,” says Winifred Gallagher, whose book New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change focuses on this trait. As a species, we’re highly neophilic—lovers of novelty—but as individuals, we differ by degree. Novelty seeking refers to the intensity of your attraction to things that are new and different. Someone at the low extreme of the spectrum avoids novelty and prefers the familiar, while someone at the other end actively pursues novelty and is bored with the routine. Most of us, of course, fall somewhere between those two poles.
Sensation seeking isn’t simply craving new experiences and going after them, but the emotional intensity, energy, and concentration we bring to the experience and the passion that invigorates the pursuit, whether in work or sports, relationships or the arts, driving style or food preferences.
It doesn’t matter if one is drawn to explore the great outdoors or the great books, “by becoming more curious and interested in life, you’ll also have a more curious and interesting life,” says Paul Silvia, psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “The tendency to either approach or avoid novelty is the most important stable behavioral difference among individuals in the same species, period.”
When it comes to risk, we have to weigh our choices. Deciding to try something new might reward you in many ways: prestige, money, career success, or maybe a fabulous lover. Or, you could end up unhappy, frightened, broke, or humiliated.
Learning that novelty and anxiety are a package deal makes me feel better. Though I’m not as terrified each time I get on Izzy Bella these days, the fear still lurks. So why would anyone—why would I—try scary new things when fear is blocking the way? As it turns out, emotions like surprise, curiosity, and interest are more satisfying for some of us than fear is daunting, and that attraction pulls us over the fear threshold. These buoyant feelings are what inspire us to lean into something new. “Like a sip of champagne, bubbly curiosity lifts us out of quotidian reality and a business-as-usual mind-set and slips us into the approach reaction with the unfamiliar,” Gallagher says.
So what’s the difference between novelty seeking and risk taking? Gallagher believes risk taking is a specific form of novelty seeking in which the novelty you seek is an intensely exciting, arousing experience. One’s reaction to a roller coaster is a good gauge of that person’s degree of risk taking. Do you say: Get me out of here? or I’ll try it once? or Let’s do it again?
Initially I’m stumped because I’m not a big fan of roller coasters or anything that combines the pull of gravity with perilous drops. So how and why do I find myself in this category?
• • •
We take off from Pasadena into the darkest, coolest part of the night. We’ve downed a fair amount of coffee but I’m already exhausted for lack of sleep. I’ve been packing for days, agonizing over what to bring, discarding what wouldn’t fit in the compact bag, making last-minute purchases like heavy gloves for when we hit the Rockies and Yellowstone, panicking about what I have forgotten. Cold-weather clothes fill most of my bag: leather jacket, down vest, long underwear, ear and neck warmers, a rain suit. I may need these items only one day of this trip, but I’ll be grateful to have them if the weather turns harsh.
The first hour on the ride is uneventful. The sun is not even tickling the horizon yet and the morning is cool, but I’m warm. And relaxed. And soon very, very sleepy. Motion is supposedly a reliable hypnotic for a restless toddler but I never sleep on planes or in a car. Still, I cannot keep my eyes open. The thrum of the road with the drone of my pipes creates a kind of white noise that lulls me toward Mr. Sandman. I shake my head and try to perk up. I don’t think I’m in any danger, but I keep waiting for the fog in my head to clear. I drift into the fast lane. I sit up straighter and force myself to pay attention. But then, I’m ahead of Edna and fast approaching George’s rear fender. How did that happen? I ease into my place in the formation, but George drops back to gesture if I’m okay. I nod that I’m fine. Falling asleep easily is not part of my nature.
Thankfully, he’s been around tired bikers enough to know the signs. He signals for us all to pull to the shoulder.
“You need to walk around, have something to eat,” he tells me.
I’m embarrassed. I hate to be the one responsible for everyone having to stop. I am most secure when I serve as a knowledgeable, astute member of the team. I hate feeling like the weak link. After some food and a brisk walk, though, I am alert again and grudgingly grateful he made the call. I would have risked my safety not to draw attention to myself. What a ridiculous, humbling thing to admit.
After the fifteen-minute break, we’re back on the bikes. The sun is starting to warm in the east, the darkness seems less inky. I’m finally out of danger. But I also acknowledge that my need for perfectionism and self-sufficiency is going to kill me if I’m not more careful.
• • •
I learn that people who share similar sensation-seeking drives tend to be more romantically compatible with each other, and that divorced males score higher than single and married males. Divorced and single females score higher than married females.
The term neophobe applies to individuals on the opposite end of the spectrum—those who exhibit a strong desire for safety and predictability. Neophiliacs and neophobes together account for 15 to 30 percent of all people overall, approximately 10 to 15 percent on each end of the continuum. “The remaining 70 to 80 percent are moderate neophiles of different degrees,” explains Gallagher. This refers to people who “want to be neither scared stiff by too much novelty and change nor bored stiff by too little.”
Though there are different lenses through which to examine a person’s drive for novelty, a lot of the experts tend to agree on the basics: While risky behavior can be detrimental to the individual (and, it must be noted, behavior that is too cautious may likewise be detrimental), both traits can be beneficial to society at large. “Whatever the costs for a particular person, particularly at the continuum’s high and low ends, the roughly 1-5-1 proportion of those who generally approach, weigh, or avoid new things is good for the commonweal,” according to Gallagher. Bold adventure seekers may live too fast and die too young. But they also explore, experiment, and otherwise push the envelope for the rest of us in productive ways, she says. “Like individuals, societies struggle to balance the need to survive, while prioritizing safety and stability, with the desire to thrive, which requires stimulation and exploration.”
• • •
“Well, hello there!” the Australian motorcycle couple enfolds Rebecca and me in hugs as if we’re long-lost family rather than friends of friends they’ve just met. They’ve been coming to California for decades, renting motorcycles and often touring with George and Edna. We’re standing in the casino parking lot in Primm, amazed at how hot the day is already at 10:00 am.
“Let’s get some food!” they say in unison.
We settle for an IHOP located inside the stale-smoke casino. There isn’t a bathroom inside the restaurant—the casino wants you to wander past as many slot machines as possible to find it. I locate the bathroom, wash my face, apply sunblock to the little patches of skin that are exposed. In my snug motorcycle gear, I walk back through the casino. Some of the men eye me: with awe, appreciation, intimidation? They take more notice than I’m used to. The women, on the other hand, seem to make an effort not to notice me.
If I were dressed as my everyday self, I wouldn’t get these looks. Or maybe that’s not true. During the course of my marriage, I learned to turn off the sexual-awareness meter that we all developed in puberty. From age twenty-three on, I stopped noticing men. They were off-limits. And since I was in the “off” position, they stopped noticing me, too.
Or so I thought.
Earlier, Rebecca said she caught glimpses of the faces of truckers who passed us on the highway. “They really perk up when they see Edna’s bike. Then they almost do a double take at the two female bikers following her.”
I hadn’t noticed. In fact, I thought of myself as rather androgynous when I was on the bike.
• • •
Gender, as it turns out, has a lot to do with the concept of novelty seeking. For both sexes, novelty seeking peaks in adolescence and declines with age—“even Keith Richards has slowed down,” Gallagher notes. That said, lots of research shows that deliberately engaging with new challenges, even things as simple as trying a different restaurant or gym routine or taking a community college course, is a great way to improve your well-being and protect your mental and physical health. “So, ladies of a certain age,” Gallagher proposes, “why not learn to fly-fish or ride a motorcycle? If not now, when?”
The major difference between the genders in this realm is that women are more sociable, and men have higher levels of testosterone and lower levels of monoamine oxidase A, two brain chemicals associated with risk taking. This could help explain why more men than women are interested in extreme sports and the Special Forces. That doesn’t mean women wouldn’t be interested in such exploits, however. Just note the number of female astronauts, West Pointers, and mountain-climbers. “I suspect women motorcycle riders would be in there somewhere too,” Gallagher notes.
The more intellectual, emotional form of novelty seeking, openness to experience, refers to one’s degree of curiosity, imagination, creativity, insight, and preference for variety. “Some studies show that many women who score high in novelty seeking manifest the tendency in unconventional lifestyles or hobbies, globe-trotting,” she says.
Biological as well as cultural influences can incline some populations to be more enthusiastic about new experiences than others. While the frequency of a gene linked to novelty seeking varies greatly around the globe, among Westerners of European decent, its prevalence comes in at a substantial 25 percent. By contrast, it’s rarely found in culturally conservative China.
It seems our ancestors’ novelty seeking was boosted by the modern nervous system’s sophisticated circuitry for the regulation of dopamine, one of the brain’s major chemical messengers that referees our emotional responses to the world. Dopamine is critical in the seeking and processing of novelty and rewards. But how we process that neurotransmitter can vary from person to person. An individual’s dopaminergic makeup can help explain why one person is eager to explore new things while someone else might see only the risky downside involved.
• • •
We enter Las Vegas just past noon when the city’s mien is at its most brutal and unflattering. This gambling and sex spectacle in the middle of the parched wasteland has never appealed to me. I prefer to feel centered and grounded, but Vegas is obviously designed to distract and dazzle. Gratefully, the plan is to roll on through.
But then a construction zone chokes four lanes down to two, and George pulls to the side and comes to a stop. There’s barely a sliver of shoulder. Rebecca and I pull up behind with traffic passing only an arm’s distance away. Edna has to get off at the next exit to make her way back to us. George’s engine has quit. We edge up snug to the K-rail erected to provide a safety barrier for the construction workers.
As George starts pulling out tools, my heart sinks, worried this experience is going to be like everything else. As a kid, it seemed there was always something that interfered with my plans. Birthday parties canceled when my mother was sent off to Camarillo State Mental Hospital again, outings aborted when my younger brother ran away or was arrested. When I was accepted into graduate school, I waited until the very last second to prepare. I was certain something would come along to destroy my chance to have that experience. I seem to have spent my life waiting for the one thing that was going to torpedo whatever hopes I’d tentatively begun to imagine into existence. When one’s dreams are forever being thwarted, you learn to deny them, or at the minimum, not take them seriously.
I am trying hard not to throw in the towel when we’ve hardly even crossed the state line. But the words keep running through my head: Who do you think you are, that you should deserve this?
With the highway traffic flying by and gusting us with wind and road debris, George tinkers. I try not to panic. Within fifteen minutes, the problem is fixed.
• • •
There’s another aspect, too, to this kind of risky behavior that feeds our need for sensation. Though we are biologically programmed to seek out what’s novel, modern life seldom gives us reasons to truly put our lives on the line. As a result, humans take what are, in most modern cases, unnecessary risks because the craving for adventure still runs strong in our genetic makeup. As a society, we laud our risk takers, showering praise and adulation on them. Race car drivers, astronauts, mountaineers, and explorers are seen as heroes (and heroines) to many in our culture. This positive social reinforcement is a powerful force, basically guaranteeing that that genetic disposition will be passed along.
Some social scientists speculate that novelty seeking may be the result of having more leisure time than our ancestors. Free time, together with brains wired for risk and a social milieu that feeds off novelty, makes a powerful concoction.
In fact, it’s one of the reasons people love horror films so much. People who would never engage in high-risk activities themselves often take vicarious excitement from movies. Nothing is going to jump off the screen and get us, so we can fill that need for a little burst of fear, a moment of panic, a release of dopamine and adrenaline, all safely contained within a benign environment, thereby allowing us to get the “fix” our biology craves.
Michael Apter, research psychologist and author of The Dangerous Edge: The Psychology of Excitement, describes the appeal of risk taking as the “the tiger in the cage” phenomenon. Risk seekers desire the danger and thrill of the tiger, but they also want the safety of knowing the beast can be contained.
In fact, many people who love to take risks are characterized by a consuming desire to control their own destiny. Though others imagine they have a latent death wish, the truth is that they are actually passionate devotees of living life to its fullest. By taking part in activities in which they could be injured or killed, and then drawing back from the brink through their application of skill and discipline, they tap into a level of awareness and alert presence that can make life seem that much sweeter. Risk takers are not interested in dangerous activities, per se, but in experiencing danger that they can control and master to the utmost degree.
Is it ironic that scientists find risk seekers to have a strong need for control in most or all areas of their lives? In fact, some experts suggest that taking risks may bring periods of welcome abandon to individuals who have trouble letting life simply unfold.
People, perhaps, somewhat like me.
• • •
We cross the short pie wedge of Nevada and enter Utah. My arms ache, my back is sore from holding my shoulders upright. My legs knot from being held in a static position. This is the longest day riding I’ve ever experienced. We approach Cedar City when George pulls off the highway.
“We just passed a sign for Zion National Park,” he says. He’s going to call Roger, who will be hosting us tonight and who ostensibly knows this area better than we do, to see if we have time to explore it.
Zion is one of my favorite places on the planet. A magical space composed of towering sandstone cliffs in red, beige, and peach, it’s a slot canyon with a distinctive Narrows, a gorge with walls more than a thousand feet tall cut through by the slender Virgin River. One must wade or swim to fully hike the terrain. But right now, I just want to stop and rest. It’s only midafternoon and I’m shot. I could kill for a bed. Or even a floor, any horizontal surface. I’m relieved when George finds out that we can’t actually ride our motorcycles into Zion. Everyone, cars and motorcycles alike, must park outside and take a shuttle. He’s still ready to go to Zion, but Rebecca and I—the tired ones—talk him out of it.
The automatic door of the largest garage I’ve ever seen opens as if of its own accord when we pull up to Roger and Crystal’s place. In their airplane hangar of a garage, there’s room for all four of our bikes. We park, unload, find the rooms they’ve set up for us. I’m out cold in minutes.
Dinner is served at six thirty. Hamburger Helper and an iceberg lettuce salad. I’m immensely grateful for their hospitality. Over dinner, Rebecca and I listen to stories Roger and George share about being stuck on the road with fellow bikers, the lengths to which both have gone to help stranded fellow riders. The many nights sitting on the side of the road with a friend’s broken-down bike, keeping each other company. They crack themselves up with tales of a guy named George Sanchez and his unreliable Sportster.
“Why did you keep riding with him if he was always breaking down?” I ask Roger.
“He would have stayed with me, too.”
I ponder this simple algebra of connection.
• • •
Apter tells a story about what he calls “edgeworkers”—those who voluntarily adopt experiences that take them to the “edge” of life. He says that edgeworkers recognize one another, despite great differences in lifestyle and social location. He cites gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, progenitor of the term edgework, to explain how Thompson won the confidence of the Hells Angels when researching his first book:
I just went out there and said, “Look, you guys don’t know me, I don’t know you, I heard some bad things about you, are they true?” I was wearing a fucking madras coat and wing tips, that kind of thing, but I think they sensed I was a little strange . . . Crazies always recognize each other. I think Melville said it, in a slightly different context: “Genius all over the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.” Of course, we’re not talking about genius here, we’re talking about crazies—but it’s essentially the same thing. They knew me, they saw right through all my clothes and there was that instant karmic flash. They seemed to sense what they had on their hands.
Those who are interested in pushing boundaries, even when they are scared to do so, may be in some kind of psychic communion with others of their tribe. It provides a form of community that may be lacking in much of modern life.
• • •
“So,” Roger turns to me. “What kind of work do you do?” In this group, I’m the odd one out, definitely not part of the tribe. Everyone, other than Rebecca, who owns Glendale Harley, earns a living with their hands. Rebecca is accepted despite her outsider status by the beloved nature of her business.
“I write books and I’m a college professor,” I say. Roger asks more questions, and when my background as a former book critic comes up, he pauses.
“That would mean you’ve read something like a hundred books in your life!” he exclaims, unable to believe that such a thing is possible. “I’ve never read a book all the way through,” he confides.
Roger and Crystal have embraced different risks from the ones I have chosen. The same goes for George, Edna, and Rebecca. But as motorcyclists, we’re all the same. We find ways to feed this need, not only because we’re biologically compelled to, but also because it’s actually good for us.
Cutting-edge neuroscience demonstrates that novel experience can improve our mental and physical health well into old age, Gallagher reports. Which makes total sense. When we do something new, learn something we didn’t know before, we create new neural pathways, develop new skills. We come alive in a new way and develop neuroplasticity. “Research now shows that adults of all ages who want to maintain sound minds as well as sound bodies should rise from their ruts and exercise both,” she writes.
Each time we cultivate our neophilia by trying something different, we make it easier to take the next step away from dull routine. We all seek novelty in our own ways. The one thing that seems clear, though, is that it’s healthy and life expanding to embrace novelty.
Researchers who investigate quality of life find that the skillful exploitation of the novelty effect can help us wrest more enjoyment and productivity from daily experience. Economist Tibor Scitovsky studied the relationship between happiness and consumerism. He argued that buying lots of inexpensive “pleasures”—fresh flowers, a piece of dark chocolate, a special meal—evoke deep appreciation and are intensely satisfying. These things are a far better investment in one’s quality of life than spending on “comforts”—serious, expensive things like a deluxe car or an expensive couch. He also supported the idea that we enjoy a pleasurable event even more when we take a short break in its midst. A few moments of pillow talk during sex or a pause during a massage enhances the experience. This is because that time-out interrupts the adaptation process, so we can re-enter and re-appreciate the initial arousal of the activity’s delights.
And it’s arousal rather than adaptation that is often what pulls us into pleasurable activities. Someone who’s terrified to hike alone or to speak in public will not adapt to that fear and will make a conscious effort to avoid it.
On the other hand—Gallagher uses the example of a hoarder—another person may stay aroused by utterly boring objects: old mail, newspapers, bottle caps, pencil stubs, and respond to them as if they were novel, not dismissing them as others would. “Then, too, some of us adapt to stimulating things that, being dangerous, should have remained highly arousing.”
It’s this precarious balance between what’s new and exciting and what feels okay to do that equals a healthy degree of sensation seeking.
Gallagher’s words about her own quest for novelty come to mind as I fall asleep. “Novelty-seeking is the spice of my life. I live in different places, both of which are extreme—NYC and remote Wyoming—because I get bored easily. For me, novelty seeking is more a matter of openness to experience than extreme risk taking. I love the research and reporting involved in producing a book, because I get to learn new things and think new thoughts every day. Then, I get to create something new out of it all!”