NOT SELF-IMPROVEMENT
My one life advice
Pet a cat!
This article was originally written for my newsletter, Could be Worse, which can best be described as a window into the cacophony of my thoughts. Subscribe to it to receive more of my posts and also way ahead of me eventually publishing them here.
People often ask me: If you had only one life advice to give, what would that be?
(To be honest, no one ever asks me that. I’ve just always wanted to start a sentence that said, “People often ask me” because it helps me manifest a future where I am the world’s favourite internet guru.)
To these imaginary people, I give a single piece of advice:
Pet a cat
Or, at least, try to.
It’s not a metaphor. The cat here doesn’t represent your feelings and the petting definitely doesn’t refer to you embracing them.
The cat is literal — those murder machines that meow; toothy terminators; poltergeists on paws; that purring doomsday; felines that don’t give a fuck.
A literal domestic cat. It doesn’t matter what colour it is or how big or small it is. Just pet it, or rather, try to.
That’s my advice.
You can stop reading this and go to the nearest cat.
Cats have style
Still here? Let me continue my special ed for you, the slow coaches.
The reason why you need to pet a cat is this:
Cats have style.
Imagine if you learned that dogs went around killing 15 billion mammals every year; you’d be immediately out with pitchforks calling for those damn savages to be locked up. And yet, that’s exactly what cats do.
Cats are extinction events with cute whiskers.
Despite their murder spree, we pet and cuddle them. We let them roam willy-nilly around in cities, homes, and (gasp!)…even our beds. Even when they willingly present evidence of their murder on our doorstep, we look at the dead and mangled ex-life and go, “Aww, how cute; your offering!”. We scratch their bellies while they plot carefully on how they’d devour us the day we die.
Why?
Style.
Petting a cat teaches you to respect this style. The lesson is this: You may be murderous and apathetic, but if you have style, people will cosy up to you and open their doors for you. Style is worth working for.
You’ll notice the style as you approach her purr-liness, smug in her perch, looking down at you like you are the scum of the earth. You’ll notice the poise, stillness, and those sparkling eyes that bore a hole into your head. You’ll feel the barely contained sprightly energy radiating off her lustrous coat.
Style.
I can hear your rumblings of dissatisfaction. I hear your whiny entitled self say, “That’s not good enough. I need real-life lessons that can change my life through my eyeballs!”
Don’t worry, there’s more. LinkedIn would be proud.
Three lessons
Anyone who has tried to pet a cat knows that it can go one of three ways:
- The cat walks away in utter disgust.
- The cat snaps at you. You pull back your hand and realize you have one less finger than when you started. Or an eye missing.
- The cat obliges you momentarily, and you pet her.
Let’s examine the three results individually and what lessons they can teach us.
#1: The cat walks away in utter disgust
A cat moving away from you with disgust is humbling. You may have millions of Instagram followers, run your own AI company, or be the best parent to your kid who calls you the best parent ever, but to the cat, you’re just another disgusting organic life form. Your place does not just drop in the human race and in the value chain of life. You are less interesting than the little mouse that the cat went chasing after.
While this may seem dis-spiriting at first, it is life-affirming to know that you are a nobody, an irrelevant cog in this wheel of life, who, for some reason, wears a dress and goes to work. This kind of deep humiliation is the best rage fuel for success.
#2: The cat snaps at you. You pull back your hand and realize you have one less finger than when you started. Or an eye missing
Losing a finger is a bit more of a permanent outcome than emotional trauma (arguably). You will have to live with one fewer finger (the cat’s most likely taken your finger as an offering for elsewhere), but there’s a bright side to it.
Seeing your missing finger will remind you daily to approach things with kindness and caution which is a great lesson to carry around (even if with a weaker grasp thanks to the missing finger). This is the reason Evolution gave you ten fingers anyway — nine more attempts to get it right.
Now to the happy outcome.
#3: The cat obliges you momentarily, and you pet her
If the cat approves you and deems you worthy of petting her, then your whole life changes. Cats are the epitome of evolution, the being civilizations prayed to. The internet you read this on was built on the back of millions of cat memes.
The surge of dopamine will be nothing you’ve ever felt before. No drug in the world will make you feel more worthy. Brimming with life-changing confidence, you’ll go on to do great things. Or become a dictator.
The real lesson, however, is this…
The cat remains unaffected after your petting. When you pet a dog, it is indebted to you for the service. It becomes your servant for life, wagging its tail and being gleefully dumb in its servitude, whereas the cat teaches you that affection is not a quid pro quo service.
In fact, you haven’t pet the cat; rather, the cat allowed you the petting privilege. You are in her debt.
And therein lies the ultimate life lesson: Love isn’t quid pro quo.
Showing your love to someone isn’t a service you provide for them but something you do for yourself with no expectation of receiving anything in return.
(Wow, I managed to find an actual lesson there.)
So, go and try to pet a cat.
Could be Worse,
Tyag
