© iStockDopamine fasting isn’t about getting away from your phone because it’s making you unhappy; it’s about getting away from your phone because it’s making you too happy
My friend J made a flying visit from San Francisco recently. Over dinner, we tackled some of the big, pressing questions of the day, such as the US education system, climate change, populism and what exactly Irish people mean when they say "grand".
"They mean 'posh', right?" he said, showing off the word he learned on his last visit, and now likes to invoke at every opportunity.
"No, no, no. Never. Rarely. Well sometimes," I said, before the husband and I treated him to a good 20 minutes, rich with anecdote and example, on all conceivable occasions for the deployment of "grand".
"Grand", we explained, with no small degree deal of national pride, can run the spectrum from thoroughly disappointing, to barely tolerable, to entirely adequate, to slightly uppity, to horrifically pretentious. The ambiguity is the point. As a nation, we try to avoid being forced to commit ourselves too firmly to anything, which is how we've managed to navigate our way through decades of political strife, and some of the thorny social issues of recent years.
When you live on an island this small and this damp, you spend a lot of time indoors trying not to fall out with other people, we concluded, as we triumphantly wrapped up the lecture. Ireland's secret weapon is the word "grand".
He left the next morning on the early train back to Dublin, and texted that the food, company, board games and the coffee on the train were grand. I've no idea whether he actually enjoyed himself or not. If he keeps this up, he'll be entitled to an Irish passport.
One of the other things we talked about was how we have ceded so much of our autonomy, attention and psychological wellness to the device in our pockets.
He brought to our attention the latest Silicon Valley wellness fad - a phenomenon called "dopamine fasting", which is what thrusting Valley types do when they suspect their system is overrun with the so-called happiness hormone, largely because of all the time they're spending plugged into their phone, microdosing on dopamine. (J, to be clear, is not a proponent of dopamine fasting. He's grand as he is.)
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