Should You Believe in Fate?

At first, these inconveniences, along with various forms of physical discomfort, dominated my consciousness. But, with time, I came to notice other, subtler changes. I was used to a certain sensory world, which was now on pause. I missed the feelings of walking and standing, obviously. But I realized that I also missed the play of wind on my face (I now rarely go outside), and the pull of weight on my arms (to move anything heavy, I carry it in my wheelchair). I’ve been largely oblivious to the smells and sounds of summer—dewy grass, lemon ices, cicadas—and haven’t felt the warmth of beach sand beneath my feet or the coolness of ocean water. The closest I’ve come to the woods has been in “Big Walk,” a coöperative video game I play with my son. (We explore an island together, solving puzzles.) It’s been months since I’ve stood at the stove, enjoying the heat, aromas, and physical fluidity of cooking.

Instead, I mainly experience the contents of the ground-floor room into which I’ve moved, and the nearby kitchen, to which I have easy access. The Danish novelist Solvej Balle, in her series “On the Calculation of Volume,” imagines a woman who, like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” lives the same twenty-four hours over and over; Tara, the novels’ protagonist, grows achingly familiar with the sounds of drawers opening and closing, and of water gushing through pipes. In a similar way, I’ve become sensitive to the too smooth pliancy of my Costco bedsheets; to the inevitable foamy squish of my ergonomic wheelchair cushion; to the creaky, limited flex of my crutches; and to the hush of the house’s central air. I loathe the endless torture of the Velcro straps on my orthopedic boot, which must be constantly done and undone.

Is this my world now? No—luckily, it’s all temporary. I’ll be back on my feet by October. But it’s sobering to consider how much of one’s life, from its broadest contours to its smallest details, can be changed by chance.

“Chance found me that day having worked for a living all morning, broken a shoelace, chatted with Tina, urinated successfully in a corporate setting, washed my face, eaten half of a bag of popcorn, bought a new set of shoelaces, eaten a hot dog and a cookie with some milk; and chance found me now sitting in the sun on a green bench, with a paperback on my lap.” This is how Howie, the narrator of Nicholson Baker’s novel “The Mezzanine,” brings us into the flow of his life. The book unfolds over the course of a single escalator ride; we follow Howie’s thoughts in slow motion as he ascends, and as they continue into various footnoted sub-thoughts. Sometimes Howie wonders about big questions, but often he dwells on the little things that make office life what it is. He considers how most of his co-workers “glide” as they walk, which is superior to the outmoded “pounding” style, and ruminates on the differences between paper and plastic straws, and the difficulty of getting them to stay put in your drink. He charts his typical thoughts, tracking how often each occurs to him. Family comes near the top, but “Panasonic three-wheeled vacuum cleaner, greatness of” has a place, too.

Similarly, in the new book “The Small Stuff: How to Live a More Gratifying Life,” the writer Ian Bogost explores the many tiny sources of “sensory enchantment” that we all encounter almost by accident. In a coffee shop, he notices a woman rotating her paper cup in her hands, feeling its embossed ridges, which “run up and down at a diagonal,” with her fingertips. He notes how satisfying it is to mash a vending machine’s big plastic button, or how fun it can be to crunch some twigs underfoot on your way to work. “There you are, touching an escalator handrail, which bobbles slightly in its track,” Bogost writes. “There you are, your fingers ribbeting across the sleeves of garments hung close together on a boutique rack.” These sources of “gratification,” he argues, are free, and everywhere, and appreciating them improves your life substantially.

This sort of gratification feels good in itself, but it can also help you feel good about being a self. Enjoying it “offers a way to express the mismatch between your body and the rich, dense universe of things that are outside that body,” Bogost suggests. “It is the good feeling you get from resolving the absurdity of the sensory world.” Why should you exist in this place, among these things? There’s something random about it, isn’t there? If you ground yourself in the here and now, though, it doesn’t feel so random. The world can become welcoming. In my current state, I can’t easily reach the clothes hanging in my closet—a few storage boxes prevent me from wheeling close enough—and so I’ve missed the feeling of “ribbeting across the sleeves” that Bogost describes. After reading his book, I decided to appreciate instead the smooth contraction of the trigger on the long-handled grabber that I’ve been using to extract my shirts. I’ve realized how much I enjoy the spring-loaded action of the brakes on my wheelchair, and the heavy-metal oomph of its footrest, which shifts into position with a pleasing ratchet sound.